Science-related prophecies

According to Qur'an; natural phenomena comprises a large portion of the divine signs; nature itself praises God ^[24:41], and God proclaims that he will show humankind his signs on the furthest horizons as well as deep within themselves ^[41:53].^[2]

Zaghloul El-Naggar argues that the Qur'anic verse: "a time is fixed for every prophecy; you will come to know in time" ^[6:67] refers to the scientific signs in the Qur'an that would be discovered by the world in modern time, centuries after the revelation. The scientific signs claimed to be in the Qur'an exist in different subjects, including creation, astronomy, the animal and vegetables kingdom, and human reproduction.^[1] Some of those claimed prophecies are:

• The Qur'an describes gametes and the process of fertilization, and fetal development and growth in humans on a cellular level.^[3]).

• The Qur'an references the heavens and earth as originally being an integrated mass before God split them "Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them" ^[21:30], which has been interpreted by some as being "nothing short of a condensed version of the Big bang theory".^[1][4]

• The Qur'an talks about cosmic orbital motion: "It is not for the sun to overtake the moon, nor doth the night outstrip the day. They float each in an orbit" ^[36:40] at a period of time when the common belief was that earth was stationary.^[5]

The most famous proponent of this argument is perhaps Maurice Bucaille, a French physician and author of the popular book The Bible, The Quran and Science. Maurice Bucaille asserts in his book that "he could not find a single error in the Qur'an", and that the Qur'an does "not contain a single statement which is assailable from a modern scientific point of view", which led him to believe that no human author in the seventh century could have written "facts" which "today are shown to be keeping with modern scientific knowledge".^[1] Bucaille's opinion did not gain scientific consensus on the matter; critics believe that "Bucaille bends the meaning of the Arabic words to suit his own ideas."^[6] and "Bucaille proposes new meanings for Qur'anic words to bring them into accord with modern scientific knowledge, without requiring any standard philological justification."^[7] The translator of "The Bible, The Quran and Science" into Indonesian, Dr. Muhammad Rasjidi, former Professor for Islamic Studies at McGill University and former Indonesian Minister for Religious Affairs characterizes as "a half-baked mish-mash of pseudo-science and pseudo-exegesis".^[8]

The search for Qur'anic references to and prophecies of modern scientific discoveries has become a "popular trend" in some Muslim societies^[9]; as a manifestation of the popularity of the scientific miracles belief, the Muslim World League at Makkah formed a committee named Committee on the Scientific Miracles of the Qur?an and the Sunna to investigate the relation between Qur'an and science, headed by Zaghloul El-Naggar.^[1]

According to some recent studies of the relationship between science education and religion, one of the ways in which science education in strongly Islamic societies is impacted by religiosity is when "acceptable" scientific discoveries can be found to have been anticipated or "identified" by the Qur'an, with consequent implications for what is taught and not taught^[10].