It is famous that the first person who discovered that the earth moves around the sun was Galileo, who lived approximately four centuries before and before that, the Egyptian scholar, Ptolemy, had said, “The earth is the center of the universe and everything revolves around it.”

Galileo was reprimanded by the Catholic Church for his discovery and his denial of this discovery saved his life but finally other scholars followed up his discovery and today it is a certain scientific fact which has been proved by space flights.

In summary, the earth being the center was negated and it became clear that this was an error of our senses because we mistake the movement of the stars and planets for the movement of the earth. We are in motion and we assume that they are!

At any rate, the opinion of Ptolemy lasted for 1500 years and it influenced the thoughts of the scholars during those years, and, at the time of the descent of the Holy Quran, no one had the courage to speak against this view.

But when we turn to the Holy Quran, we see:

و تری الجبال تحبها جامده و هی تمر مر السحاب صنع الله الذی اتقن کل شی انه خبیر بما تفعلون
النمل 27/88

“You see the mountains and think them firmly fixed, but they shall pass away as the clouds pass away...” (27:88)

The Quran speaks very clearly about the movement of the mountains whereas we see them as immovable and the analogy of their movement with that of clouds is both an indication of calmness and quietude.

If we see that instead of the movement of the earth, the movement of the mountains is mentioned, this is so that the truth of the matter be made known because it is clear that the mountains, without the earth, have no motion and the movement of them is exactly like the movement of the earth, either around itself, or around the sun or both.

Now think that at a time when all of the scholars of the world and the masses of the people thought that the earth was motionless, and believed that all of the stars and planets moved around it, the direct confrontation of this idea and the mention of the movement of the earth is a scientific miracle!

And this from a person who had never studied and who, in general, arose from an area where there were no teachers and which was considered to be very backward from the point of view of science and culture. Is this not proof of the truth of this Book?

Think and Answer:

1. What is meant by ‘scientific miracles’ of the Quran?

2. Who was the first person who discovered the law of gravity and in what age did he live?

3. In what verse in the Quran and with what analogy does it refer to the law of gravity in general terms?

4. Who said that the earth was immobile and how long did this rule human thought?

5. In what verse and sura does the Holy Quran refer to the movement of the earth?