EXAMPLES FROM ASTRONOMY

The Challenge of The Qur’an ~ 358 ~ center of the world and that the Sun moved in relation to it, how could anyone have failed to refer to the sun’s movement when talking of the sequence of night and day? This is not however referred to in the Quran (p. 163). He then discusses the special significance of the Arabic verb kawwara, (Quran 39: 5), the original meaning of which is to coil or wind a turban round the head, when describing the change from night to day, evidently conveying the idea of the rotation of the earth (Most translators seem to have misinterpreted this). ‘This purpose of perpetual coiling, including the interpretation of one sector by another is expressed in the Quran just as if the concept of the earth’s roundness had already been conceived at the time—which was obviously not the case’ (p.164). There are many descriptions in the Quran of a similar nature, some of them being scientific statements about phenomena of which seventh century men had no knowledge whatsoever. I should now like to present recent examples from a variety of disciplines which bear out the truth of these Quranic assertions.