Our God — Page 76
76 beliefs about the creation of the earth and humanity found prev- alent among the followers of different religions today are in fact the commentaries and interpretations of later scholars, and not based on their revealed Scriptures or other authentic texts of these religions. This being the case, such interpretations being proven wrong does not in any way justify the religion to be criti- cized. Second, some concepts about the creation of the universe became part of religious books because of certain later alterations and mistranslations and were never mentioned in a revealed Book in the first place. Therefore, blaming the teachings of religion is clearly unjustified. Third, some of these ideas are indeed found in revealed Books but have been misunderstood by most people and this misinterpretation has provided modern researchers with the opportunity to criticise. For instance, it is stated in the Holy Quran that God created the earth and the heaven in six ayy a m. Some people have erred in translating it as 24-hour days, whereas the Arabic word ‘ yaum ’, although meaning ‘a day’, often means just a period of time or a particular era; pre-Islamic Arab poets frequently used the word ‘ yaum ’ in this sense. However, some people, because of their naivety or lack of knowledge, translated it to ‘six days’ and thence some took it to mean 24-hour days, despite the fact that the con- text of the verse clearly suggests that the word ‘day’ is not used here to refer to the commonly known day of twenty-four hours. The concept of day as we know relates to the rotation of the earth and its orbit in relation to the sun, whereas the verse refers to the time before the creation of the sun and the earth. God says: We created the earth and the heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars in ‘six days’. Inevitably, the day herein means the day before the