The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an: The Book of God
~ 34 ~
the third world also possesses the potential to
produce food for 33 billion-ten times the present
population. According to F.A.O. estimates, if the
increase in the population of the third world
continues unabated, reaching over the 4 billion mark
by the year 2000 A.D., there will still be no cause for
alarm. The increase in population will be
accompanied by an increase in production: the
means will be available to provide food for 1 ½ times
more than the number of people who have to be fed.
And this increase in food production will be possible
without deforestation. So there is no real danger of a
food crisis, either on a regional or on a universal
scale. Gwynne Dwyer concludes his report with the
following words: ‘Malthus was wrong. We are not
doomed to breed ourselves into famine.’
Where Malthus’s book on population and
sustenance – the work of a human mind working
within the confines of time and place – was very far
out in its predictions for the human race, (and this
was proved to the world just 150 years after the
author’s death) the Qur’an, on the other hand – the
work of a superhuman mind – still bears out
external realities to this very day.
