Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 658
NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST themselves by arbitrarily relegating the contents of these verses to the time of resurrection. Thus, not comprehending their meaning, they tossed them lock, stock and barrel over to the unknown. . Among the Western orientalists, Sale faced the same dilemma of how to translate the word hotamah literally. He simply mentioned a large number of people to be thrust into the hoṭamah without translating Al-ḥotamah at all. This left no danger for the English speaking people to express their incredulance at the impossibility of people being cast into a tiny particle. As they would have no idea what ḥoṭamah is, they would be free to imagine a vast hall of burning fire called the hoṭamah (the smallest particle). This strategy of. Sale saved him from the embarrassment of this translation. . Yet, at the same time, he failed to do justice to this amazing prophecy. . The fire described in this verse, whether it is a conflagration here upon earth or a raging fire in the hereafter, could in no way be pressed into the tiny space of the minutest of particles. But that is not the only dilemma which must have confronted Sale and other earlier commentators. What about the fire which is packed into tiny extended columns, a scenario altogether impossible to conceive until the dawn of the atomic era? Now the jigsaw puzzle appears to be finally resolved, with every piece settling into its right place. . Unless one is familiar with the scientific description of how an atomic explosion takes place and what changes are brought about within the nuclear mass, one cannot fully comprehend the meaning of the Quranic expression of 'extended columns'. Nuclear experts describe the state of a critical mass which is about to explode, as something elongating and pulsating with the immense pressure built within it. This pressure is caused by the elongation of the 616