THE QUR’AN AND MODERN SCIENCE

On 9 NOVEMBER 1976, an unusual lecture was given at the French Academy of
Medicine. It’s title was ‘Physiological and Embryological data in the Qur’an’. I presented
my study on the existence in the Qur’an of certain statements concerning physiology and
reproduction. My reason for doing this was that our knowledge of these disciplines is such,
that it is impossible to explain how a text produced at the time of the Qur’an could have
contained ideas that have only been discovered in modern times.

 There is indeed no human work prior to modern times that contains statements which were
equally in advance of the state of knowledge at the time they appeared and which might be
compared to the Qur’an.
In addition to this, a comparative study of data of a similar kind contained in the Bible (Old
Testament and Gospels) seemed desirable. This is how the project was formed of a
confrontation between modern knowledge and certain passages in the Holy Scriptures of each
monotheistic religion. It resulted in the publication of a book under the title, The Bible, The
Qur’an and Science. The first French addition appeared in May 976. (Seglers, Paris). English
and Arabic editions have now been published.
It comes as no surprise to learn that Religion and Science have always been considered to
be twin sisters by Islam and that today, at a time when science has taken such great strides,
they still continue to be associated, and furthermore certain scientific data are used for the
better understanding of the Qur’anic text. What is more, in a century where, scientific truth has
dealt a deathblow to religious belief, it is precisely the discoveries of science that, in an
objective examination of the Islamic Revelation, have highlighted the supernatural character of
certain aspects of the Revelation.
When all is said and done, generally speaking, scientific knowledge would seem in spite of
what people may say, to be highly conducive to reflection on the existence of God.
Once we begin to ask ourselves in an unbiased or unprejudiced way about the metaphysical
lessons to be derived from some of today’s knowledge, (for example our knowledge of the
infinitely small or the problem of life), we indeed discover many reasons for thinking along these
lines. When we think about the remarkable organisation presiding over the birth and and
maintenance of life, it surely becomes clear that the likelihood of it being the result of chance
gets less and less, as our knowledge and progress in this field expand. Certain concepts must
appear to be increasingly unacceptable; for example, the one put forward by the French winner
of the Nobel prize for Medicine who tried to get people to admit that living matter was selfcreated
as the result of fortuitous circumstances under effect of certain outside influences using
simple chemical elements as their base. From this it is claimed that living organisms came into
being, leading to the remarkable complex called man. To me, it would seem that the scientific
progress made in understanding the fantastic complexity of higher beings provides strong
arguments in favour of the opposite theory: in other words, the existence of an extraordinarily
methodical organisation presiding over the remarkable arrangement of the phenomena of life.
In many parts of the Book, the Qur’an leads, in simple terms, to this kind of general
reflection. But it also contains infinitely more precise data which are directly related to facts
discovered by modern science: these are what exercise a magnetic attraction for today’s
scientists.