Sciences and religions in the late modern period

The apologetics of “scientific miracles in the Quran”

How have those Muslim thinkers handled what they call the enigma of “miracles” in the Quran and what relation do they posit between science and miracle? Those are the conundrums Harun Yahya[1] addresses in his defence of creationism as does also Zaghloul El Naggar[2] . The “Holy Quran” is the greatest miracle granted Prophet Muhammad. This text, deemed peerless, guides, heals, soothes the heart and “nourishes the souls for ever”. Both thinkers share the view that the Quran, though not a scientific book, records numerous facts that have been upheld and approved by Western scientists many centuries after it had first been written. Their thinking runs as follows: given the state of scientific knowledge at the time this book, given for sacred and revealed, came to human knowledge, it is impossible to explain the presence therein of facts that were discovered and confirmed only much later thanks to state of the art equipment and highly developed scientific methods. Therefore, these thinkers conclude, Islam is most favourable to the sciences and the broadening of knowledge and the Quran is indeed the word of God as revealed by Him to Prophet Muhammad.

  1. Adnan Otokar (born 1956):

    a.k.a Harun Yahya was born in Ankara, Turkey where he received an education steeped in Islamic culture and notably the writing of Kurdish writer Said Nursi, author of a comprehensive Quranic commentary. Admitted at the Mimar Sinan University of Istanbul, he met up with other students to pray for one thing but also in order to counter the materialism ferried both in Marxism and Darwinism. In 1986 he enrolled in the Philosophy Department of Istanbul University. A few years later, he published a book entitled Judaism and Freemasonry based on conspiracy theories, in this instance directed at academic and media circles. He created the Science Research Foundation (SRF, or, in Turkish, Bilim Araştırma Vakfı, BAV) and in 1995 the Foundation for Protection of National Values (or in Turkish Millî Değerleri Koruma Vakfı MDKV). His opposition to Darwinism earned him international attention through the distribution of thousands of copies of his Creation Atlas published in several languages. Well received in some predominantly Muslim countries, it was castigated by The Committee on Science and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

  2. Zaghloul El Naggar (born 1933):

    Egyptian geologist, a graduate of the University of Cairo and the University of Wales (UK). a member of the Geological Society of London and the Geological Society of Egypt, he quit his academic career in order to preside over the Committee of Scientific Notions in the Qur'an, Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs in Egypt. In 1989, he co-founded the International Commission on Scientific Signs of the Quran and Sunna. He claims a) that the Quran is not a scientific textbook or a record of scientific discoveries but b) that a survey of its 1000 or more verses relating to the cosmos, man and his surroundings, can be one of the most patently miraculous aspects of the Quran. He has written over 40 books among which The Geological Concept of Mountains in the Quran (2003).

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