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The Myth of Science in the Quran

By Adrian Reddy
Introduction
In 1976, a book was published which claimed that the Quran “..does not contain a single
statement that is assailable from a modern scientific point of view”. The book: ‘The Bible,
the Quran and Science’ [1] had been written by a French doctor, Maurice Bucaille, who
became interested in Islam after he was appointed family physician to King Faisal of
Saudi Arabia. In the early chapters, Bucaille proclaims articulately, enthusiastically and
with apparent sincerity that the scientific accuracy of the Quran is such that “I could not
find a single error…“ and that “…there can be no human explanation” for its contents.
Such a claim was not new. Something similar had been expressed in the 13th century
by the Islamic scholar Al-Qurtubi (see e.g. [2]), but here was an educated Western non-
Muslim putting forward a detailed and, seemingly, carefully argued case that, more than
700 years after Al-Qurtubi, the science in the Quran still stood up to scrutiny. To the
Islamic world, frustrated by centuries of failure to convince the non-Muslim world that the
Quran was miraculous, the book was enthusiastically received. It became a best seller
and its existence fuelled the growth of the ‘Science in the Quran’ movement, a
movement that is supported today by the enthusiasm of countless individuals on the
Internet, each endeavouring to push the claim even further and to publicise new
‘discoveries’ of scientific predictions in the Quran’s enigmatic verses.
As summarised above, the book itself does not make a feature of claiming that the
Quran contains new information. It mostly promotes only the weaker claim that there is
no contradiction between the Quran and modern science and so falls short of the claims
of Bucaille’s many successors. Nevertheless, it is perhaps a surprise that such a claim
can be made at all for a book nearly 1400 years old, so it is worth attempting to
determine how at least the illusion of scientific compatibility came about. This article
therefore presents a brief review of Bucaille’s approach and an assessment of selected
Quranic statements. It is by no means the first critique of Bucaille’s work (e.g. [3,4]), but
has been compiled without reference to previous reviews, so the thoughts below are at
least original, if not particularly profound. This review also discusses the evidence in the
book for Bucaille’s guilty secret, of which more later.
Water
The Quran contains many statements urging people to be grateful to (or fearful of) the
Biblical God (‘God’) for various natural phenomena. Not surprisingly, given the desert
location of Mecca and Medina, where Islam began, the Quran emphasises the
importance of water in such verses as (Q39: 21) (i.e. Quran, Sura (Chapter) 39, Verse
21):
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“Have you not seen that God sent water down from the sky and led it
through sources into the ground? Then He caused sown fields of different
colours to grow.”
and (Q50: 9-11):
“We sent down from the sky blessed water whereby We caused to grow
gardens, grains for harvest, tall palm-trees with their spathes…”
With further references in (Q23: 18,19), (Q36: 34) and (Q56: 68-70). It is evident that
such verses remain true by being expressed as straightforward qualitative observational
statements. Bucaille nevertheless contends that the work of a mere mortal would
inevitably reveal errors, but that
“In the passages from the Quran, there is no trace of the mistaken ideas
[concerning the water cycle] that were current at the time of Muhammad”
Nevertheless, consider the following:
(Q25: 53)"(God) is the One Who has let free the two seas, one is
agreeable and sweet, the other salty and bitter. He placed a barrier
between them, a partition that it is forbidden to pass."

(Q55: 19) "He has loosed the two seas. They meet together. Between
them there is a barrier which they do not transgress.”
The two verses, taken together, show that the ‘two seas’ refers to bodies of fresh and of
salt water. Although the first of the verses suggests that the ‘barrier’ may refer to the
land, the second shows that this is not so: it is located where the two seas ‘meet
together’. Bucaille interprets this meeting as taking place at the mouths of rivers, a view
that is consistent with the translations of Shakir, Yusufali and Sarwar [5]. However, what
point is being made by the verses? It is surely noting the singular fact that the sea does
not turn the rivers salty, nor do the rivers turn the sea fresh.
However, there is neither a physical nor a virtual barrier. The fresh water mixes fully with
the sea and the status quo is maintained only because a similar quantity evaporates
from the sea and falls as rain upstream. Therefore, the statement that a barrier exists is
simply incorrect and disproves, if further disproof were needed, the notion that an all-
knowing deity authored the Quran. In addition, Bucaille’s favourite get-out argument: that
God adjusted his descriptions so as to be comprehensible to 7th century Arabs, is
particularly inapplicable in this case, for there were then, as there are now, no rivers (at
least, no permanent ones) in Arabia. Most of Muhammad’s compatriots must therefore
have been mystified by the reference to the ‘two seas’.
The lack of Arabian rivers explains why the description of the ‘two seas’ is so muddled
for, surely, even an unschooled riverbank dweller would realise that the separation
between fresh and salt waters exists because of the continuous downstream flow.
Muhammad’s meagre knowledge must therefore have been based entirely on hearsay
from travellers familiar with (for example) the huge deltas of major rivers such as the
Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates. The Quran therefore does not demonstrate scientific
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knowledge of the water cycle; quite the opposite: it demonstrates nothing but a naive
ignorance, an ignorance consistent with its authorship by an uneducated 7th century
desert-dweller.
The sky
Though never unambiguously stating that the earth is flat, the Quran adopts a
conventional pre-scientific geocentric stance and fails to distinguish adequately between
‘Heaven’ (where God is alleged to reside) and ‘the Heavens’ (space), so that a cryptic
verse can be proclaimed as ‘scientific’ if it possesses an oblique resemblance to some
finding within astronomy or cosmology, yet remain unassailable as ‘theology’ if it does
not.
On many occasions in his book, Maurice Bucaille displays considerable inventiveness in
perceiving the poetic imagery of the Quran as divine wisdom, but this inventiveness
reaches its peak in the chapters dealing with ‘the Heavens’. A number of verses are
helped along by scientific-sounding translations, such as that of the sun and the moon
‘travelling in an orbit’ where the Arberry translation refers to them as ‘swimming in the
sky’ (Q21: 33) which, incidentally, the Quran verses below imply is some sort of physical
object:
(Q22: 65) “(God) holds back the sky from falling on the earth unless by His
leave . . .”

(Q13: 2) “God is He who raised up the heavens without pillars you can
see…”
As stated above, Bucaille takes the view that God expressed his concepts within the
limited vocabulary of 7th Century Arabia and that therefore these concepts can now be
freed from these constraints by means of the replacement of the original vocabulary by
modern scientific terminology. This is a highly dubious process, and not just from a
secular point of view. The idea that God was somehow prevented from expressing
himself properly does not seem compatible with the Islamic notions that the Quran is
perfect and that God is unlimited in his power. Furthermore, since (according to Islam)
God chose both the time and the place for his revelation, it seems somewhat insolent to
imply that this choice impaired the effectiveness of what he had to say. From the non-
Islamic perspective, the manipulation of the wording in this way just looks like cheating.
In addition to giving God a helping hand with the terminology, Bucaille makes the most
extraordinary interpretations of some fairly vague statements, such as:
(Q31: 29) “Have you not seen how God merges the night into the day and
merges the day into the night?”

(Q39: 5) “. . . He coils the night upon the day and He coils the day upon
the night.”
Bucaille states, obscurely: “This process of perpetual coiling, including the
interpenetration of one sector by another is expressed in the Quran just as if the concept
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of the Earth’s roundness had already been conceived at the time-which was obviously
not the case”. The statement, in addition to being largely incomprehensible, fails to note
that the likelihood that the earth was a sphere had been appreciated for centuries.
Eratosthenes (276 – 194 BC) had even made a remarkably accurate estimate of its
diameter.
Sura 15, verses 14 and 15, speak of the unbelievers in Mecca:
“Even if We opened unto them a gate to Heaven and they were to continue
ascending therein, they would say ‘Our sight is confused as in
drunkenness. Nay, we are people bewitched.’”
The verse clearly says only that unbelievers would not recognise Heaven even if it was
right in front of them. Bucaille, however, states, “It describes the human reactions to the
unexpected spectacle that travellers in space will see”.
Of course, the author of the Quran is not to blame for Bucaille’s over-active imagination.
However, Sura 36 contains verses, which reveal the primitive level of understanding
underlying them. Verse 38 states:
“The Sun runs its course to a settled place. This is the decree of the All
Mighty, the Full of Knowledge.”
and Bucaille comments: “'Settled place' is the translation of the word ‘mustaqarr’ and
there can be no doubt that the idea of an exact place is attached to it”. The following
recollection in the Bukhari Hadiths, along with the passage quoted above; suggest that
Muhammad remained in complete ignorance about the true nature of the solar system:
(B9:93:520) “I entered the mosque while Allah’s Apostle was sitting there.
When the sun had set, the Prophet said, ‘O Abu Dharr! Do you know
where this (sun) goes?’ I said, ‘Allah and His Apostle know best.’ He said,
‘It goes and asks permission to prostrate, and it is allowed, and (one day)
it, as if being ordered to return whence it came, then it will rise from the
west’”
In discussing the following verse, Bucaille misses a most significant error:
(Q36: 40) “The sun must not catch up the moon, nor does the night
outstrip the day….”
Since the moon, along with the earth, orbits the sun, it is meaningless to speak of the
sun actually ‘catching up’ with the moon, so the verse must refer to the apparent motion
of the sun’s and moon’s disks across the sky. Because the moon orbits the earth in the
same direction as the earth spins, its apparent speed across the sky is slightly less than
that of the sun. The result is that the sun’s disk does indeed catch up and overtake that
of the moon, an occurrence that can be clearly seen in sequences of photographs of a
solar eclipse, of which there are a number of excellent examples on the Internet.
Furthermore, the sun overtakes the moon not just during eclipses (when they happen to
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line up with the Earth), but once a month, resulting in the familiar phenomenon of the
new moon.
The wording of (Q36: 40) is sufficiently clear and unambiguous that no significant
difference exists between the various English translations. It’s meaning is, therefore,
exactly as it appears. Even if, by some creative interpretation of the original Arabic, it
could be argued that some other meaning than that suggested above was intended, it is
evident that the suspicion raised by the dubious way that the verse is expressed is
trivially avoidable. Had the first part been expressed as “The moon must not catch up
the sun”, the astronomical interpretation would have been correct. Had it been omitted
altogether, nothing would have been lost. To include it was the author’s decision and
therefore the author’s error. Again, provincial ignorance, not divine knowledge, is evident
in the verse.
In addition to the remarks made above, it appears that the wording of the second part of
the extract from (Q36: 40): ‘..nor does the night outstrip the day..’ is superfluous. The
following verse suggests a possible reason for its inclusion: that the author does not
quite grasp the underlying causes of light and darkness:
(Q25:45,46) “Have you not seen how thy Lord has spread the shade? If He
willed, He could have made it stationary. Moreover We made the sun its
guide and We withdraw it towards Us easily.”
As a final observation: for a man selected to receive communications from God,
Muhammad had a remarkably unsophisticated attitude to the harmless appearance of a
solar eclipse. One of the Bukhari Hadiths (B1:8:423) reports that:
“The sun eclipsed and Allah’s Apostle offered the eclipse prayer and said,
‘I have been shown the Hellfire (now) and I never saw a worse and horrible
sight than the sight I have seen today.’”
The earth
As with the verses dealing with the sky and the water cycle, those mentioning the earth
reflect an almost total lack of any understanding of natural processes. For example, the
following verse tells us that valleys came before rivers, rather than the other way
around:
(Q27: 61) “He Who made the earth an abode and set rivers in its
interstices and mountains standing firm….”
In fact, the Quran is rather keen to emphasise the ‘stability’ of mountains, for example:
(Q79:30-33) “After that (God) spread the earth out. Therefrom He drew out
its water and its pasture. And the mountains He has firmly fixed….”
With similar sentiments expressed in (Q16: 15), (Q21: 31) (27:61) and (Q31: 10).
Bucaille, who is outside his field of expertise, asserts the following:
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“These verses express the idea that the way the mountains are laid out
ensures stability and is in complete agreement with geological data.”
Strangely, given the appearance of permanence that mountains provide, the opposite is
true. Over geological timescales, mountains are transient things and symptoms of
instability, rather than stability. They grow as a result of major crustal movement and,
once the force-giving rise to them has ceased to operate, they sink and erode. The
Quran is even more in error when it becomes more specific:
(Q78: 6,7) “Have We not made the earth an expanse and the mountains
stakes.”
about which Bucaille says: “The stakes referred to are the ones used to anchor a tent in
the ground”. The idea that mountains are like stakes, anchoring the earth’s surface to
some sort of stable foundation, is an analogy, which has probably never occurred to
anyone with any knowledge of geology.
Biology
When Bucaille is within his intellectual comfort zone, he commits none of the howlers
that he makes when dealing with astronomy or geology. However, he is forced to
confront the realisation that some Quranic statements relating to mammal physiology
appear to be complete nonsense. Bucaille then steps beyond the bounds of merely
lending a helping hand to the vocabulary, to the point where he simply rejects the
existing translations because the errors can no longer be ignored.
In the undoctored versions of the Quran, there is a strange description of the region
where human sperm originates:
(Q86:5-7) “So let man consider of what he was created;
he was created of gushing water
issuing between the loins and the breast-bones” (Arberry translation)
There are considerable variations of detail in the English translations for the last verse:
“Proceeding from between the backbone and the ribs” (Yusufali)
”That issued from between the loins and ribs”. (Pickthall)
”Coming from between the back and the ribs.” (Shakir)
There is also an equally inaccurate verse concerning the biology of mammalian milk
production:
(Q16: 66) “And surely in the cattle there is a lesson for you; We give you to
drink of what is in their bellies, between filth and blood, pure milk, sweet to
drinkers” (Arberry)

“ From what is within their bodies between excretions and blood...”

(Yusufali)
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” Of that which is in their bellies, from betwixt the refuse and the blood.....
“ (Pickthall)

” Of what is in their bellies–from betwixt the faeces and the blood….

” (Shakir)

” Between dregs and blood, which is in their bellies…” (Rodwell)

So, semen comes from between the backbone and the ribs and milk is formed in the
bellies of cattle between faeces and blood, whatever that means. Bucaille now takes a
step beyond the already dubious process of ‘modernising’ the Quran’s vocabulary. He
now alters the sense of the text for no other reason than that it is wrong in its original
form, expressing it as
“ Of what is inside their bodies, coming from a conjunction between the
contents of the intestine and the blood”
His justification for the alteration is that:
“These translations are the work of highly eminent Arabists. It is a well
known fact however, that a translator, even an expert, is liable to make
mistakes in the translation of scientific statements, unless he happens to
be a specialist in the discipline in question….From a scientific point of
view, physiological notions must be called upon to grasp the meaning of
this verse”
whereas, in reality, they have been used to correct the verse. The translators, though not
experts in the sciences, were in no worse a position than the millions of others who have
tried to understand the Quran. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that what they
expressed in their translations is pretty much what the Quran says.
Creatures
The Quran makes a number of dubious statements regarding the Earth’s animal life. For
example:
(Q16: 79) “Do they not look at the birds subjected in the atmosphere of the
sky? None can hold them up (in His Power) except God.”
As with (Q36: 40) above, all the translations say more or less the same thing, implying
that there is no ambiguity in the original. The verse says that birds can fly only because
God holds them up. Now, it is true that Muslims believe that all things happen by the ‘will
of Allah’, so (Q16: 79) could be interpreted as a purely theological statement. However, it
looks suspiciously like the verse is drawing our attention to the evident ‘miracle’ of the
flight of birds, which is attributed to God’s direct intervention rather than to the lift
produced by the shape and motion of their wings. This again is a sign of human
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ignorance, rather than divine knowledge. Bucaille clearly also had difficulty with this
verse since, in addition to the substitution of the scientific term ‘atmosphere’ instead of
the mundane ‘air’, he feels it necessary to misdirect his readers by including an
irrelevant discussion of the alternative ‘miracle’ of migration.
Not surprisingly, Bucaille fails to include in his book the following account of one of King
Solomon’s expeditions with his army. Starting with (Q27: 17)
“And his hosts were mustered to Solomon, jinn, men and birds, duly
disposed…”
The verse therefore claims that (a) Solomon’s army contained a division of birds (b) it
contained another division of the Arab folklore beings called jinn who, according to (Q55:
15), were created by God from “..a smokeless fire”. Incidentally, the previous verse,
(Q55: 14), gives the following information on the origin of humans: “He created man of a
clay like the potter's”.
The question of the existence of jinn presents something of a problem for the modern
Muslim. To assert that they exist not only flies in the face of overwhelming evidence to
the contrary but also implies the remarkable coincidence that only the Arabs, out of all
the Earth’s cultures, had managed to discern them prior to the delivery, also to the
Arabs, of the Quran, where their existence was ‘confirmed’. It must be tempting to
consider the alternative explanation that the Quran was composed by an Arab who had
been brought up to believe in jinn. However, to deny their existence is to doubt the
Quran, which entails apostasy ([6], Section o8.7): a capital offence. It is as if Irish law
specified the death penalty for denying the existence of leprechauns.
The account of Solomon’s journey does not get any more plausible, because the next
verse tells us that
“.. when they came on the Valley of Ants, an ant said, 'Ants, enter your
dwelling-places, lest Solomon and his hosts crush you, being unaware!' “
Solomon understood the local ant dialect [7], though his response was rather dismissive:
“But he smiled, laughing at its words….”
and he proceeded to ignore the ant, and to concentrate instead on a rather edgy
discussion with one of his birds (Q27: 22 onwards).
The story of Solomon and the ant is an old Jewish legend [8]. Many of the Earth’s
cultures have a variety of barmy folk tales but Islam is unusual in that, in effect, it stakes
its life on its own stories being true. For if the account of Solomon and the ant is untrue,
then the Quran contains errors and the whole basis of Islam is false. It is a heavy burden
to place on the narrow shoulders of a talking ant.
Muslim apologists are uncertain regarding the appropriate interpretation of the ant story.
Those who prefer a rational explanation suggest that the inhabitants of the valley were a
tribe called the ‘Naml’ (Arabic for ‘ant’), thereby avoiding the embarrassment of having to
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defend an indefensible position. However, the original Jewish story does indeed concern
an actual ant, as the phrase “..lest Solomon and his hosts crush you, being unaware”
implies. Furthermore, the ‘Naml’ explanation does not adequately deal with the
subsequent implausible account of the man-bird dialogue.
The more traditional explanations portray Solomon as a Bronze Age Dr. Dolittle,
miraculously endowed with the ability to talk with creatures. Although such a claim is no
more implausible than many others within this and other religions, it falls well short of
explaining all the remarkable features of the story. Not only, according to the tale, did
Solomon possess miraculous powers (including, presumably, very acute hearing), the
ant itself achieved the feat of recognising Solomon from a distance and evidently
already knew his name. Unless Solomon had previously dropped in for a chat from time
to time, it is difficult to see how the ant could have come by this knowledge.
The ant story is not the only Jewish legend, which the Quran repeats uncritically:
(Q29: 14) “Indeed, We sent Noah to his people, and he tarried among
them a thousand years, all but fifty...”
Remind us of your conclusion, Maurice. Ah yes:
“.. the Qur’an does not contain a single statement that is assailable from a
modern scientific point of view”.
Dr. Bucaille’s guilty secret
There is a perception that Maurice Bucaille converted to Islam as a result of his studies
and his book certainly encourages that view. However, is it true? In a 1992 interview with
the online Islamic Bulletin [9], Bucaille himself states:
“I knew then [i.e. during his studies] that the Quran was the "Work of Allah"
and had not been authored by any human being.”
However, when asked the straight question “Have you embraced Islam?” Bucaille fails to
give a straight answer. He first replies:
“..when God guided me to undertake a study of the Quran, my inner soul
cried out that Al-Quran was the Word of God revealed to his Last Prophet
Mohammed”
which looks almost, but not quite, like ‘yes’. However, he goes on to say
“About my faith and belief, God knows what is in one's heart. I am
convinced that if I identify myself with any creed, people will invariably dub
me as one belonging to such and such group”
which sounds suspiciously like a ‘no’. Campbell (see [10]) has looked into this subject
more thoroughly, and says
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“At a public lecture in Fez Morocco in either 1981 or 1983, a friend of mine
asked during the question period whether Dr. Bucaille had become a
Muslim. Dr. Bucaille said, "No".
And [10] also points out that the following passage occurred in the catalogue of the
Islamic publisher and book distributor Pak Books in 1998:
“Dr.Bucaille's study of scientific information in scriptures gave him high
regard for Qur'an and recognition of contradictions in Christian scriptures.
Yet he remained a Christian.”
So, what is the truth? Surprisingly, the answer can be found in Bucaille’s book, though it
is carefully disguised by weasel words. He writes:
“For me, there can be no human explanation to the Quran”.

“..statements that simply cannot be ascribed to the thought of a man who

lived more than fourteen centuries ago.”

“Such statements….obviously do not lend themselves to a human

explanation”

“…the existence in the Qur’an of the verse referring to these concepts can
have no human explanation on account of the period in which they were
formulated.”
These are words, which are carefully crafted to convince Muslims that he had been won
over by the Islamic view of the Quran, but equally carefully avoiding the explicit
conclusion that its author was God. This he never states, so leaving open the question
of what type of being he considers responsible for the text. Dr. Bucaille may not have
embraced Islam, but he has certainly embraced the Islamic practice of dissimulation.
Muslims should perhaps consider why someone who appears so rapturously convinced
of the miraculous origin of the Quran would not convert to Islam, particularly since “..God
guided me..” to carry out the study in the first place. Kasem [11] has no doubt about
Bucaille’s motives:
“This charlatan found a great opportunity to make good money out of this
situation.”
However, despite the fact that Bucaille achieved a good deal of fame in the Muslim
world as a result of his book, and undoubtedly received large amounts of money, the
idea that he planned a scam from the very start seems a little too good to be true. My
own view of Bucaille’s motives is less damning than Kasem’s, though I would shed no
tears if Kasem turned out to be right.
I think that, for a long while during his studies, Bucaille did genuinely believe that the
Quran was divinely authored: “..my inner soul cried out that Al-Quran was the Word of
God”. However, I suspect that, at some point during his researches, Bucaille began to
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realise that this belief could not be sustained. The contrived special pleading that he was
forced to make, time and time again, to support so many flagrantly poor descriptions of
the natural world, must have had its effect.
Nevertheless, to retract his nascent book was impossible. Too many close
acquaintances were eagerly anticipating the glowing praise soon to be bestowed on the
Quran by a Western scholar: people who included his distinguished employer, King
Faisal, of whom Bucaille writes “The debt of gratitude I owe to the late King Faisal,
whose memory I salute with deepest respect, is indeed very great.” So he decided to
weaken his conclusions just a touch, publish anyway, and remain a Roman Catholic.
Nevertheless, the conclusion seems inevitable: by the time he penned his final words,
and though he didn’t dare to admit it, Bucaille had ceased to believe his own book.
Summing up
There are no verses in the Quran with any modern scientific content. Those of the
Quran’s statements about the natural world, which have survived unrefuted to the
present day, have done so not because they contain profound truths, but precisely
because they contain no profound truths. Most are just everyday rustic observations;
those, which venture beyond the mundane often, contain nothing more than an opaque
mixture of poetic description, vagueness and mysticism. How did Muhammad largely
avoid expounding a series of then-current but erroneous scientific ideas? Because he
was interested only in theology, lived in an intellectual backwater and had not received a
formal education, so knew nothing of them.
There remains, however, a residue of statements in the Quran, which are, both clear
enough to be understood and specific enough to be identified as erroneous. Even
ignoring the simple errors and absurdities which Bucaille overlooks or tries to divert our
attention from, the descriptions of natural phenomena in the Quran are often so poor
that they cannot be the product of divine revelation, nor even of an educated mortal.
There is no sense in which (Q36: 38) is an adequate description of the motion of the
sun, nor (Q78: 6,7) an adequate description of the geology of mountains, nor (Q86: 5-7)
a competent account of human biology. Are Muslims really suggesting that the above
was the best that an almighty, all-knowing deity could do? For anyone who believes that
the descriptions quoted above are satisfactory, consider this: if you were marking an
examination paper and you came across one of the above passages without realising it
was a direct quote from the Quran, how many marks out of 10 would you give?
And there is, of course, the problem of the talking ant. If anyone could suggest a reason
why this story should not be regarded as absurd, it would be most interesting to hear it.
Nevertheless, even if a plausible explanation of the account could be constructed, the
problem remains that ‘God’ has included in the Quran a tale that appears ridiculous, with
its resulting adverse effect on the book’s credibility. For an almighty being intent on the
world’s conversion to Islam, this is a strange approach.
The supposed existence of scientific references in the Quran, as with that of ‘inimitability’
[12], is a myth, born of wishful thinking and inflated by exaggerated repetition. The
continuous ‘discovery’ of new interpretations resembles the ‘discovery’ of new
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predictions contained in the quatrains of Nostradamus. However, while the latter is a

relatively inconsequential pastime for devotees, the former helps sustain the delusion
that the Quran is miraculous, thereby giving support to the grim edifice of Islam itself.
Finally, one cannot explain away the Quran’s 0% score in Science by claiming (as
Bucaille does) that God adjusted his descriptions to suit the average uneducated 7th
century Arab. According to Islam, God composed the Quran for all people, for all time,
and was happy elsewhere to include ‘ambiguous’ (i.e. incomprehensible) verses about
other subjects (see Q3: 7). So why not include accurate descriptions about the natural
world for the benefit of later generations, even if they could not necessarily be
appreciated at the time? The Quran was not composed for a 7th century Arab; it was
composed by a 7th century Arab.
References
[1] M. Bucaille. The Bible, The Quran and Science.
[2] A. von Denffer. Introduction to the Quran.
[3] W. Campbell. The Qur'an and the Bible in the light of history and science.
[4] T. Edis. An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam. Prometheus Books
2007.
[5] All the Quran translations cited here are easily found on the Internet.
[6] Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic
Sacred Law, (rev. ed., trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Beltsville, Maryland: Amana, 1994)
[7] G. Chapman, T. Jones. Let’s Talk Ant.
[8] Jewish Encyclopedia.
[9] Islamic Bulletin. Issue 6, January 1992.
[10] Is Dr. Maurice Bucaille a Muslim?
[11] A. Kasem. The tales of Bucaille and Moore, two occidental charlatans.
[12] A. Reddy. Matchless Prose?