Islam
Père Zakaria Boutros

Scientific Miraculousness And Errors in the Quran
 

The author      : Father Zakaria Boutros
The publisher:  www.fatherzakaria.com
 

1) About the sunset
 
It was said In the Cave chapter (Surat Al-Kahf) 83 – 86:
"And they ask you about Dhul-Qarnain. Say:" I shall recite to you something of his story." we established him in the earth, and we gave him the means of everything. So he followed a way. Until, when he reached the setting place of the sun, he found it setting in Ein Hame'h, and he found near it a people"
Ein Hame'h means a spring of black muddy and hot water
How the sun set in a spring and the sun is one million and thirty thousands folds bigger than the earth
Some may say that: the sunset in" Ein Hame'h" is what seems to be for the watcher eye of the sun's motion in the horizon, as the sun is moving from east to the west, and to the watcher it seems that it is setting in the spring

That's not true, as it was said that God gave Alexander the great everything, and granted him the knowledge, so he was under the commandment of God and his guidance, he was following the knowledge and not the mere vision

And what was mentioned in the quran couldn't bear any exegesis in that meaning, but confirms that Alexander the great went by himself and saw the sun with his own eyes!!
As the verse said ?????" "meaning he found it" and not "he saw it" so finding it is a reality

?????" "  in the intermediary dictionary , part 2 and page 1113 means: "he realized it with cognition "

We are asking from where Muhammad quoted this idea?

Actually it had roots in the poetry of pre-Islam epoch

In a book for Louis sickout, he was one of the poets of the pre-Islam Nazarenes
There was a poem for Omi'ah Ibn Al-Salet about Alexander the great, he said:

He reached the east and west    seeking reigning
He found the sun setting
In a spring of long and black mud

Omi'ah Ibn Al-Salet was one of the contemporaries of the prophet, and the prophet liked his poems very much, and quoted lot of those poems, Muhammad said about him: Omi'ah was just about to be a Muslim
 
 

Who was Dhul-Qarnain?

Al-Tabry said: narrated Oqu'da Ibn Amer; he came to the prophet one day saying to him: a group of people of the scripture are here, they want to see you, he replied : what should I tell them , I have no knowledge except that given to me by God, he made ablution and told him , let them in: they came in and asked him about Alexander the great, he said: " he was a Romanian man , he built the city of Alexandria , and when he finished building it , an angel came to him and carried him up to the sky telling him : I was sent from God to you to let you teach the illiterates , then he brought him to a  mountain with a sliding surface, then he passed by Gouge and Magog , then he took him to a nation their faces like that of dogs, fighting  Gouge and Magog, he passed them and went to a nation fighting that nation whose faces like that of the dogs , then passed them to another nation"

Oqu'da asked Ali about "Dhul-Qarnain" he said: he was a man who loved God and God loved him and he commanded people to live in the piety of God, but they stroke him on his horn and killed him, but God revived him, and they stroke him on his other horn then he died, so he was called the one of two horns " Dhul-Qarnain"

Al-Quortoby said he was a man sent by God, and by him God had conquered the earth

Al-Darqatly said in his book" the news" there was an angel named Rabakeel was coming to" Dhul-Qarnain" and his name was Alexander, he was a Greek Macedonian king

So was Alexander the great a prophet of God receiving revelations from God and angels taking him to the sky?

According to the well known history, Alexander the great was a Greek pagan conqueror and not a prophet of God
 

2) The earth is it fixed or moving?
 

In Luqman chapter (Surat Luqman) 31:10:" He has created the heavens without any pillars that you see, and has set on the earth firm mountains, lest it should shake with you"
And in the Bees chapter (Surat An-Nahl) 15:" And He has affixed into the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with you"
Also in the prophets chapter (Surat Al-Anbiya') 31 "And we have placed on the earth firm mountains, lest it should shake with them"
Al-Tabry said that:" God has affixed into the Earth Mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with you to the right and left, causing troubles so they let the earth settle down with you
Al-Quortoby said: narrated Anes Ibn malek, the prophet: when the earth was created, it was shaking, so God made the mountains over it, so it settled down, and the angels were wondering for that

The question is: does that accord with science? How could the Mountains affix the earth and hinder it from movement? Isn't it well approved by science that the earth is in continuous motion, spinning around itself, once in every 24 hours, and spinning around the sun once in each year?
If the Mountains hinder the earth from tilting and causing troubles? What about after the explosion of mountains in the construction of the high dam, and the tunnels of Al-Alb Mountains…and other mountains all over the world? Why then the earth didn't tilt with us?
- The origin of that was from the poetry of Zaied Ibn Amre Ibn Nofail one of the pre-Islam poets, page 104, as he said literally:

He spread it and when he saw it over the water   he affixed the mountains over it

- Also in the poetry of Omi'ah Ibn Abe Al-Salet, page 226

The God of All that exist and every land               the lord of the firm mountains
He built them seven strong skies                          without any pillars that you see
He formed it and decorated it with a light             of the shining sun and the moon
And of meteors                                                        that are glowing in it
 
The earth is suspended and the mountain could never affix it from movement

3) The development of the embryo
 
Some said that the noble quran in its scientific miraculousness was the first book to speak about man's creation and the stages of embryonic development in the mother's womb, it was mentioned in:
1)The Believers chapter(Surat Al-Mu'minun ) 12-14:" We created man out of an extract of clay , Thereafter we made him as Nutfah (the male sexual discharge or semen) and lodged it in a safe lodging ,Then we made the Nutfah into Alaqah (a piece of blood from which the embryo is formed), then we made the clot into Mudghah (a lump of flesh ), then we made out of the Mudghah  bones , then we clothed the bones with flesh, and then we brought it forth as another creation. …" they are saying that, those facts were not known before the quran
While in fact those facts were well known thousands of years before the quran as in:

The Holy Bible:

1) Job 10:8-12 "'Your hands have framed me and fashioned me altogether, that you have fashioned me as clay. . .  Haven't you poured me out like milk and curdled me like cheese; you have clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and loving kindness. Your visitation has preserved my spirit" for your knowledge the book of Job was written more than 2000(two thousands years) before the Christ i.e. more than 2600 years before Islam

2) In Psalms 139; 13-16:" You knit me together in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, for I was fearfully and wonderfully made. My bones weren't hidden from you when you made inside the womb, when I was wonderfully made in secret, your eyes saw me unformed as an embryo. My members were all written in your book, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there were none of them." {The psalms were written more than 500 years before the Christ i.e. more than 1100 years before Islam}

The medical science:

(The simplified Arabic encyclopedia page 1149, 1150){It points to the emergence of medical profession among the Sumerians and Babylon people (centuries before the Christ), the ancient civil civilizations in China, India, Egypt and Persian land had achieved variable degrees of progress in anatomical knowledge…some papyruses found in Fayoum contained information about anatomical medical sciences, in them a special part concerning gynecology and conception….dated to about 1800 B.C (i.e. about 2400 years before Islam)… containing  a description of parts of human body , Arabs contributed significantly in the medical sciences…as they translated the ancient Egyptian and Greek books… in medicine}

It was also mentioned in the poetry of the pre-Islam epoch
As in the poetry of Ibn Ghaliz the Jewish said about the creation of man:

A Nutfah of water came out of me as semen      it has its order and from it I was created
God had placed it in a hidden place                    and hided its place

Do those facts about the development of the embryo mentioned in the quran accord with the medical sciences?

Medicine refuses that completely, as there is nothing called Mudghah as it means the chewed piece of meat

Besides bones don't develop before the flesh, as in case of abortion we never see the abortus formed of a skeleton only without flesh, as medicine is telling that body parts are developing all together, so bones develop at the same time as flesh

So the bones never been clothed by flesh as the quran said