God Arises
The Challenge of The Qur’an
~ 358 ~
center of the world and that the Sun moved in
relation to it, how could anyone have failed to refer
to the sun’s movement when talking of the
sequence of night and day? This is not however
referred to in the Quran (p. 163). He then discusses
the special significance of the Arabic verb
kawwara
,
(Quran 39: 5), the original meaning of which is to
coil or wind a turban round the head, when
describing the change from night to day, evidently
conveying the idea of the rotation of the earth (Most
translators seem to have misinterpreted this). ‘This
purpose of perpetual coiling, including the
interpretation of one sector by another is expressed
in the Quran just as if the concept of the earth’s
roundness had already been conceived at the
time—which was obviously not the case’ (p.164).
There are many descriptions in the Quran of a
similar nature, some of them being scientific
statements about phenomena of which seventh
century men had no knowledge whatsoever. I
should now like to present recent examples from a
variety of disciplines which bear out the truth of
these Quranic assertions.
