Koran: The Myth of Embryology!
Scientific errors
of medical information on embryology and human development in the mother’s
womb.
Islam:
Truth or Myth?
Scientific errors and the myth of embryology in the Koran:
In an
effort to show the scientific accuracy of the Koran, Muslim's are quick to
bring up the claim of embryology revealed in stunning accuracy, before man
discovered for himself. Muslims love to tell the story of how professor Keith L. Moore, the former anatomist at the
However
many Muslim are completely unaware that all of the information in the Qur'an
about embryology had already been revealed many different times, centuries
before hand. Furthermore, some of the information is scientifically inaccurate.
But don't
take my word for it, early Muslim doctors, like Ibn-Qayyim,
were first to blow the whistle when they saw the Koranic
material, mirrored a Greek doctor named Galen, who lived of 150 AD. In 1983 Basim Musallam, Director of the
Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge concluded,
"The stages of development which the Qur'an and Hadith
established for believers agreed perfectly with Galen's scientific
account....There is no doubt that medieval thought appreciated this agreement
between the Qur'an and Galen, for Arabic science employed the same Qur'anic terms to describe the Galenic
stages" (B. Musallam (Cambridge, 1983)
Sex and Society in Islam. p. 54) In other words when it comes to embryology the
Qur'an merely echoes the scientific knowledge man had already discovered 450
years earlier.
Samuel
ha-Yehudi was a 2nd century Jewish physician, and one
of many with an interest in embryology . The embryo
was called peri habbetten
(fruit of the body) and develops as golem (formless, rolled-up thing); shefir meruqqam
(embroidered foetus - shefir means amniotic
sac); 'ubbar (something carried); v'alad (child); v'alad
shel qayama (noble or
viable child) and ben she-kallu chadashav (child whose
months have been completed). (J. Needham (Cambridge, 2nd edition 1959) A
History of Embryology, p. 77)
J.
Needham spent almost 60 pages in his book "A history of embryology",
discussing ancient Greek, Indian and Egyptian embryology, than in less than 1
page he dismisses the entire Arabic tradition by concluding that "Arabic
science ... was not of great help to embryology". After listing some of
the verses in the Qur'an about embryology he dismisses them as "a
seventh-century echo of Aristotle and the Ayer-veda" . (J. Needham (Cambridge, 2nd
edition 1959) A History of Embryology, p. 82), in other words a mixture of
Greek and ancient Indian teachings.
And what
about Professor Keith L. Moore, once at the
Bones Before Muscle? The Koran got it wrong!
Keith L.
Moore knows that the Koran is wrong when it says that bones are formed first, then flesh is placed upon them.
"Look
further at the bones, how We bring them together and
clothe them with flesh ..." (Al-Baqara 2:259)
The Koran gives the
impression that first the skeleton is formed, and then it is clothed with mustle. Dr. Bucaille knows
perfectly well that this is not true. The muscles and the cartilage
precursors of the bones start forming from the somite
at the same time. At the end of the eighth week there are only a few centers of ossification started but the fetus
is already capable of some muscular movement.
In a personal letter dated
8/1/87 from Dr. T.W. Sadler, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of
Anatomy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514, and author
of Langman's Medical Embryology,
Dr. Sadler states,
"At
the 8th week post fertilization, the ribs would be cartilaginous and muscles
would be present. Also at this time ossification would begin near the angle of
the rib and would spread along the shaft until it reached the costal cartilage
by the 4th month. Muscles would be capable of some movement at 8 weeks, but by
10-12 weeks this capacity would be much better developed."
It is always better to have
two witnesses so we shall see what Dr. Keith L. Moore has to say about the
development of bones and muscles in his book The Developing Human.
Extracted from Chapters 15-17 we find the following information:
The skeletal and muscle
system develops from the mesoderm, some of which becomes mesenchymal cells. These mesenchymal
cells make muscles, and also have the ability to differentiate...into osteoblasts which make bone. At first the bones form as
cartilage models so that by the end of the sixth week the whole limb
skeleton is formed out of cartilage but without any bony calcium as shown in Figure
15-13. (Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human, 4th
ed., 1988, p. 346.)
While the bone models are
forming, myoblasts develop a large muscle mass in
each limb bud, separating into extensor and flexor components. In other
words, the limb musculature develops simultaneously in situ from the mesenchyme surrounding the developing bones. So Dr.
Moore agrees completely with Dr. Sadler.
Furthermore, during a
personal conversation with Dr. Moore I showed him Dr. Sadler's statement and he
agreed that it was absolutely valid.
Conclusion: on bone development Dr. Sadler and
Dr. Moore agree. There is no time when calcified bones have been formed and
then the muscles are placed around them. The muscles are there several weeks before there
are calcified bones, rather than being added around previously formed bones as
the Qur'an states. The Qur'an is in complete error
here.
We are going to examine the
historical situation leading up to the time of Muhammad to see what Muhammad
and his people believed about embryology. The trail will start with the Greek
and Indian medical men.
HIPPOCRATES
We will start with
Hippocrates. According to the best evidence, he was born on the Greek
Semen
Sperm is a product which
comes from the whole body of each parent, weak sperm coming from the weak
parts, and strong sperm from the strong parts. Section 8, p 321
Coagulation of Mother's
blood
The seed (embryo), then, is
contained in a membrane ... Moreover, it grows because
of its mother's blood, which descends to the womb. For once a woman
conceives, she ceases to menstruate... Section 14, p.
326
Flesh
At this stage, with the
descent and coagulation of the mother's blood, flesh begins to be formed, with
the umbilicus. Section 14, p. 326
Bones
As the flesh grows it is
formed into distinct members by breath ... The bones grow hard ... moreover
they send out branches like a tree ... Section 17, p. 328
This information is clearly
summarized in the following chart.
STAGES OF PRENATAL
DEVELOPMENT ACCORDING TO HIPPOCRATES
STAGE
1. sperm
STAGE
2. mother's blood descends around the membrane
STAGE
3. flesh, fed through umbilicus
STAGE
4. bones
Clearly this shows that 1000 years before the Qur'an the development of the
embryo was divided into stages.
ARISTOTLE
Next we will look at
Aristotle. In his book On the Generation of Animals, (Aristotle, On
the Generation of Animals, Trans. by Arthur Platt, Vol. 9 of Great Books of
the Western World, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.,
1952.) sometime about 350 BC, Aristotle gives his
stages of embryology. (The section numbers are in the text.)
Semen and menstrual
blood
In this section, 728a,
Aristotle speaks of the male semen as being in a pure state ... "It
follows that what the female would contribute to the semen of the male would be
material for the semen to work upon." In other words the semen clots the
menstrual blood.
Then he continues,
"Nature forms from the purest material the flesh ... and from the
residues thereof bones, sinews, hair, and also nails ... and lastly, round
about the bones, and attached to them by thin fibrous bands, grow the
fleshy parts. ..." 654b
Clearly the Qur'an follows
this exactly, sperm clotting the menstrual blood which forms meat. Then the
bones are formed and lastly "round about the bones ... grow the fleshy
parts" as we see in the following chart.
STAGES OF PRENATAL
DEVELOPMENT ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE
STAGE
1. sperm
STAGE
2. catamenia -- menstrual blood
STAGE
3. flesh
STAGE
4. bones
STAGE
5. around the bones grow the fleshy parts
NEXT WE SHALL CONSIDER INDIAN MEDICINE
The opinion of Charaka (123 AD) and Susruta is
that both the male and female contributed seed. The "secretion" of
the male is called the sukra (semen) ...
The "secretion"
of the woman is called artava or sonita (blood) and it is derived from food by way of
blood ..." (Dr. P. Kutumbiah, M.D., F.R.C.P., Ancient
Indian Medicine, Orient Longmans, Madras, 1969, p. 2-4.)
Here we see that in the
medicine of
NOW WE SHALL LOOK AT GALEN
Galen was born in 131 AD in
Our knowledge of his book, De
Semine, depends on two Greek manuscripts of the
15th and 16th century and two Arabic copies from the 12th and 13th century of
the same translation made in about 840 AD, i.e. 700 years after Galen lived.
Galen's work was considered so important that copies were still being made in
1500 AD. Secondly, although the Arabic copies reflect a translation made 700
years after Galen's life, no one doubts their essential accuracy.
I mention this because in
comparison we Christians have 75% of the Greek Gospel-New Testament in papyrus
copies from only 150 years after Christ ascended into heaven, and we have 2
complete Greek copies from 350 AD. Therefore, there is no reason to doubt the
essential accuracy of the Gospel-New Testament either. It has not been changed.
Galen - On Semen
Galen says, "The substance
from which the fetus is formed is not merely
menstrual blood, as Aristotle maintained, but menstrual blood plus the two semens." p 50.
The Qur'an agrees with
Galen here when it says in Sura 76:2, "We
created man from a drop of mingled sperm."
Embryological
Development
Concerning Embryological
development, Galen also taught that the embryo developed in stages.
He wrote, "the first is that in which ... the form of the semen
prevails. At this time Hippocrates too, the all marvelous, ... still calls
it semen (geniture)."
The next stage is
"when it has been filled with blood, and heart, brain and liver are
(still) unarticulated and unshaped ... this is the period ... that
Hippocrates (called) foetus."
(The Quranic
Sura 22:5 reflects this when it says, "... Then
out of a morsel of flesh, partly formed and partly unformed ...")
"And now the third
period of gestation has come ... Thus it (nature) caused flesh to grow
on and around all the bones."
We saw above that the
Qur'an agrees with this in Sura 23:14 where it says,
"And we clothed the bones (with) meat."
"The fourth and final period (puer or child - verse 9) is at the stage when all the parts in the limbs have been differentiated." (Galen, op.cit. I 9, verses 1-9, p. 92-95.)
GALEN'S STAGES OF
PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT
STAGE
1. The
two semens
STAGE
1b. plus menstrual blood
STAGE
2. unshaped flesh
STAGE
3. bones
STAGE
3b. flesh grows on and around the bones
Thus we see that Galen also
has stages. He divides them differently, but the sequence is the same.
THE XVI BOOKS OF GALEN AS THE BASIS OF MEDICAL STUDIES
Galen was so important in
medicine that just about the time of the Hejira, four
leading medical men in Alexandria, Egypt decided to form a medical school using
16 books of Galen as the basis of the studies. This continued up to and
including the 13th century. (LeClerc,
op. cit., p. 41.)
We must now ask ourselves
what the political, economic and medical climate was in
From the Hadramaut in
In North Arabia in about
500 AD the Ghassanids took over and by 528 AD the Ghassan controlled the Syrian desert
to the outskirts of Yathrib (
As early as 463 AD, the
Jews translated the Torah and Old Testament from Hebrew into Syriac. (The
During this time, Sergius al-ras Ayni, (died in
Khosru I, (Arabic Kisra)
King of Persia from 531-579, was known as Khosru the
Great. His troops conquered areas as far away as
"The school of Jundi-Shapur became,
during Khosru I's long
reign of 48 years, the greatest intellectual center
of the time. Within its walls Greek, Jewish, Nestorian, Persian and Hindu
thought and experience were freely exchanged.
Teaching was done largely
in Syriac from Syriac
translations of Greek texts." (The Role of the
Nestorians and Muslims in the History of Medicine, Allen O. Whipple, 1967,
Princeton Univ. Press, p. 16.) This meant that Aristotle, Hippocrates,
and Galen were readily available when the medical school at Jundi-Shapur
was operating during his reign.
The next step was that the
conquering Arabs compelled the Nestorians to translate their Syriac texts of Greek medicine into Arabic. The translation
from Syriac to Arabic was easy as the two languages
had the same grammar.
Concerning the local
medical situation during Muhammad's life, we know there were physicians living
in
Harith ben Kalada was the best-educated physician trained in the
healing art. "He was born about the middle of the sixth century, at Ta'if, in the tribe of Banu Thaqif. He traveled through
"Having completed his
studies he practiced as a physician in
"Though Harith ben Kalada
did not write any book on medicine, his views on many medical problems are
preserved in his conversation with Khosru. About the
eye he says that it is constituted of fat which is the white part, of water
which is the black part, and of wind which constituted the eyesight."
All this ... goes to show the acquaintance of Harith
with the Greek doctors. (Dr. Muhammad Zubayr
Siddiqi, Studies in Arabic and Persian Medical
Literature, Calcutta University, 1959, p. 6-7.) He died in the reign
of 'Umar the 2nd Caliph.
Summarizing the situation
in a few words in his book Histoire de
"Harith ben Kalada
studied medicine at Jandi-Shapur and Muhammad owed to
Harith a part of his medical knowledge. Thus, with
the one as well as the other, we easily recognize the traces of Greek
(medicine)." (LeClerc, op.cit.,
p. 123)
"Sometimes
Muhammad treated the sick but in the difficult cases he would send the patients
to Harith." (LeClerc, op.cit., p. 33.)
Another educated person
around Muhammad was Nadr ben
Harith--not related to the doctor. He was a Qurayshite and cousin of Muhammad and had also visited the
court of Khosru. He had learned Persian and music
which he introduced among the Quraish at
However, he was not
sympathetic to Muhammad, mocking some of the stories in the Qur'an.
"Muhammad never forgave him for this, and when he was taken prisoner at
the Battle of Badr, he caused him to be put to
death." (Edward G. Brown, M.B., F.R.C.P., Arabian
Medicine, Cambridge, 1921, p. 11.)
In summary, we see that
(1) Arabs
living in
(2) A
cousin of Muhammad knew Persian well enough to do his musical studies in it.
(3) The Ghassan tribe, which ruled the Syrian desert
over to the gates of
(4) An ill
king of
(5) During
Muhammad's life time a new medical school was established in
This all shows that there
was ample opportunity for Muhammad and the people around him to have heard of
the embryological theories of Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen when they went
to seek treatment from Harith ben
Kalada and other local doctors.
Thus when the Qur'an says
in the Late Meccan Sura of
the Believer (Al-Mu'min) 40:67,
"He it
is Who created you from dust, then from a sperm-drop, then from a leech-like
clot (‘alaqa) ... THAT PERHAPS YOU MAY
UNDERSTAND,"
And when the Sura of the Pilgrimage (Al-Hajj) 22:5 starts out,
"O
mankind! if you have doubt about the resurrection (consider)
that We have created you from dust, then from a drop of seed, then from a clot
(‘alaqa), etc..."
it is correct for us to ask again what
were they to understand?
What were they to consider?
When we look at the Quranic stages again the answer is very clear.
QURANIC STAGES OF
PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT
STAGE
1. nutfa -- sperm
STAGE
2. ‘alaqa -- clot
STAGE
3. mudagha -- piece or lump of flesh
STAGE
4. ‘adaam -- bones
STAGE
5. dressing the bones with muscles
They were understanding and
considering that which was common knowledge--the
embryological stages as taught by the Greek physicians.
I do not mean that
Muhammad's listeners all knew the names of the Greek physicians, but they knew
the embryological stages of the Greek physicians.
(1) They
believed that the male sperm
(2) mixed with the female semen and menstrual blood to cause it
to clot and this became the baby.
(3) They
believed there was a time when the fetal lump was
"formed and unformed".
(4) They
believed the lump became bones
(5) which were then covered with muscles
Allah in the Qur'an was
using that common knowledge as a sign encouraging the listeners and readers to
turn to Him. The trouble is that this common knowledge was and is not true.
ARAB PHYSICIANS AFTER MUHAMMAD
We must now look at one hadith and two well-known physicians from the period after
Muhammad. Obviously they had no effect on the Qur'an, but they demonstrate that
faith in the embryological ideas of Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen continued
among the Arabs right up to the 1600's.
The Hadith
is found in the Forty Hadiths of An-Nawawi and reads as follows,
This Hadith is reported according to Abi
‘Abd-ar-rahman ‘Abdallah ben Mas‘ud, may God be pleased
with him, who said: The Apostle of God, may God bless him and grant him salvation,
spoke to us and he is truthful and worthy of belief:
"The
creation of any one of you is accomplished in various stages in the abdomen of
your mother; 40 days a drop of sperm; then he will be (‘alaqa) a clot for the same period, then chewed meat (mudagha) for the same period; then the angel will be
sent to him and he will blow into him the spirit (soul) and he will order four
words (about the future) by writing: his monetary fortune, and his length of
life, and his actions, and whether he is to be damned or happy in the
hereafter.
"And I swear by God
Whom there is no other God except Him: it could be that one of you will do acts
as the people of heaven until there remains only one arms length between him
and it (heaven), and the writing ( of his future) will
overtake him and he will do the acts of the people of the fire and he will
enter it. And it could be that one of you will do acts of the people of the
fire until there remains only one arms length between him and it, and the
writing (of his future) will overtake him and he will do the acts of the people
of heaven and he will enter it." (translation
mine) Transmitted by Bukhari and
Muslim. (An-Nawawi, op.
cit., p. 28-29.)
We have here a Hadith which is reported to be from the mouth of Muhammad;
attested to by the best authorities--Bukhari and
Muslim; included in a special collection of Hadiths
by a specialist in Hadiths; which has gross
scientific errors. It follows the stages of the Qur'an exactly, but here
Muhammad has added other information. The drop of sperm remains a drop of sperm
40 days, then an "‘alaqa" 40 days for a
total of 80 days, then "chewed meat" for 40 days for a total of 120
days as shown in the following summary. Modern gynecological
studies have shown that sperm remain alive less than a week inside the female
genital tract, and that at 70 days organ
differentiation and maturation are well advanced, except for the brain.
HADITH'S STAGES OF
PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT
STAGE
1. sperm--for 40 days
STAGE
2. ‘alaqa -- clot for 40 days
STAGE
3. mudagha -- flesh for 40 days
This makes a total of
120 days or 3 months and there are still no bones.
In truth all organs are
formed, bones are beginning to calcify, and muscles are moving at 2 months.
This Hadith
says that it doesn't even become "an unformed lump" until 80 days, a
clear error. Dr. Bucaille also mentions this Hadith and concludes,
"This description of
embryonic evolution does not agree with modern data." (Bucaille, BQ&S, p. 245.)
However, it clearly shows
something of what men believed only 200 years away from Muhammad, and it raises
severe theological problems in relation to all the Hadith.
THE THEOLOGICAL PROBLEM
Do the scientific errors in
this Hadith make the theological statements of
Muhammad wrong too?
If the scientific error
proves that this well attested Hadith is wrong, how
do we know anything about the validity of the other well attested Hadiths which don't happen to have a scientific error to
betray that they are wrong?
An even more crucial
question is, how do we know that this Hadith is not an accurate transmission? How do we know that
this does not represent Muhammad's words and understanding of the scientific
facts???
Furthermore, if the correct
translation of "alaqa" is "leech-like
substance" as modern Muslims like Shabir Ally
claim, there is no place where these post-Quranic
doctors said so. In fact, it is just the opposite. The ideas of these Greek
physicians were being used to explain the Qur'an and the Qur'an was quoted to
enlighten the meaning of the Greek physicians.
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
980-1037 AD wrote,
679. The human being takes
its origin from two things---(1) the male sperm, which plays the part of
"factor"; (2) the female sperm [first part of the menstrual blood],
which provides the matter ... These give the coagulum ("He created
man from a clot"---Q. 96,2) a certain hardiness or firmness. (Gruner, op.cit.,
p. 359.)
Thus we see that "Ibn Sina gave the female semen
exactly the same role that Aristotle had assigned to the menstrual blood ... It
is difficult to overstate the importance of Ibn Sina as a scientific and philosophical authority for the
pre-modern Europeans. (Musallam, Basim
F., Sex and Society in Islam, Birth control before the 19th century.
Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya (1291-1351)
Ibn Qayyim
took full advantage of the agreement between Quranic
revelation and Greek medicine.
Here Ibn
Qayyim is writing a medical account which includes
Hippocrates (italics),
the Qur'an (bold),
Hadith (bold underlined),
commentaries (plain underlined),
and his own thoughts (in plain)
in one and the same paragraph.
Hippocrates said in the
third chapter of Kitab al-ajinna:
"... The semen is contained in a membrane, and it grows because of the
blood of its mother which descends to the womb (This is exactly what we
quoted from Hippocrates at the beginning of this section: "The seed
(embryo), then, is contained in a membrane ... Moreover, it grows because of
its mother's blood, which descends to the womb. For once a woman
conceives, she ceases to menstruate ... Section 14, p. 326." ) ... Some membranes are formed at the beginning,
others after the second month, and others in the third month ..." That is
why God says, "He creates you in the wombs of your mothers, by one
formation after another in three darknesses"
(Qur'an 39:6). Since each of these membranes has its own darkness, when God
mentioned the stages of creation and transformation from one state to another,
He also mentioned the darknesses of the membranes.
Most commentators explain: 'it is the darkness of the belly, and the
darkness of the womb, and the darkness of the placenta' ...
In a second example we
read,
Hippocrates said, "The
mouth opens up spontaneously, and the nose and ears are formed from the flesh.
The ears are opened, and the eyes, which are filled with a clear liquid."
The Prophet used to say, 'I worship Him Who made
my face and formed it, and opened my hearing and eyesight' etc. etc."
(Ibn Qayyim,
Tuhfat, p. 248-52.)
He could do this because,
as we have seen, the educated people of Muhammad's time were familiar with
Greek medicine.
However, what is important
for us sitting here today to realize is that there is no place where the
Qur'an corrected Greek medicine. There is no place where Ibn Qayyim was shouting "Hay
you guys. You've got this all wrong. The correct meaning of ‘alaqa is "that which clings" or "leech-like
substance." On the contrary, Ibn Qayyim was demonstrating the agreement between the Qur'an
and Greek medicine--their agreement in error.
A final witness is the
commentary of Imam Naasir-addiin Baidawi
who died in 1282 AD. He quotes Sura 22:5 and then
gives his understanding. He explains ‘alaqa as
"a piece of solid blood (qata min al-dam jaamida)" and mudagha as
"a piece of meat originally as much as can be chewed (qata
min al-lahm wa
hiya fii al-aasal qadr maa
yamdagh) ". (Baidawi's
commentary of Sura Al-Hajj 22:1-5, Dar Al-Fikr, P.O. Box 11/7061, Beirut, Lebanon, 1982, p. 439. )
Stages of development - a modern idea?!?
As I mentioned at the
beginning of this study, it has been said that the idea of the embryo
developing through stages is a modern one, and that the Qur'an is prophesying
modern embryology by depicting differing stages. Yet, we have seen that
Aristotle, Hippocrates, the Indians and Galen have all discussed stages of
embryological development during the 1000 years before the Qur'an.
And after the coming of the
Qur'an, the account of the different stages as described by the Qur'an, was
carried on in the teachings of the Hadiths, Avicenna
and Ibn Qayyim, and is
essentially the same as that taught by Galen and those preceding him.
Concerning the bone stage,
it is clear, as Dr. Moore demonstrates so capably in his textbook, that muscles
start forming from the somites at the same time as
the cartilage models of the bones. There is no bone stage at which the limbs of
the developing fetus are just bones around which
muscles will later be placed.
It is equally clear, that ‘alaqa in the Qur'an means clot and that the Quraish who heard Muhammad speaking understood him to be
referring to the menstrual blood as the female contribution to the developing
baby.
Therefore we can
conclude that during all these years, the Quranic
verses on embryology saying that "man is created from a drop of sperm
which becomes a clot" were in perfect accord with the "science"
of the 1st century of the Hejira, of the time of the
Qur'an.
But when compared with
the modern science of our 20th century,
Hippocrates is in error,
Aristotle is in error,
Galen is in error,
The Qur'an is in error.
They are all in serious error.
(the
section above by Dr. William Campbell)
An
extraordinary passage from the writings of the medieval philosopher Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya
shows how heavily the later Arabic writers depended upon the Greek doctors; in
one continuous discourse (Ibn Qayyin
(Damascus, 1971) Tuhfat: Tuhfat
al mawdud bi ahkam al-mawlud, pp. 254-291) the words of Hippocrates explain the
Qur'an and Hadith, and the latter are used to explain
Hippocrates:
"Here
is someone writing a medical account who includes Hippocrates,
the Qur'an and Hadith, commentaries on
them and his own thoughts in one and the same paragraph. Of course the
intelligentsia of Muhammed's time would have been
familiar with both Greek and Indian medicine: "Hippocrates said ... 'some membranes are formed at the beginning, others after
the second month, and others in the third month ...' That is why God
says, 'He creates you in the wombs of your
mothers, by one formation after another in three darknesses'.
Since each of these membranes has its own darkness, when God mentioned the
stages of creation and transformation from one state to another, He also
mentioned the darknesses of the membranes. Most
commentators explain: 'it is the darkness of the
belly, and the darkness of the womb, and the darkness of the placenta'
... Hippocrates said, 'The
ears are opened, and the eyes, which are filled with a clear liquid.'
The Prophet used to say, 'I worship Him Who made my face and formed it, and opened my hearing and
eyesight' etc. etc"" (B. Musallam
(Cambridge, 1983) Sex and Society in Islam. p. 56).
The Koran
says in16:4 "He has created man from a sperm-drop", but this was
understood about 2000 years before the Koran, for the Bible says, "Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he
went in to his brother’s wife, he wasted his seed on the ground in order not to
give offspring to his brother." (Genesis 38:9) That man was created from
dust is recorded in Gen 2.
Scientific
errors related to embryology are contained in the Koran. In 86:6-7 the Koran
says, "He is created from a drop emitted- Proceeding from between the
backbone and the ribs". This echoes the scientific error of Hippocrates
who believed semen originates from all the fluid in the body, starting from the
brain down the spinal chord, before passing through the kidneys and finally the
testicles into the penis. (Hippocratic Writings, Penguin Classics, 1983, p.
317)
Written by Brother Andrew
http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-myths-embryology.htm