FROM THE SPIRITUAL TREE

As astronomers began to study these distant galaxies, they discovered that the light from each galaxy showed the same spectral pattern. To understand the implications of this, we must first understand that light travels in waves. The size of one wave (comprising of one crest and one trough), called wavelength, determines its colour. Visible light consists of seven colours: red―which has the longest wavelength and therefore the largest waves, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet―which has the shortest wavelength and therefore the smallest waves. Now, the spectral pattern of the galaxies was all found to be slightly shifted to the red side. Different stars emit light at different wavelengths. If the stars were stationary, the light we receive would be in the same wavelength in which it was emitted. If the stars were moving away from us, the light would be being stretched as it was emitted―which means its wavelength would keep increasing―becoming red. If all galaxies were being shifted to the red, it meant that they were all moving away from Earth. This meant that the universe was expanding―just as points marked on a balloon move further and further away from each other as the balloon grows in size. Fourteen centuries ago, the following verse was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the Quran (51: 47): We built the universe with Our might, and truly, it is We who are steadily expanding it. With the advances made in the field of science and technology, the range of human observation and experiment has vastly increased, opening up great vistas of knowledge about the universe. In all spheres of existence and in all disciplines of science, previously established concepts are being proved wrong by latest research. This means no human work dating back 1500 years can claim total accuracy, because all ‘facts’ must now be re-evaluated in the light of recent information. But when one reads and understands the verses in the Quran related to the universe, one can observe that it is free of incongruities. For a serious reader, this can be an evidence of the Quran having had its source in an Omnipresent and Eternal Mind―one which knows all facts in their true forms and whose knowledge has not been conditioned by time and circumstances. o For a serious reader, there is enough evidence in the Quran having had its source in an Omnipresent and Eternal Mind—one which knows all facts in their true forms and whose knowledge has not been conditioned by time and circumstances.