The Quran for Astronomy and Earth Exploration From Space

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Preface

I owe my most gratitude to my Saudi Arabian benefactors who have been supporting my research, publications, and promotion programs in Islamization of the sciences and technology. They have supported my work financially, mobilized support, and patronized it with a generosity of spirit which, I believe, is unique to the noble people of Saudi Arabia and its institutions. The later are both private firms and those sponsored by the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. My latter benefactor has been the Muslim World League, one of its agencies is the Commission on Scientific Signs in the Qur'an and Sunnah which undertakes and promotes modern scientific explanations of the Qur'an like what I have presented in this work. I offer my most humble and sincere tribute to the unique nobility of Saudi people and institutions by identifying some of their characteristics. This is my duty in the spirit of a Saying/hadith of Prophet Muhammad, peace and the blessings of God Almighty be upon him: He who is not thankful to people is not thankful to God.

Qur'an and Sunnah must pervade the Saudi Arabian environment and institutions. Nowhere in the world are they as intensively studied and promoted, I believe, as in Saudi Arabia through the curricula and courses in schools and universities, the electronic and printed media, and the activities of private and public institutions. Nowhere does one find turned into mosques at prayer times even the street corners, hallways of shopping centers, and sides of highways in the desert, as in this mahbatul wahy (the land where the Qur'an was revealed). No wonder, then, that the Saudi people and its institutions embody some of the noblest ethical qualities of the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad's model behavior (Sunnah). They include the young in Saudi schools and universities, those who obtained Ph.D. degrees from U.S.A. after their Islamic acculturation in the Saudi environment, and those of the older generations who were brought up in and represent the Saudi traditions. A measure of their nobility and generous spirit is their treatment with kindness, forgiveness, and marked dignity even those who oppose or offend them. The Saudi Government has been the most generous in the world in providing foreign aid as a percentage of its GNP through international agencies and little known unpublicized channels. The Saudi private assistance provided to various Islamic causes is known only to God Almighty; the Saudis really give with one hand what the other hand does not know. They oppose public mention of their giving and goodness; according to the ideals of Islamic ethics, they merely want the rewards to be added undiminished to the scale of their good deeds on the Day of Recknoning. I mention two such persons, who are representatives of my benefactors, without their consent. One is Shaikh Ahmad Salah Jamjoom whom I first encountered in the 1970s through the World Conferences on Muslim Education. He was Chairman of their Organizing Committee, and a moving spirit in our contemporary movement for Islamization of knowledge and education. His indefatigable work for Islam through aid and deeds rather than mere words is one of his best precepts that all Muslims should follow. The other is Professor Abdullah Omar Naseef, formerly both the President of King Abdul Aziz University and Secretary General of the Muslim World League, my chief patron off and on for twenty years through my various vicissitudes, a partner in our intellectual and institutional work on Islamization of science and technology, and an intimate friend ever since we were graduate students at Stanford University, 1964-65.

My Preface should bring out our strong feelings to remove Muslim backwardness and to develop Islamic science and technology for the sake of Muslims and mankind. A Saudi institution which utilizes the leadership of young Saudi professors and other concerned volunteers, to mobilize similar young Muslims around the world, is the World Assembly of Muslim Youth. I owe many thanks to WAMY's officers and administration in Riyadh for their help and encouragement. WAMY and similar associations of young Muslim intellectuals world-wide are providing creative and constructive responses for Islamic renaissance and Muslim development even in environments where there is despair and discouragement. I am hopeful, through my experiences with the Islamic spirit and potentials of such Muslim youth around the world, that Islamization of all knowledge, science and technology in particular, will be a growing trend of our times.

Introduction

The Teacher Resource Centre, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, California, provided information for the photographs and images presented and described here. I am thankful for these resources of NASA, the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, U.S.A.

The Qur'anic verses with the photographs deal with the scientific, metaphysical and ethical aspects of the phenomena and planetary bodies. They illustrate tawhid which "integrates" all creation with the concept of God to develop Islamic theoretical and applied philosophy of science and technology. The Qur'an is God's Guidance, Criteria, etc. about the truth of science and philosophy. A majority of the illustrations represent the application of space science and technology to studies of our earth's geology, geomorphology, stratosphere, biosphere, hydrology, forest resources, and man-made and natural environmental problems.

God Almighty commands us to see, observe, use the senses and reason, even travel in space to gain knowledge of planetary bodies, and use His signs (ayat) as Islamic science, technology, and ethics to manage the Earth. The years since 1959 began a golden age of exploration of the solar system, and the earth from space. However, it was the non-Muslims who were able and willing to mobilize their secularized scholars (ulama) and economic resources, and their secularized sciences and technology, to gain understanding (fiqh) and knowledge ('ilm) through the electronic "sights" and other "senses" of automated spacecraft. We Muslims have been in recent centuries a "blinded people or civilization" (qawmun 'amin, Qur'an 7:64); they are "deaf, dumb and blind, so they have no rational knowledge" (Qur'an 2:171), because we have turned our backs on His observable and knowable signs. The early Muslims, on the other hand, had world intellectual supremacy, hence power and dignity, for at least six centuries from the second-eighth centuries A.H. (eighth-fourteenth centuries A.D.) because they followed the Qur'an and the good pattern (uswatun hasanah) of Prophet Muhammad.

The purpose of this book, text and illustrations, is to divert both Muslims and non-Muslims to the Qur'an to "Islamize knowledge" and apply it as Islamic science and technology. Secularized peoples and secularized knowledge are a curse for the earth and mankind: "... and any for whom God has appointed no light, there is no light" (Qur'an 24:40).