Closed, and Then Opened

Then Allah (swt) continues. There is much discussion of the oneness of Allah (swt); numerous dalāʾil are given, numerous evidences, numerous points. The verses are of real interest to read. Allah (swt) speaks of the ground, of the earth, of the heavens, of the sun and the moon; He speaks of the day and the night. These are notions plain and easy, set before your face, which you see and do not think upon because you take them for granted. Hence Allah (swt) constantly — as, for example, where Allah says wa jaʿalnā fī al-arḍi rawāsiya an tamīda bihim, which will be discussed. And yaʿlamu mā bayna aydīhim: Allah speaks of how He knows of everyone. Look at verses 16 to 20 and all this discussion of the heavens and the earth and the rest, all these evidences, will be seen. And moving on to verses 21 to 24, Allah (swt) speaks of how they would bow down, of how they worship idols that can do nothing for them.

What one sees is that every evidence they bring, every notion or answer they give, is irrational. They have the strangest reasons for their worship. Am ittakhadhū min dūnihi ālihatan qul hātū burhānakum — bring your evidence; as seen at verse 24. But none of it amounts to a rational argument.

So what Allah (swt) does is to answer them in a way they may, one hopes, understand, with clear evidences. Allah (swt) brings six evidences of Allah (swt) as the Creator, and of His power to do everything. And all of these evidences are from the cosmic realm; they are all from observable realms outside, which a man may entirely see.

Look at verse 30. Allah (swt) says a-wa-lam yara alladhīna kafarū anna al-samāwāti wa-l-arḍa kānatā ratqan fa-fataqnāhumā wa jaʿalnā mina al-māʾi kulla shayʾin ḥayy, a-fa-lā yuʾminūn. These are two evidences.

The first is: do they not see, those who disbelieve, that the heavens and the earth — and there are various ways of rendering this, as may be seen in the translations — were closed? And then fa-fataqnāhumā: We opened them up, so that the rain and the rest might come. That is one opinion. Another opinion is that the earth and the heavens were together in one mass, and then We separated them. The Big Bang theory seems to support this notion, or to accord with it: that all the mass was together, and then split into all these different things. Many have discussed that, from an astronomical point of view and from the point of view of the inception of the world; there is much discussion of it.

But this is something the Qur'an said fourteen hundred years ago, making that claim when nobody could ever even have thought of such things, going back so far. For discussion of the Big Bang and such matters belongs to the last few hundred years. Before that there was nothing, because one simply had not the means to go so far. We still have a long way to go. But Allah (swt) makes this entirely plain, and as the days pass it will become plainer still.