#0102265 THE SUN AND THE MOON
"He created the skies and the earth for truth.
He coils the night upon the day and He coils the day upon the night"(Koran 39:5)
At a time when a geocentric cosmology was in vogue, the Koran not only corrected the erroneous notions associated with that world-view, but made clear that night and day were caused by a coiling motion. The Koran uses the arabic verb Kawarra which in its original usage signifies the "coiling" of a turban around the head. A perfect analogy to the movement that causes night and day, i.e. the earth's rotation.
"He it is who has created the night and day, and the sun and the moon.
They all, in their orbit, swim (yasbahoon)" (Koran 39:5)
To make this notion of a rotating earth causing night and day even clearer, the Koran mentions that the night "merges" into the day and day "merges" into night (Koran 3:27) and that the night and day "interchange" into each other (Koran 24:44). The above statement stated that this change is brought about by orbital motion similar to (in principle) but distinct from the orbital motion of the sun and the moon. "They all" says the Koran, "all" signifies night and day, the sun and the moon. The word translated "swim" above is the Arabic Yasbahoon. It signifies movement with one's own motion. If you refer to a man doing this on the ground, it means he is walking and not rolled by someone else.
"And the sun constantly journeys towards a homing place for it
And for the moon We have determined phases...
It is not for the sun to overtake the moon,
neither can the night outstrip the day.
And they all swim (yasbahoon) in their own orbits (Koran 36:38-40)"
The Koran mentions the movement of the sun. The sun's movement is not something that is evident to our eyes or experience but requires specialized equipment. Modern science has found out that the sun rotates around its axis every 26 days and is continually on a journey in space towards its "homing place", the central nucleus of our galaxy, just like mentioned in the Koran (36:39), in its orbit of around 226 million miles (accurate to within 6 percent), according to Mark Reid, a Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer. Also, the Koran is known to be the first book to use the modern term "phase" (Manazil in Arabic) associated with the moon's appearances.
By stating that the sun is not permitted to "overtake" the moon, the Koran is making clear for astronomers, in their own terminology, that the sun and the moon are not revolving around the same object. It also makes clear that the movement that causes night and day has nothing to do with the movement of the sun and the moon. In the first part of the statement, the sun is mentioned as the one that cannot "overtake" the moon. In the second part it is the night that cannot "outstrip" the day. This is completely contrary to popular earth-centered (geocentric) systems, in which day and night were associated with the sun's movement (popular at the time of Muhammed).
Simon and Jacqueline Mitton, in their book, Invitation to Astronomy (1986), state on page 20:
...a planet travels more slowly the further it is away from the sun. Thus the Earth regularly "overtakes on the inside", the planets that are further out. The overtaking causes the apparent backward loop in the planet's path." (Mitton 1986:20)
Not only this, the Koran completely debunks the geocentric hypothesis when it states:
By the Sun and its brightness
And by the moon when it imitates it (i.e. reflects that brightness)
And by the day which reveals it.
By the night which conceals it." (Koran 91:1-4)
The above statements of the Koran not only reveal the reflected nature of the moon's light but also debunk the erroneous claim of the geocentrists that the sun's movement causes day and night. It is the morning that "reveals" the sun and the night that "conceals" the sun, not the other way around. In other words, the sun is stationary relative to night and day. The movement that causes night and day is not the movement of the sun!
The fact that the earth, sun and moon move with their own motion is a notion that even the "father of gravity", Issac Newton, did not fully understand. It was clarified by Einstein in 1912 (almost 1400 years after the Koran) and formed the essence of his General Theory of Relativity. Physicist Brian Greene, in his book, The Elegant Universe (1999) states on page 71:
...Einstein has taught us that the warping of space is gravity. The mere presence of an object with mass causes space to respond by warping. Similarly, the earth is not kept in orbit because the gravitational pull of some other external object guides it...Instead, Einstein showed that objects move through space along the shortest possible paths- the "easiest possible" paths or the "paths of least resistance". (Greene, Page 71)
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