Muslims, to an even greater extent than Christians, fancy that their holy book is inerrant. Zakir Naik, a conservative Muslim scholar, declares that the Quran is never to be critiqued. He demands that non-Muslim houses of worship be forbidden in Muslim lands and that Muslims who convert from Islam and then speak against Islam be put to death.[1]+
If a book is inerrant, why is so much effort invested in silencing or killing its critics? Someone should call Naik aside and say, “Listen, buttercup, you need to calm down.”
Tradition holds that the Quran (meaning “recitation”) was written within a few years after the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632 CE. It was compiled by Muhammad’s followers.
Naik boasts that the Quran expresses scientific concepts that mankind didn’t discover until much later. I will devote the remainder of this chapter to exposing this idle boast for the sham that it is.
Item number 1. According to Naik, the Quran describes the Big Bang in verse 21:30, which says, “Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?”[2]+
Naik is oblivious to the Quran’s view—common to Abrahamic, ancient Mesopotamian, and Egyptian religions—that Earth and sky, both solid, were split by a god. Similar ideas appear first in Babylonian creation myths recounted in the Enuma Elish (nicknamed the “Babylonian Genesis” and probably written during the twelfth century BCE or maybe a little earlier), in which the supreme god Marduk split the body of the vanquished Tiamat to create heaven and Earth and to separate the waters above from the waters below.[3]+
All these religious fables consist of magical stuff, nothing like the modern cosmological view. I have perused the Quran and found no mention of red shifts or cosmic background radiation. If the Quran were going to dabble in scientific discussions of the Big Bang, then certainly it should have mentioned the Hubble constant. Muslims and Christians alike used to denounce the Big Bang as a dastardly atheistic ploy. Now they scramble to show how their holy books described the Big Bang centuries before science discovered it.
Item number 2. According to Naik, the Quran says the moon reflects sunlight rather than being an original source of light, whereas scientists discovered a mere one hundred to two hundred years ago that the moon doesn’t produce its own light.
Naik’s account is false. Aristotle, way back in the fourth century BCE, argued that Earth was spherical based on observations of Earth’s shadow on the moon. Aristotle understood that no shadow would be detected if the moon were the source of its own light. By the time the Quran was written, it had been known for nearly a thousand years that the moon reflects sunlight.
Naik cited verse 25:61, “Blessed is He Who made constellations in the skies, and placed therein a Lamp and a Moon giving light.”[4] That could be read to indicate either that the moon generates light or reflects light. As we stretch that verse to fit Naik’s claim, we can’t help but wonder why supposedly all-knowing beings struggle to communicate in clear, unambiguous terms. Gods tend to talk to their followers using metaphor, poetic language, secret codes, signs, and parables. I don’t want to be insulting, but from what I have seen of religious believers, these are the last people on Earth who should be expected to solve riddles.
Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”) was booed by a Waco, Texas, audience during McLennan Community College’s Distinguished Lecture Series after he commented that the moon reflects sunlight, contrary to Genesis 1:16, which states, “God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night” (NIV). Nye noted that the “lesser light” (the moon) is not a light at all.[5] Christians who booed weren’t disputing the science. They just didn’t appreciate someone pointing out that their inerrant text isn’t. Christians and Muslims should either learn to be more open to criticism or adopt books that are less open to criticism.
Item number 3. Naik claimed that mankind first knew Earth was spherical when Francis Drake sailed around the globe in 1597.
False. Pythagoras (ca. 570–495 BCE) was, as far as we know, the first to recognize Earth as spherical. Many other Greek scholars subsequently agreed. In the middle of the second century CE, the Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy incorporated a spherical Earth into his Earth-centric model of the cosmos. The globist perspective, though largely ignored outside the intellectual class for nearly a millennium, never went extinct.
Naik subsequently amended his claim to say that, though individuals had speculated that Earth was spherical, it was not proved until the time of Francis Drake.
False. The Greek mathematician Eratosthenes (ca. 276–195 BCE) calculated Earth’s circumference to within 2 percent of the actual value.[6]+
During the centuries following Eratosthenes, intellectuals such as Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (a Neoplatonist pagan writing in Rome during the fifth century CE) adopted the spherical Earth model. Most of the Mediterranean region subsequently fell under control of the Catholic Church, which expressed little interest in science and didn’t formally opine on Earth’s shape. As explained by sociologist Leone Montagnini, early Church leaders influenced by the Greeks readily accepted a globist view. Among these were Origen of Alexandria, Ambrose of Alexandria, and Basil of Caesarea. In contrast, the flat-Earth model persisted among Church leaders influenced more by Old Testament texts. These included Diodore of Tarsus, Severian of Gabala, Theodore of Mopsuestia, John Crysostom, Epiphanius of Salamis, and Cosmas Indicopleustes.[7]
Augustine (354–430 CE), exposed as a youth to spherical Earth theories among Neoplatonists, was open to the idea, yet he dismissed such matters: “There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity . . . It is this that drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.”[8]
In the fourth century, Lucius Lactantius, a Christian advisor to Emperor Constantine I, described Earth as flat in his book Institutiones Divinae. The monk Cosmas Indicopleustes defended the flat-Earth model in Topographia Christiana, written ca. 547 CE. The English monk Bede, educated in Greek traditions, defended a globist perspective in 725 CE in De Temporum Ratione.
Medieval European peasants (85-90 percent of the population), being illiterate, did not write down their opinions, so we don’t know when they shifted to a globist stance. Perhaps the majority became globists as early as the sixth century, or perhaps as late as the eleventh century. But by the thirteenth century, texts written in vernacular language referred to Earth as a sphere.[9]+ The oldest surviving model of a globe, created by the German astronomer Martin Behaim, dates to the late fifteenth century. We therefore have ample reason to reject Naik’s claim that the flat-Earth perspective prevailed until Francis Drake’s 1597 sea voyage.
The flat-Earth model may have prevailed among ordinary people during the seventh century, when the Quran was written. So what? The Middle Eastern literati almost certainly understood that Earth is spherical, so the authors of the Quran had literary resources available to get the shape of Earth right. In any case, having such resources would be unnecessary if the Quran were written under direction of an all-knowing god.
Yet the Quran still got the shape of Earth wrong. Naik cites verse 79:30: “And the earth, moreover, hath He extended to a wide expanse.”[10] Put another way, Earth is wide because Allah stretched it. This is the familiar Old Testament flat-Earth perspective.[11]
Since Naik likes to interpret passages poetically, maybe he can interpret this passage about the extending or stretching of Earth to mean that the Rocky Mountains are stretch marks. Unfortunately, Muhammad never mentioned the Rocky Mountains. He didn’t seem to know anything about the American continents, isotopes, chloroplasts, or kangaroos. He knew only about sand and camels and other stuff common in the seventh-century Middle East. That’s hardly surprising since Muhammad was allegedly a camel merchant, the seventh-century equivalent of a used-car salesman.[12]+
Item number 4. Naik brags that verse 51:47 describes the expansion of the universe: “With power and skill did We construct the Firmament: for it is We Who create the vastness of space.”[13]
Naik strikes out again. The Quran refers to the firmament, expressing the same flat-Earth perspective as the Old Testament, as affirmed by Quran 22:65: “He holds up the sky lest it falls on earth.”[14] When Naik’s passage mentions “space,” it refers to the expansive Earthly terrain enclosed by the solid firmament. But even if it referred to outer space, the passage speaks only of the “vastness” of space, providing no hint that our universe is expanding.
Item number 5. Naik claims that the Quran presaged the scientific principle that mountains prevent Earth from shaking. Unfortunately for Naik’s argument, there is no such scientific principle. Mountains do not prevent Earth from shaking. To the contrary, plate tectonics create mountains and cause earthquakes. Naik cites verses 78:6–7, which say, “Have We not made the earth a resting place? And the mountains as stakes?”[15] The verses that Naik cites do not establish that mountains keep Earth from shaking.
I have critiqued enough of Naik’s empty boasts to establish that the Quran is not an inerrant book. There is no inerrant book (not even the book you are reading now).[16]+
It might be tempting to reply, “Well, if someone wants to fool themselves into thinking their holy book is inerrant, that’s their business.” It is their business, certainly, but we should not be so nonchalant. The whole idea of inerrancy arises from the wish to preemptively dismiss contrary evidence, silence one’s opposition, and prevail through means other than reasoned dialogue.
We need to acknowledge the danger we face. Claims of inerrancy pose an existential threat to any discursive and democratic civilization founded on the principles of open debate.
[1] Killing apostates is mandated in the collection of Muhammad’s sayings and practices known as the Hadith (Sahih al-Bukhari 4:52:260 and elsewhere). Sunni scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, head of the Muslim Brotherhood, said on Egyptian television, “If they [prior Muslim leaders] had gotten rid of the punishment for apostasy, Islam would not exist today.” ♣ Quotation Source: Nonie Darwish, “If They [Muslims] Had Gotten Rid of the Punishment for Apostasy, Islam Would Not Exist Today,” Gatestone Institute, February 5, 2013, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3572/islam-apostasy-death.
[2] You may wonder why Allah uses the plural “we” instead of “I.” According to Muslims, the plural is not a holdover from polytheism. Rather, “The term ‘We’ in the Bible and in the Quran is the royal ‘We’ – as an example when the king says, ‘We decree the following . . .’ ” ♣ “Why Does Quran Say ‘We & He’?” GodAllah.com, https://www.godallah.com/we_and_he.php. Quran source: Abdullah Yusuf Ali, trans., The Holy Qur’an Text, Translation and Commentary (Singapore: The Muslim Converts’ Association, 1946).
[3] The book of Genesis and the Enuma Elish share many commonalities: (1) Both say God brings order and light to chaos and darkness. (2) In the Enuma Elish, the symbol of chaos is the sea goddess Tiamat, while Genesis refers to the “deep” using the Hebrew word tehom, which is linguistically related to Tiamat. (3) Both say light exists before the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. (4) There is also a division of the waters above from those below, with a barrier (firmament) holding back the upper waters. (5) The sequence of creation is similar, including the division of waters, creation of dry land, luminaries, and humanity, all followed by rest. ♣ Pete Enns, “Genesis 1 and a Babylonian Creation Story,” BioLogos, May 18, 2010, https://biologos.org/articles/genesis-1-and-a-babylonian-creation-story.
[4] Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an Text, Translation and Commentary.
[5] Tim Woods, “Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’ Is Entertaining and Provocative at MCC Lecture,” Wacotrib.com, April 06, 2006, Internet Archive, http://web.archive.org/web/20090427074510/http:/ /www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2006/04/06/04062006wacbillnye.html?.
[6] Within 16% in the unlikely event that he used the Egyptian rather than Greek stadion as his unit of measure.
[7] Leone Montagnini, “La questione della forma della Terra. Dalle origini alla tarda Antichità, in Studi sull’Oriente Cristiano,” 13/II: 31–68. See also: “Abstracts of Some Leone Montagnini’s Publications,” Armonie del Disordine,”” Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20160614100145/www.armoniedeldisordine.it/works.html.
[8] Augustine, Confessions, Chapter XXXV (paraphrased in Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind)
[9] For example, the Norwegian book Konungs Skuggsjá, dated to approximately 1250. We should not assume that people who accepted a globist perspective held to a modern cosmology. Even the respected Muslim scholar Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi (ca. 870 – 951), who acknowledged that Earth was a globe, adhered to the Ptolemaic notion of an Earth-centered solar system. Some sources claim Clement of Rome as a globist, but deeper investigations show that he expressed no clear opinion. ♣ David C. Reisman, “Fārābī and the Philosophical Curriculum” in Peter S. Adamson; Richard C. Taylor (editors), The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy: Cambridge Companions to Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 52–71).
[10] Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an Text, Translation and Commentary.
[11] See also: Quran 2:22, 2:29, 11:7, 13:3, 15:19, 20:53, 22:65, 31:29, 41:9–12, 43:10–11, 50:7, 51:48, 57:4, 65:12, 67:5, 81:2, 91:1–4.
[12] We have no written record of Muhammad (or the rise of Islam) until centuries after his death. The Quran provides scant historical information. Muhammad allegedly used military force to spread Islam, though it may be that Islam was adopted only later by Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (ca. 644-705) to consolidate Arab conquests, much as Rome embraced Christianity to unite the empire. Popular legend holds that Muhammad was illiterate, that he married a wealthy widow named Khadija bint Khuwaylid, and that he later added nine-year-old Aisha to his harem. Muslim scholars insist that he patiently waited until Aisha was eleven years old before he penetrated her, so he wasn’t a pederast; he was a gentleman. To this day, Muslim judges maintain that eleven is an appropriate age for girls to marry. It isn’t necessary, in their view, to consult a professional moralist, a psychologist, or an eleven-year-old girl. As disturbing as it is to contemplate a 50-year-old prophet marrying a nine-year-old girl, a saying attributed to Aisha herself (Sahih Bukhari volume 5, book 58, number 234) indicates that she was six years old when married, with consummation occurring at age nine. ♣ Myriam Francois-Cerrah, “The truth about Muhammad and Aisha,” September 17, 2012, accessed April 17, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/17/muhammad-aisha- truth#:~:text=Critics%20allege%20that%20Aisha%20was,when%20the%20marriage%20was%
20consummated. See also: Kathy Gannon, “AP Probe: Sexual Abuse Pervasive in Pakistan Islamic Schools,” Columbian, November 21, 2017, https://www.columbian.com/news/2017/nov/21/ap-probe-sexual-abuse-pervasive-in-pakistan-islamic-schools/ See also: Fran Abrams, “Child Abuse Claims at UK Madrassas ‘Tip of Iceberg,’ ” BBC News, October 18, 2011, http://www.bbc.com/news/education-15256764.
[13] Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an Text, Translation and Commentary.
[14] Talal Itani, trans., Quran in English: Clear and Easy to Read (ClearQuran, 2012).
[15] https://legacy.quran.com/78/6-7
[16] My opinions on religion have changed throughout my life and they continue to evolve. Within six months of publishing this book, I may have significant disagreements with the author. I am already suspicious of him.