101 Reasons Why We Left Islam – Chapter 3: Islam and Science – Reason 24
What does Geocentric Earth mean? It is an ancient belief that the Earth is the centre of the universe. It is to believe that the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars revolve around the Earth. However, it was not until the 16th century (some ten centuries after Islam) that we discovered this is not true: the Earth is not the centre of the universe, and only the Moon revolves around the Earth. An all-knowing God would refrain from making a silly mistake by suggesting or saying that the Sun revolves around the Earth to create day and night, right? Instead, we have these verses in the Quran:
Qur’an 36:37-40: https://legacy.quran.com/36/37-40
And a sign for them is the night. We remove from it [the light of] day, so they are [left] in darkness. And the sun runs toward its stopping point… It is not allowable for the Sun to reach the Moon, nor does the night overtake the day, but each, in an orbit, is swimming.
Quran 21:33
And it is He who created the night and the day and the sun and the moon; all [heavenly bodies] in an orbit are swimming.
Some try to explain away the above Qur’anic description of the Sun moving in an orbit as a reference to our Sun orbiting the black hole at the centre of the universe every 225 million years. This is a poor attempt to fix the Quran, as these texts only speak about the orbit of the Sun and Moon in the context of day and night. Read it again!
If the author had knowledge of the Sun orbiting a black hole, then why he mentions the Sun’s orbit relative to that of the Moon’s!
Qur’an 91:1-2: https://legacy.quran.com/91/1-2
By the Sun and his (glorious) splendour; By the Moon as she follows him;
Does the Moon ‘follow’ the Sun? The author of the Quran seems to forget that their orbits across the sky intersect during the solar eclipse! What we have here are two different worldviews. The ancient view verses the modern view. In one, the Moon follows the Sun and they both take turns in floating over the Earth, which is wrong. In the second, the Moon orbits Earth and the Earth Orbits the Sun. The Moon never follows the Sun!
Because of these silly mistakes, for 1350 years, we believed that the Earth is the centre of the universe. Our Islamic scholar found it very challenging to accept that the Quran could be wrong. In fact, here is the original Arabic video of Ibn Baz pressed on this subject in the 1980’s:
https://youtu.be/nbzh7p2ZlFQ?si=C_FkMfJyRKh9xJ0N (The video is in Arabic, but you can use Youtube to translate the caption)
You can see another Sheikh, Sheikh Bandar, repeating the same claim from 2017. This time, he goes further and brings in many other evidence to why many Islamic Scholars believe the Earth is geocentric:
https://youtu.be/d2AuQfMUC9A (The video is in Arabic but has English Subtitles)
And, last but not least, here we haves a Muslim at Speakers’ Corner in the UK (Sept 2023) not only arguing that the Earth is Stationary but that the Earth is Flat as well:
https://youtu.be/maz_EArENgA?si=EqS9anwxGmfpv4pu (Skip to 1 min and 28 seconds when he starts exposing everything).
This is just a sample. There are many more.
Issue 24.1: Yet again, we are confronted with more evidence that the Quran is nothing but the imagination of a 7th century man who was simply conveying the knowledge of 7th century cosmos. Why would the Quran enforce an error in understanding our universe that has led many people to reject the science that proves otherwise that the Sun is the centre of our galaxy? How can the Quran make the silly mistake of suggesting the moon follows the sun? How can it link the orbit of the Sun to day and night when it is actually the rotation of the Earth that makes that illusion?
Apologist Excuses:
Issue 24.1: We go back to the same argument as before that the Quran is not a book of science but a book of signs. Some people may have wanted to use it as their source of science, but that is not necessarily correct. Why scholars and some Muslims decided to go astray in their analysis has no bearing on the eternal message of the Quran. Still, to address a few of your points:
The verses never say the Earth is stationary or fixed. In fact, verse 21:33 ends by saying, “…all [heavenly bodies] in orbit are swimming,” which we can easily infer that it means even Earth has its orbit. There was a claim in the 1970s that the Quran has a clear error when it says the Sun has an orbit when it does not. We have discovered recently that the Sun actually has an orbit around the core of the universe, and the Quran is correct. This shows you that what may appear at times to be an error is not an error after all. Science catches up with the eternal message of the Quran.
>> Our Response: The Quran does not have to be a book of science to be accurate in its description and observations. It is one of the challenges given in the Quran, is to find any errors or contradictions (Quran 4:82). It is this absolute believe that the Quran is divine message that drove many to believe everything written in the Quran to be accurate even if it just hits. As for verse 21:33, “all” refers to the Sun and Moon in that verse and nothing else. The bit in brackets [heavenly bodies] was added by the translators to fix it. As for the Sun’s orbit around the centre of the universe, that has nothing to do with the verse. Whenever the verse mentioned the Sun’s orbit, it was in the context of day and night, not 225 million years, that it takes the Sun to orbit the centre of the universe.
Final Thought:
We still find Islamic scholars and believers, to this date, believing that the Earth is the centre of the universe. The number who believe it is much higher because the majority are too embarrassed to admit it. There are also several sects in Islam that still believe the Earth is flat and that the Earth is centre of the universe. For example, Al-Ahbash, a traditional Sufi sect found in Lebanon, Ethiopia, Turkey, and other parts of the Middle East, is a reclusive branch of Islam that still believe the Earth is flat and is centre of the universe. They still teach that in their schools!
في مدرسة للأحباش في بيروت: داروين كافر والأرض مسطحة | النهار (annahar.com)
What we demonstrated in the reasons 19 to 24 is a consistent picture where the Quran and Hadith paints a picture that is not consistent with our world but the world of a 7th century desert dweller. And the science of that 7th century will continue next.