Responses to "It is Truth"

Chapter 10

Some Qur'aanic Verses About Geology and the Origin of the Earth


Professor Alfred Kroner, Professor of Geology and the Chairman of the Department of Geology at the Institute of Geosciences, Johannes Gutenburg University, Mainz, Germany is our next expert..

The Qur'an tells us:

Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together [ratqan], before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing... [Sura 21:30]

The meaning of ratqan in this verse, as Ibn Abbas, Mujaahid, and others said, may Allah be pleased with all of them, is that the heavens and the earth were stuck together or blended together, and that they were later separated from each other. Professor Kroner used this as an example to prove that no human being during the time of Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu `alaihi wa sallam), could have known this.

There are several problems with this argument:

Problem 1: "Other sacred texts" contain similar stories. For example, the Rig Veda tells us that the universe was created when the cosmic "egg" was split.

Problem 2: In an earlier chapter, you said that:

Then He turned to the heaven, which was only smoke at that time. He said to the heaven and the earth: "Come ye together, willingly or unwillingly." (Sura 41:11).

So, was the earth and universe original one substance, which was split, or was the universe first split and then called together? Another small problem with Sura 21:30 is that: were there any "unbelievers" alive (at this time) to witness the fact that the heavens and earth were joined together and then split?

Problem 3: This Sura claims that every living thing is made from water. I thought, as mentioned in several earlier chapters, that we were created from a blood clot! Which is it, water or a blood clot?

Professor Kroner, so it seemed to us, has a special talent of being evasive. For example, we asked him to describe the geological conditions of Arabia. `Was Arabia full of orchards and rivers?' He said: During the Snow Age. And it is further known that the North Polar icebergs are slowly moving southwards. When those polar icebergs become relatively close to the Arabian Peninsula, the weather will change and Arabia will become one of the greenest and wettest parts of the world. We asked him: `Will Arabia become the land of orchards and rivers?' He said: Yes, it is a scientific fact.

First of all, there was no such thing as the "snow age". There was, however, an "ice age" (Pleistocene). The fact there are large oil deposits in Arabia is proof that the region once had lush vegetation. However, these deposits were not formed during the relatively recent Pleistocene Epoch, they were formed during the Carboniferous Period which was much earlier than the Pleistocene Epoch.

The second question is the issue of North Polar icebergs moving "relatively closer" to the Arabian Peninsula. What route would these icebergs take to get there? Would they go around the African continent and then turn north towards Arabia, or would they go through the Mediterranean and then through the Suez? In either case, even the largest iceberg would melt far from Arabia.

The third issue is the question of Arabia becoming a land of lush vegetation. The earth is becoming warmer, there is very little debate about that. Will global warming make Arabia greener and wetter according to the climate change models? The answer, according to NASA and Environmental Protection Agency scientists is no.

Most of the earth's deserts are found at latitudes between 20 and 32 degrees. Soils are extremely dry at these latitudes because the potential for evaporation and transpiration is generally greater than the average rainfall. If global temperatures were to rise by a mere 4°C, the potential evapotranspiration would increase 30-40 percent. However, precipitation would only increase 10-15 percent. As a result, the area with a deficiency of precipitation, in this case Arabia, would expand poleward and toward the equator. In other words, the Arabian desert, as well as most of the world's other deserts, will expand, not shrink. In fact, scientists at NASA (David Rind et al. 1990) have suggested that in the long run, there will be a worldwide expansion of deserts.

This astonished us, and we wondered how he could state this as a scientific fact while it was related to the future and we asked: `Why?' He said: Because the new Snow Age has actually started. And we can see the snow crawling once again from the North Pole southwards. In fact, the polar snow is now on the way to get closer to the Arabian Peninsula. We can see the signs of this in the snow blizzards striking the northern parts of Europe and America every winter. Scientists have other signs and information proving the actual beginning of another Snow Age. It is a scientific fact.

This statement also astonished me. "Polar snow" is not moving towards Arabia, in fact the polar ice caps are shrinking. Have you heard of GLOBAL WARMING? The earth's climate is becoming warmer, not colder. Oh well, I guess the Qur'an missed that one!

So we said to him: `What you have just mentioned has only been known to scientists after a long series of discoveries and with the help of specialized instruments. But we have already found this mentioned by the Prophet Muhammad (sallallahu `alaihi wa sallam) 1400 years ago. He said in a hadith transmitted in Saheeh Muslim:

The Last Hour will not come upon us until the lands of the Arabs are once again pasture lands and filled with rivers.

Once again, I searched the USC-MSA Hadith Data Base site and COULD NOT find this hadith. Please give us a reference and/or quote the entire text. In any event, the trend of global warming makes the possibility of Arabia having "pasture lands and filled with rivers" highly unlikely.

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