The notion of scientific miracles in the Qur’an entails revealing that it contains facts that are corroborated by science, which could not have been recognized at the time of Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him).
This topic has been under debate for hundreds of years. One side advocates that science is the only universal language understood by all humans, and hence is the importance of addressing the idea of scientific miracles [4].
The other side argues that the versatile nature of scientific findings opens up wide doors for refuters who can hold a strong argument against the Noble Book should one of these scientific findings be proven untrue [1].
Qur’an is not in need of science to prove its authenticity. It is not, and should not be treated as a scientific textbook. However, scientific signs do exist in the Qur’an.
If studied as signs that lead to inquiry, and not definitive facts or miracles, these signs can serve the purpose of developing the human intellect, encouraging people to follow the teachings of the Qur’an: to read, enquire, and research.
Nature of Lights
An amateur yet the legitimate description of the sun would be that reddish thing in the sky that is the source of all light and heat that we experience on earth.
In scientific terms, the sun is a star that is largely composed of Hydrogen and Helium, which emits light through electromagnetic waves. During their journey to the earth, some of these waves are absorbed, re-emitted, or re-radiated, with only a small portion received on earth [12].
But while we marvel at Allah’s creation of the sun’s power, the moon remains the peaceful satellite that everybody romanticizes about. While light emitted from the moon is the source of its beauty, it is now confirmed this light is actually a reflection of the sun’s light, bouncing light from the day-side to the night-side of the earth [8].
The first claim about the nature of the moonlight is attributed to Thales (625B.C.), the Egyptian-influenced Greek mathematician and astronomer who learned in Egypt and argued that the moon receives its light from the sun [9]. Thales’s belief was shared by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (500B.C.), who also claimed that the sun and the moon were huge, spherical rocks.
At a time when people believed that the sun and the moon were real Gods, Anaxagoras’s findings were deemed impious, resulting in his imprisonment and banishment [2]. It was not until Galileo’s findings in the 1600s did these claims get scientifically proven, although they too were declared by some priests also as impious because they contradicted Genesis which describes the moon as “a great light” [5].
