In the Qur’an...

In the Qur’an, one finds the wondrous aspects of the creatures, the spiritual dimension of the heavens and the earth, what is in the horizon’s loftiest part and what is beneath the sod, the beginning of creation…4 We find this kind of outlook in Muslim scholars of recent times too. For example, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kawabiki (d.

1902), in his book, Tab ‘al-‘Istibad (the Nature of Despotism) says: In recent centuries, science has revealed many facts and these are attributed to their discoverers who are European or American.

But those who examine the Qur’an carefully, find that most of those facts were stated, explicitly or implicitly, in the Qur’an thirteen centuries ago; and these were not left hidden but to show, upon their discovery a miracle of the Qur’an, and to indicate that it is the word of the Lord who only is aware of the hidden.5 And among the recent proponents of this view is Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi’i.

In the Qur’an, he said, one finds many hints for the scientific facts; and modern science helps us to interpret the meanings of some of the Qur’anic verses and to discover their facts.6 Also Shaykh Muhammad Bakit says: Those who think that the Qur’an is a book for the statement of the (Islamic) laws and for legislation are avoiding the truth. The Qur’an is the source of all sciences and the human civilization….

The Qur’an, with its statements and hints, has evidence for the essence and attributes of all things and their quantitative and qualitative changes and contains all sciences dealing with the external realities, whether they are heavenly or earthly.7 At this point , it is necessary to mention that the early ‘ulama’s motive in considering the Qur’an as the source of all sciences arose out of their conviction in the comprehensiveness of the Qur’an, but the recent scholars, while believing in this, have more emphasis on proving the miraculous state of the Qur’an in the scientific domain.

Therefore, they try to adapt the Qur’an to the findings of contemporary science. Some of them believe that there is nothing in the new findings of science which was not predicted by the Qur’an. For example, al-Tantawi, in his commentary on the Qur’an, tries to extract the results of the physical and natural sciences from the Qur’an, and is afraid that he might not live long enough to locate all of the findings of science and technology in the Qur’an.