The Expansion of
the Universe and the Qur’an – Abdassamad Clarke
The following examination of the ayah of Qur’an which is taken to
refer to the expansion of the universe is a single example of what is becoming
a burgeoning literature among Muslims claiming that science proves the Qur’an
to be true. This literature can be said to date from the book of Maurice
Bucaille: The Bible, the Qur’an and Science. As Hajj Idris Mears
pointed out, it is implicit in the title of his book that there are three successive
stages of revelation: first, the Bible; second, the Qur’an which the author
regards as a great deal more scientific (although in the process he manages to
undermine and indeed repudiate the hadith literature); and then thirdly and
lastly, science, which is clearly in his view the judge and arbiter as to the
truth or falsity of the previous two.
This perspective is of course utterly unacceptable to us, since, as Thomas Kuhn
showed, the modern scientific outlook is in his terminology ‘a paradigm’ which
was preceded by the Aristotelian ‘paradigm’ and may thus clearly be succeeded
by yet another. Thus it is impossible that we should tie the meanings of the
Qur’an to what is simply a paradigm.
It might help if we look at one example which is widely touted as definitive
proof of the scientific authenticity of the Qur’an: the ayah 47 in Surat
adh-Dhariyat which many people take as predicting the twentieth-century
discovery that the universe is expanding.
In the Bewley translation this meaning is expressed as:
As for heaven – We built it with great power
and gave it its vast expanse.
This is clearly not the meaning that those give the ayah who
consider that it might have to do with the expanding universe. Note also that
the Bewley translation is the most careful of the translations in following the
orthodox tafs?r literature and the meanings of the Arabic
language.
It is absolutely impermissible for anyone to interpret the Qur’an simply
according to their own opinion or even according to the opinions of others even
if those others are legion, native Arab speakers, and doctors in universities.
Rather, there is a process for tafsir and there are conditions for doing it,
which are best outlined in the introduction which Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi makes to
his tafsir at-Tashil li ‘ulum at-tanzil. (Available as a
PDF here.)
Without going into the science of tafsir exhaustively, let us note that the
least requirement of it is that any explanation be consistent with what is
possible in the Arabic language, but here we mean the classical Arabic
language, and not as spoken today by Arabs, since it is clear that Arabic has
altered considerably in its usages. This is not a new condition to place on the
person making tafsir. It has always been one of the requirements of tafsir that
it should be consistent with the classical language and thus we have the
scholarship of the Arabic-Arabic dictionaries and of the tafsir scholars.
In Surat adh-Dhariyat, the key term musi’un is the masculine
plural of the active participle of the fourth form of the verb wasi’a.
The modern person thinks of wasi’a as simply ‘to be vast’, and
that thus the fourth form of the verb awsa’awould necessarily have
the sense of ‘to make [something] vast’. Note here that even in modern Arabic,
it does not give the sense ‘to make vaster’ or ‘to expand’, which may be a
subconscious confusion with the comparative form awsa’u‘vaster’.
However, in classical Arabic, the senses of the verb are utterly different from
what we would be led to expect by a modern dictionary such as Hans Wehr’s A
Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, which although an Arabic-German
dictionary is well known in English because of its translation by Cowan and
there is no doubt about its excellence within its domain. However, it is in no
sense reliable for translation of any classical work and does not make any such
claim, and it is certainly no proof, or indeed of very much use, in translation
of Qur’an.
So our point of departure as English speaking Arabic students for the classical
language must be E. W. Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon. But we must
understand what this book is before we proceed. Lane’s Lexicon is
simply Lane’s extremely careful translation of the entries from the classical
dictionaries of Arabic which the Muslims drew up in order to have access to the
classical language, in particular to understand the Qur’an, the hadith
literature and the classical works of poetry. Lane put little of his own
understanding in his book. So it is our point of departure but if we are
serious we must have recourse to the Arabic-Arabic dictionaries and the
lexicographical understandings of the Qur’anic commentators.
The Bewleys translate the ayat thus: ‘As for heaven – We built it with great
power and gave it its vast expanse.’ It is clear from this translation that the
meaning they have taken is to give heaven its vastness or great expanse,
something that is evident to the human senses and has been from the beginning
of time to all people whether educated or not. Thus they have translated it in
a sense that is immediately obvious to any people at any time in history and
not just to people who have a degree in cosmology.
A part of our problem with giving the meaning to the ayah of expanding the
universe is that this is something utterly concealed from our senses and only
available to our intellects through a most abstract process, whereas the ‘vast
expanse’ of the universe is something evident to anyone who has ever been out
of the city and under an open sky at night.
The idea of the expanding universe is a theoretical mathematical idea which can
never be seen and theoretically is deduced from Einstein’s General Theory of
Relativity and practically from Hubble’s observations of the red-shift.
However, what is most striking in our dictionary sources is that most of the
meanings of wasi’a and awsa’a have no sense
of physical vastness but indeed of encompassing in knowledge, or being endowed
with sufficient and ample wealth, etc., as you can see from the numerous
examples below.
Please note that almost all of the commentators see the only other usage of
this word (in its singular form) in the Qur’an in Surat al-Baqarah 236 ‘from
the musi’ [wealthy person] according to his capacity’ as a
decisive proof of its meaning in this ayah in adh-Dhariyat.
The Expansion of
the Universe and the Qur’an – Abdassamad Clarke
The following examination of the ayah of Qur’an which is taken to
refer to the expansion of the universe is a single example of what is becoming
a burgeoning literature among Muslims claiming that science proves the Qur’an
to be true. This literature can be said to date from the book of Maurice
Bucaille: The Bible, the Qur’an and Science. As Hajj Idris Mears
pointed out, it is implicit in the title of his book that there are three successive
stages of revelation: first, the Bible; second, the Qur’an which the author
regards as a great deal more scientific (although in the process he manages to
undermine and indeed repudiate the hadith literature); and then thirdly and
lastly, science, which is clearly in his view the judge and arbiter as to the
truth or falsity of the previous two.
This perspective is of course utterly unacceptable to us, since, as Thomas Kuhn
showed, the modern scientific outlook is in his terminology ‘a paradigm’ which
was preceded by the Aristotelian ‘paradigm’ and may thus clearly be succeeded
by yet another. Thus it is impossible that we should tie the meanings of the
Qur’an to what is simply a paradigm.
It might help if we look at one example which is widely touted as definitive
proof of the scientific authenticity of the Qur’an: the ayah 47 in Surat
adh-Dhariyat which many people take as predicting the twentieth-century
discovery that the universe is expanding.
In the Bewley translation this meaning is expressed as:
As for heaven – We built it with great power
and gave it its vast expanse.
This is clearly not the meaning that those give the ayah who
consider that it might have to do with the expanding universe. Note also that
the Bewley translation is the most careful of the translations in following the
orthodox tafs?r literature and the meanings of the Arabic
language.
It is absolutely impermissible for anyone to interpret the Qur’an simply
according to their own opinion or even according to the opinions of others even
if those others are legion, native Arab speakers, and doctors in universities.
Rather, there is a process for tafsir and there are conditions for doing it,
which are best outlined in the introduction which Ibn Juzayy al-Kalbi makes to
his tafsir at-Tashil li ‘ulum at-tanzil. (Available as a
PDF here.)
Without going into the science of tafsir exhaustively, let us note that the
least requirement of it is that any explanation be consistent with what is
possible in the Arabic language, but here we mean the classical Arabic
language, and not as spoken today by Arabs, since it is clear that Arabic has
altered considerably in its usages. This is not a new condition to place on the
person making tafsir. It has always been one of the requirements of tafsir that
it should be consistent with the classical language and thus we have the
scholarship of the Arabic-Arabic dictionaries and of the tafsir scholars.
In Surat adh-Dhariyat, the key term musi’un is the masculine
plural of the active participle of the fourth form of the verb wasi’a.
The modern person thinks of wasi’a as simply ‘to be vast’, and
that thus the fourth form of the verb awsa’awould necessarily have
the sense of ‘to make [something] vast’. Note here that even in modern Arabic,
it does not give the sense ‘to make vaster’ or ‘to expand’, which may be a
subconscious confusion with the comparative form awsa’u‘vaster’.
However, in classical Arabic, the senses of the verb are utterly different from
what we would be led to expect by a modern dictionary such as Hans Wehr’s A
Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, which although an Arabic-German
dictionary is well known in English because of its translation by Cowan and
there is no doubt about its excellence within its domain. However, it is in no
sense reliable for translation of any classical work and does not make any such
claim, and it is certainly no proof, or indeed of very much use, in translation
of Qur’an.
So our point of departure as English speaking Arabic students for the classical
language must be E. W. Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon. But we must
understand what this book is before we proceed. Lane’s Lexicon is
simply Lane’s extremely careful translation of the entries from the classical
dictionaries of Arabic which the Muslims drew up in order to have access to the
classical language, in particular to understand the Qur’an, the hadith
literature and the classical works of poetry. Lane put little of his own
understanding in his book. So it is our point of departure but if we are
serious we must have recourse to the Arabic-Arabic dictionaries and the
lexicographical understandings of the Qur’anic commentators.
The Bewleys translate the ayat thus: ‘As for heaven – We built it with great
power and gave it its vast expanse.’ It is clear from this translation that the
meaning they have taken is to give heaven its vastness or great expanse,
something that is evident to the human senses and has been from the beginning
of time to all people whether educated or not. Thus they have translated it in
a sense that is immediately obvious to any people at any time in history and
not just to people who have a degree in cosmology.
A part of our problem with giving the meaning to the ayah of expanding the
universe is that this is something utterly concealed from our senses and only
available to our intellects through a most abstract process, whereas the ‘vast
expanse’ of the universe is something evident to anyone who has ever been out
of the city and under an open sky at night.
The idea of the expanding universe is a theoretical mathematical idea which can
never be seen and theoretically is deduced from Einstein’s General Theory of
Relativity and practically from Hubble’s observations of the red-shift.
However, what is most striking in our dictionary sources is that most of the
meanings of wasi’a and awsa’a have no sense
of physical vastness but indeed of encompassing in knowledge, or being endowed
with sufficient and ample wealth, etc., as you can see from the numerous
examples below.
Please note that almost all of the commentators see the only other usage of
this word (in its singular form) in the Qur’an in Surat al-Baqarah 236 ‘from
the musi’ [wealthy person] according to his capacity’ as a
decisive proof of its meaning in this ayah in adh-Dhariyat.
