And Modern Science
By Dr. MAURICE BUCAILLE
( French Academy Of Medicine )
Presented By Kamber Asadi
ENCYCLOPEDIA KNOWLEDGE NECESSARYTO UNDERSTAND THE QUR'AN
In this book, Dr. Bucaille narrates his encounter with the Qur'an. "It is not a faith in Islam," says Dr. Bucaille, "that first guided my steps, but simple research for the truth. This is how I see it today. It was mainly fact which, by the time I had finished my study, had led me to see in the Qur'an a text revealed to a prophet." What led him to this conviction was the fact it would be unthinkable "for a man of Muhammad's time to have been the author of such statements on account of the state of knowledge in his days."
For the purpose of his study, Dr. Bucaille grouped such Qur'anic verses containing scientific data under general headings as Creation, Astronomy, the Earth, etc.
Touching on Creation, he refutes the age old Western notion (deliberate or through ignorance) that Muhammad only copied the general outlines of the Bible. He compares the version of the Bible and that of the Qur'an and concludes that the Bible version is scientifically unacceptable, whereas the Qur'anic version, not only agrees perfectly with the data discovered by modern science but also is remarkably free from the erroneous notions of the time. How can we then, he asks, imagine that a man who drew his inspiration from the Bible could have been the author of the Qur'an, and, of his own accord, have corrected the Biblical text to arrive at a general concept concerning the formation of the Universe, when this concept was not formed until centuries after his death?
This book contains a precious message for today's scientists in particular and modern man in general, but it should not be forgotten, as the author himself warns, that the Qur'an is not interested to be a scientific book but it is religious book, par excellence. The Qur'an's purpose in inviting man to reflect upon the natural phenomena is to stress Divine Omnipotence. The fact that, in these reflections, we can find elusions to data connected with scientific knowledge is surely another of God's gifts whose value must shine out in this age of materialistic athiesm.