Erth is Fixed; or You are Dead
Edip Yuksel
Abd al-Aziz bin Baz was the chief cleric of Saudi Arabia, the head of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars for three decades. He had great impact in regressive and oppressive laws in Saudi Arabia, including the ban on women's driving. A book authored by Bin Baz was published in 1975 carried the following title: "Scientific and Narrative Evidence for that the Earth is Fixed, the Sun is Moving and it is Possible to Go to the Planets." The book was not published by any publishing house; it was published by no other than the Islamic University of Medina. In that book, Bin Baz complains about a new heresy; he is saddened to see, well more accurately, hear, people talking about motion of the earth and he wants to put a stop to that heresy. In page 23, Bin Baz after listing some hadiths issues a fatwa, asserting that those who believe that the earth is rotating are kafirs (disbelievers), and if they were Muslims before they become apostate. The Saudi Sunni leader does not stop there and explains the ramification of fatwa: any Muslim believing in the rotation of earth lose his or her right to life and property; they should be killed! This same cleric was the head of an international conference of Sunni scholars representing 38 countries discussing the Salman Rushdi affair. Then, Saudi Arabia was competing with Iran regarding leadership in the Islamic world and this was the hot issue then. The conference issued a unanimous fatwa in 19 March 1989, condemning Rushdi and Rashad, as apostates. The Western world by then knew Rushdi, but not many westerners were familiar with the second name in the fatwa. Dr. Rashad Khalifa, the late leader of modern reformist movement and the discoverer of the mathematical code of the Quran, in less than a year after this fatwa would be assassinated by a terrorist group affiliated with the Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden in 31 January 1990, in his Masjid in Tucson, Arizona.
Bin Baz, in his book, quoted some verses and many hadith to support his position that the earth is fixed. After his expressing is religious verdict of death penalty for the apostates who believe in a moving earth, he included the following reasoning as his scientific evidence:
"If the world was rotating as they assert, countries, mountains, trees, rivers, seas, nothing would be stable; humans would see the countries in the west in the east, the ones in the east in the west. The position of the qibla would change continuously. In sum, as you see, this claim is false in many respects. But, I do not wish to prolong my words."
Towards the end of the 20th century, a "university" of a Sunni country publishes such a nonsense authored by the highest ranking religious leader of that country! Considering that the Ottoman chief clerics banned the import and use of printing machine for about 300 years, it becomes clear the reason why the so-called Muslim countries are so lagging behind civilization, socially, politically, and in science and technology.
Ibn Kathir is a popular commentary of the Quran, which is respected because of its reliance on hadith to "explain" verses of the Quran. Ibn Kathir (d. 1372), in the classic commentary carrying his name, makes the following remarks on verses 2:29 and 68:1. For this commentary, he relies mainly on a hadith from Abud Dawud (d. 888), one of the so-called authentic Sunni holy hadith books:
Ibn Abbas told all of you by Wasil b. Abd al-Ala al-Asadi- Muhammad b. Fudayl- al-Amash- abu Zabyan- ibn Abbas: the first thing god created is the pen. God then said to it: write!, Whereupon the pen asked: what shall I write, my lord! God replied: write what is predestined! He continued: and the pen proceeded to (write) whatever is predestined and gong to be to the coming of the hour. God then lifted up the water vapor and split the heavens off from it. Then god created the fish (nun), and the earth was spread out upon its back. The fish became agitated, with the result that the earth was shaken up. It was steadied by means of the mountains, for they indeed proudly (tower) over the earth.
After learning the intellectual level of the believers, collectors, narrators, and commentators of the above hadith, such as Abu Dawud (d. 888), al-Tabari (d. 1516), and Ibn al-Baz (1995), it becomes clear why Muhammad would utter the words in 25:30. |
