Scientific Miracles in the Qur’an

Many Muslims claim that the Qur’an contains scientific information that could not have been known during the time that it was written and, as a result of this, believe that the Qur’an must be divine revelation. Here I will address some of the more common “scientific miracle” verses of the Qur’an that are presented in this leaflet. I will attempt to demonstrate that these verses are often either drawn from the Bible or misinterpreted to seem as though they contain some sort of miraculous scientific knowledge.

Iconoclasm in Islam

Whether or not Yazid issued an iconoclastic edict in 721 AD has been debated among scholars, but I find the current state of Islam (and accounts of those in Muslim territory at the time) to be quite telling and fascinating. 

It is interesting to note the various traditions concerning icons in Islamic history. Omid Safi, an Iranian-American professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, in his book Memories of Muhammad notes that his own Islamic tradition, Iranian Shi’a Islam, is very iconophilic. He even includes icons of Muhammad in his book and the distraught reactions of his Sunni friends upon being told what they were looking at was an icon of their Prophet. While one may then think the iconophilic attitude is uniquely Shi’a, that would be incorrect—Arab Shi’as are just as strongly iconoclastic as their Sunni counterparts. Safi also mentions, along with Judith Herrin in her book Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medeival Empire, the fact that Muhammad, when destroying all the idols in the Ka’ba, left the icons of Christ and the Virgin Mary untouched—an interesting Islamic reaction that would not have been the case during the time of Yazid II.

The edict of Yazid II back in 721 AD, mainly influential among Arab-Muslims, might explain this strange and interesting variety concerning icons in Islamic history.