Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 323
THE QURAN AND COSMOLOGY the Quran which describe the heavenly bodies bound together with invisible links. Hence if one of them moves in a direction other than its orbital and elliptical motion, all the other heavenly bodies must also move along to maintain their mutual balance. وَهُوَ الَّذِى خَلَقَ الْيْلَ وَالنَّهَارَ وَالشَّمْسَ وَالْقَمَرَ كُلٌّ فِي فَلَك يَسْبَحُونَ * 21:34. And He it is Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon; everything gliding along in orbit. 19 لَا الشَّمْسُ يَنْبَغِي لَهَا أَنْ تُدْرِكَ الْقَمَرَ وَلَا الَّيْلُ سَابِقُ النَّهَارِ وَكُلٌّ فِي فَلَكٍ يَسْبَحُونَ* 36:41. It is not for the sun to overtake the moon, nor can the night outstrip the day. All float in an orbit. ² 20. This is a unique style of the Quran also employed for indicating the movement of the earth upon its axis. The people of the time of both these revelations could not clearly grasp the underlying idea. If the mountains are moving the earth must also move along, but this is not what the people of that age inferred. Nor could they grasp the idea that if the sun is moving in the direction of a specific space, the entire universe must also be moving along with it to the same destination. This vision of the entire universe drifting away in space is an idea which perhaps has not as yet been conceived by contemporary scientists. Yet it can be implied from an in-depth study of the Quran that the entire cosmos is moving towards some point in space. If that implication is true then one is left with no choice but to visualize all 180 billion or more galaxies, of which our 314