Look For the Quran in Science but Never Look For Science in the Quran

By Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam 17 June 2022 This is a supplement to my article: Should Science And Religion Be Kept Separate? To which the answer was no, they shouldn’t be kept apart. This article adds a necessary refinement to it as a result of the discussions. The article cited, began with a quote from the Nobel Laureate Dr Abdus Salam and proceeded to say why he was wrong and why the Quran and Science should not be kept apart. The relevant quote is as follows: “There is a verse that says, We have created everything living out of water. There are words about heaven and earth were united together and We spilt them apart. A man who believes in the big bang will perhaps read the Big Bang. I do not. I do not believe that the Big Bang may last forever by our scientific thinking. It would be absolutely stupid to connect the science of today to what is essentially allegorical, religious, spiritual experience which I think is a totally different dimension” I had argued that Dr Salam’s diffidence betrayed the insufficiency of knowledge and faith in the Quran and that science is bound to converge with the Quran. If the current scientific thinking has converged with what the Quran says on the same subject, then that is the truth as far as that subject is concerned and there is no need for any diffidence. The subsequent article: Dr Abdus Salam, Science, the Big Bang Theory of Creation, and the Quran, was a detailed response to a probing question by a young commentator who had asked why I had said that Salam’s argument expressing doubts about the Big Bang theory was only rhetorical. I also gave my reasoned opinion on why I thought Salam was reluctant to endorse the accurate description of the creation event in the Quran. Why One Should Never Look For Science in the Quran Let us look at what Salam said and apply it to the situation when the astrophysicists and cosmologists had assumed a static universe with no beginning and no end, both in time and space. Any attempt to reconcile the “scientific thinking” then with what the Quran says on the subject would have been as Dr Salam has said, very stupid. This is looking for science in the Quran which we can see is stupid because science is not Al Furqan and is subject to drastic revision as happened when the Big Bang theory of the creation of the Universe replaced the earlier static view of a never-changing universe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also Read: Islam Does Not Inhibit Science: Islamic Culture Has Produced Many First-Rate Scientists Who Were Also Devout In Their Religious Observances ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, there are writers who try to reconcile the theory of evolution with the Quran when there are no verses that lead us to such thinking and they, therefore, reinterpret many of the Quran’s verses to prove the theory of evolution finds support in the Quran. This is again looking for science in the Quran treating science as Al Furqan which is an unwise thing to do. The theory of evolution may get discarded as a good theory which proved to be untrue. Moreover, the Quran is not a Book of either Science or history and therefore why look for science or history in the Quran? However, Always Look For the Quran in Science Consider the verse: 21:30 “Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing.” How does anyone see what the verse is asking the people to see? What the verse is saying is not out there for us to see except by collecting relevant data through methodical observations and its analysis as we do in science. The verse is therefore clearly asking us to see in science, (if necessary), what the verse has said. It is the right approach to look for the Quran in science since the Quran is directly and explicitly asking us to do so. Science is simply the name for a reliable and proven method of making observations and arriving at conclusions that are verifiable as to their correctness and the means to disprove if the conclusions are incorrect. We have discussed the verses relating to the creation of the universe with reference to the current scientific thinking in the article: The Al Furqan Prevails As It Must We discussed the significant difference between the Quran saying that there was something before the Big Bang creation and science saying there was nothing. This was discussed in the article: The Big Bang Theory and the Quran We showed how developments in physics since the Big Bang theory, are converging with what the Quran says about what existed before the Big Bang and also about the process of recreating the Universe afresh at a future date. We also explored the meaning of “(21:104) The Day that We roll up the heavens like a scroll rolled up for books (completed),- even as We produced the first creation, so shall We produce a new one: a promise….” without the help of science to begin with. We failed in our understanding of the verse although what it says is in very plain language and easy to understand. We failed because we imagined our universe to be spherical in shape and wondered how this could be rolled up like the scroll of a book that is completed. We then looked for an explanation in science and found out to our amazement, that the universe is not spherical in shape as we had imagined, but is flat. The universe is therefore like a roll of paper which is spread out gradually as its story unfolds, and when the story is finished, it will be rolled back as a book that is completed. The description is not only accurate but beautifully describes the expanding universe as the unfolding of its story and the end as the story getting completed and the book in the form of the scroll spread out then rolled back. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also Read: Science Should Be Separated From Religion: No Point in Proving Changing Scientific Theories from Quran ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The learning from this small experiment is that our correct understanding of the Quran is prevented by the wrong notions that we have about the subject of the verse. This explains why many of the verses of the Quran get mistranslated because what the Quran is saying in plain language goes against the beliefs of the translator about the same subject. The series of articles cited and discussed above demonstrate a systematic methodology for discovering the meaning of the Quranic verses from the book of our life’s experiences which includes science. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also Read: Islam, Science and the Muslim Predicament ------------------------------------------------------------------ Conclusion To conclude: 1. The first step is to get the literal meaning of the verse right. This is not a simple matter because a verse that is difficult to understand is likely to be also mistranslated. For example, the word “Samavat”, refers to the rest of the universe except the earth and never to the “blue sky above” but in many verses is translated as “the sky” which causes confusion. What falls from the “Samavat” to destroy is therefore not a piece of the sky but an object from above and perhaps a meteorite. Whenever “Samavat” is translated as “sky” the meaning makes little scientific sense. There is no word in the Quran that speaks of the sky. Trust the Quran to say the right thing the right way and never ever deviate from its literal meaning or resort to fanciful interpretations. If the word is frequently used in the Quran, determine its meaning from the Quran itself. If it is used only once or not frequently enough to facilitate determining its meaning from the Quran, then rely on the dictionary meaning. 2. If the verse does not make sense from what we know, look for its explanation in science or the relevant branch of knowledge 3. If a satisfactory explanation is found that fits the literal meaning of the verse then that is the correct explanation 4. If there is a difference between the meaning of the verse and what science tells us, the Quran is right and scientific thinking has yet to converge with what the Quran has said. 5. Do not look for science in the Quran even when the subject is covered in the Quran because science may not have caught up with what the Quran says. We discussed this in the context of the verses on the creation of the Universe. If we had looked for science in the Quran on the creation of the Universe, before the 20th century, we would have found that the two hold opposite views and are irreconcilable. In such a situation, it means that the Quran is right and science is yet to catch up. Until then the verses may remain enigmatic but their literal meaning will be proved right someday in the future. 6. The Quran is not a book of science and therefore do not even expect to find all of science in the Quran. 7. The Quran is Al Furqan or always right. Science is not Al Furqan or always right but converges to the truth eventually but we do not know when. Therefore, looking for an explanation in science if we can find one makes sense but not vice versa. Science is not Al Furqan with which we should “interpret” the Quran to bend it to yield a meaning that conforms with current scientific thinking. That is a very unwise thing to do. All my articles follow the methodology outlined. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Also Read: God-Realization and Modern Science ------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- A frequent contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Naseer Ahmed is an Engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur and is an independent IT consultant after having served in both the Public and Private sector in responsible positions for over three decades. He has spent years studying Quran in-depth and made seminal contributions to its interpretation. 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