He regulates all affairs...

He regulates all affairs, explaining the sign in detail that you may believe with certainty in the meeting with your Lord.” (13:2) In a Tradition from Imam ‘Ali ibn Musa al-Rida about this verse, he says, “Does God not say a pillar without a pillar being seen? The narrator says that in response to the Imam, I said, “Yes.” He said, “Thus a pillar exists but you do not see it.” Can an analogy simpler than this be found to express this to simple Arab people?

In a tradition of Hadrat ‘Ali we read: “These stars which are in the heavens are cities like cities on earth and every city is connected to another city by a ray of light.” Scholars today, among the astronomers, believe that there are millions of stars which are inhabited with living creatures but the details of this are still not known.

The Discovery of the Orbit of the Earth around the Sun It is famous that the first person who discovered that the earth moves around the sun was Galileo, who lived approximately four centuries before and before that, the Egyptian scholar, Ptolemy, had said, “The earth is the center of the universe and everything revolves around it.” Galileo was reprimanded by the Catholic Church for his discovery and his denial of this discovery saved his life but finally other scholars followed up his discovery and today it is a certain scientific fact which has been proved by space flights.

In summary, the earth being the center was negated and it became clear that this was an error of our senses because we mistake the movement of the stars and planets for the movement of the earth. We are in motion and we assume that they are! At any rate, the opinion of Ptolemy lasted for 1500 years and it influenced the thoughts of the scholars during those years, and, at the time of the descent of the Holy Qur’an, no one had the courage to speak against this view.

But when we turn to the Holy Qur’an, we see: “You see the mountains and think them firmly fixed, but they shall pass away as the clouds pass away...” (27:88) The Qur’an speaks very clearly about the movement of the mountains whereas we see them as immovable and the analogy of their movement with that of clouds is both an indication of calmness and quietude.