101 Reasons Why We Left Islam – Chapter 3: Islam and Science – Reason 42
Would it surprise you to know that most search engines’ sequence of terms when typing: “The scientific errors in….” is now the Quran ahead of other religions or terms? As the meme shows, people are waking up. A reliable web tool for tracking traffic called AHREF suggests that websites such as Wikiislam, which has the most popular pages on the scientific errors in the Quran, get 4.5 million hits a year!
For the hundreds of thousands of videos and millions of social media posts promoting the Quran as having one or another scientific miracle, it was always a moving goalpost for people like us. It did not matter how many claims we debunked; there were new ones that came up. So, rather than write another book about all the claims and how to debunk them, we propose five steps that you can do yourself to debunk any claim you come across. We will provide examples for each. For whatever claim you get, make the following checks:
- Rebranding old knowledge: Did people before the 7th century know about this? Take the claim that ‘all living things need water’ or ‘iron falls from the sky’, a simple Generative AI search with the question: What is the earliest evidence we have of people knowing about…? And if you get references to ancient cultures, then the argument for “no one at the time of the Prophet would have known” is automatically debunked. Ancient stories, observations, and philosophies were the TikTok entertainment of their time. People would huddle at night around the fire, listening to stories. People who narrated good stories were the popstars of their time and, in many cases, paid in money and kind to share their stories. These stories were passed from one generation to another with lots of fascination. Hardly anything was missed.
- Twisting Meaning: Examine the Quranic source of the individual words using direct translations or the Tafsir. For translation, Google Translate is reliable. For the Tafsir, search the internet using the keywords “Tafsir Quran x:x” and read from multiple sources. Specifically, classical scholars from the time of the Prophet, such as Ibn Abbas, the Prophet’s uncle. Ibn Abbas regularly cites the Prophet and how he explained these verses. Also, Al Tabari and Al Qurtubi – there is a reason why they are not translated into English. But do not let that stop you because the translation tools are very good. Claims like the ‘universe is expanding’ when the word really says the sky is expanding, or Earth is ‘ostrich egg’, where the word says ‘spread out’ are quick and easy to debunk.
- Context: Read the previous and next verses. Read the whole chapter if you have to. For example, the claim that the Sun and Moon orbit never overtake each other. The context, if you read the verses around it, is the claim that the Sun and Moon make day and night – and how can the day overtake the night? Whereas we know it is the Earth’s rotation that creates the illusion of day and night – these planets are not chasing each other! This is not a miracle but a scientific error. Or, the sky is a protective ceiling covering the Earth (Quran 21.32); only in the context of the verses before and after it do you learn that the Quran claims the mountains were ‘fitted firm’ before Allah created the sky as a ceiling. And it was after that (21.33), the Sun and Moon were put in motion. The Quran claims the Earth was built first, then the sky as a ceiling, and then the planets! There are so many issues that they try to cover up, hoping you do not read the context of the verses.
- Challenge the claim: Consider if it is true by testing it. For example, the claim that ‘Day’ in Arabic word is ‘Yawm / يوم’ appears 365 times in the Quran. We checked the word on Quran dot com and got 211. And the question we asked those who made this claim: isn’t the number of days a year in Islam 354 or 355 days of a Lunar/ Hijri year? Why would Allah choose a number that matches the Christian Solar calendar year – which is 10 days off? Or, like when the Quran says it created the Sky and then the Earth (79: 27- 30), but in fact, Quran (2:29) and (41:9-12) say the opposite. Even more ridiculous is the suggestion that the Quran was miraculous for saying: ‘Allah created everything in pairs’ (Quran 6.38), but that is not true. If a person makes a quick search, they would quickly realise many species are not created in pairs. What they hope for is that no one would bother to challenge the claim because it will take time to search for the correct answer.
- Bias Academic Research: In my view, this is probably the most dangerous of all Dawah tactics. There have been several attempts by Islamists to infiltrate academic research with bias and twisted findings that would help validate either a Quranic claim or a narration by the Prophet. There was a Saudi paper claiming that Camel urine has cancer treatment properties. We had to dig and realise the same study was debunked 10 years later for providing unreliable data. And more to the point, the Prophet never suggested Camel urine as a treatment for the disease but instead for stomach upsets when travelling! Then there was an Egyptian researcher claiming that dipping a fly wing in a drink kills the bacteria of the other wing – yes, I am not kidding. We dug into it. The paper was published in an unranked and unreliable journal based in Pakistan! How do you spot these research papers? The authors are Muslims. The paper uses terms such as “The Prophet Sal-la-lahu Alihy Wa Salam” or “The Prophet, peace be upon him”. Why would they be questionable? Would you take a study by a Christian researcher who starts with “Jesus is the lord and saviour” or a Hindu researcher publishing a paper that starts with “Oh Krishna, lord of compassion and love” – and if you see that the paper attempting to support a claim to be ‘scientific’ than naturally you would want their claim to be independently verified!
For years, we wasted our time debating Islamic e-jihadists that: 1- The scientific miracles of the Quran are debunked. 2- Their Dawah people lie blatantly to them. But they had to hear it from one of their most popular Pop-Dawahs before they realised we were telling the truth all along. Ali Dawah completely and utterly destroyed millions of hours of PR Islamic videos when, in 2023, he came out and said, “There are no scientific miracles in the Quran. They are all debunked, and we do not care!”
He has destroyed 25 years of Islamic Dawah in under 10 mins. All the work of Dr Zakir Naik, 50 years of Western Islamic Dawahs, and hundreds of YouTube channels switch off or tune down the propaganda after that.
Final Thoughts:
In the introduction of Chapter 3, we explained how the whole claim of ‘miracles of the Quran’ first started as a response to increasing challenges to medieval Islamic claims in the aftermath of the 1960’s Moon landing and the advancements of science and medicine coming from the infidel West. We also explained the whole purpose of inventing ‘scientific miracles of the Quran’ was just a pushback from Islamists. The reality is that many people repeatedly point out that the Quran itself never claimed to have any secret knowledge or scientific miracles.
When desert dwellers asked the Prophet, “What are your miracles?” he had nothing to show besides the Quran. So, his first claim was that no one can match the Quran. This claim appears in Quran 11:13, 2:24, 10:38, and 17:88. All the Tafsirs clearly state that this claim is about the poetic style of the Quran. The reality is that the Quran does not rhyme well and does not read well, and Arab linguistics had to “bend the rules of poetry” in a ridiculous way to claim the Quran is poetic. Narrators had to focus on a very small sample of verses that rhyme well to recite it poetically…and if you do not believe me, try to recite verses 4:11-14 (talks about inheritance) or 2:282 (longest verse talks about loans!) And I have many more.
Islamic scholars noticed this problem very early on, specifically when some poets beat the Quran to create something that sounded better. So, they declared any attempt to mimic the Quran to be heretic, punishable by death! If this is an impossible challenge from all-mighty Allah, why are we forbidding people from challenging it?
Still, with the advent of the internet many Arabs created comparable if not better verses that make more sense and rhythm a lot better. Such as Sourat Corona, or Sourat Creation. They are both in Arabic, so unless you are Arab you may not spot the similarity and superiority of the newer versions but here try them…
Sorah Corona:
(or search YouTube Sorah Corona)
Sourat creation:
(or search YouTube سورة الخلق من القرآن الجديد)
The challenge has been met – but blind Islamists don’t care.