Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 291
BELIEF IN THE UNSEEN able to share and utilize some of the secrets to which this verse refers. . The circumference of the earth is merely twenty-five thousand miles, but the vastness of which the Holy Quran is speaking stretches some eighteen or twenty billion light years across from end to end and continues to expand further at an amazing speed. This means that if a space traveller begins his journey today from one edge of the universe to the other at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), he could possibly reach the other edge after travelling for eighteen to twenty billion years, provided that the universe were stationary - which it is not. Now one may try to grasp the meaning of the Holy Quran, when it declares that in all the vastness of space there is not a single bubble of emptiness, not an inch, not a millimetre, not a nanometre or the tiniest of tiny dots. . The verse under review has also another important significance worthy of note. Even without the employment of natural means of enquiry, God the All-Knowing can reveal some of His secrets to whomsoever He pleases. . Hence any mention in the Divine scripture of the mysteries of nature, before they are discovered by scientific exploration, presents a powerful evidence in favour of the existence of an All-Knowing Supreme Creator of the. Universe. It is He alone, Who possesses the full knowledge . (عَلِمُ الْغَيْبِ وَالشَّهَادَة ) of the realms of the seen and the unseen. The knowledge gained through revelation is quite a different story from that of the knowledge gained through secular scientific investigation. The Divine scriptures are not textbooks of science, hence any reference therein to scientific subjects could not be merely incidental. The main purpose is to establish the unity of source; to prove that the material world and the spiritual world are both the work of the same Creator. Remember that the Founders of Islam, 285