Page 81 - Allah is Known through Reason

the relativity of time! Three related verses are;

Yet they ask you to hasten on the Punishment! But Allah will not fail in
His Promise. Verily a Day in the sight of your Lord is like a thousand
years of your reckoning. (Surat al-Hajj, 47)

He regulates the affair from the heaven to the earth; then shall it ascend
to Him in a day the measure of which is a thousand years of what you
count. (Surat al-Sajda, 5)
The angels and the spirit ascend unto him in a Day the measure where-
of is (as) fifty thousand years. (Surat al-Maarij, 4)
As a book whose revelation began in 610, the Qur'an's referring to
relativity so straightforwardly is another evidence that it is a divine book.

THE ROUNDNESS OF THE EARTH
Arabic, the language in which the Qur'an was revealed, is a very rich
and developed language. Its vocabulary is very large and words have many
variations. For this reason, some of the verbs in Arabic cannot be translat-
ed into some languages as single words. For instance, the verb "hashiya"
means "fearing with awe" (other words are used for other types of fears).
Or the word "karia" is used for referring to "an adversity, that which
strikes", that is, the day of Resurrection.
One of these verbs is "tekvir". In English, this means "to make one
thing lap over another, folded up as a garment that is laid away". For
instance, in Arabic dictionaries this word is used for the action of wrapping
one thing around another, in the way that a turban is put on. Let us now
look at a verse where the verb "tekvir" is used:

He has created the Heavens and the Earth for Truth. He wraps the night
up in the day, and wraps the day up in the night. (Surat az-Zumar, 5)
The information given in the verse about the day's and the night's
wrapping each other up includes accurate information about the shape of
the world. This situation can be true only if the earth is round. This means
that in the Qur'an, the roundness of the world was hinted at.
However, the understanding of astronomy of the time perceived the
world differently. As we have mentioned, it was then thought that the

Scientific Facts and the Miracle of the Qur’an 81