According to The ISLAM TV (2020), God performed a miracle by splitting the moon into two. The Mikkans wanted to believe if Muhammad ﷺ was a true prophet, and so they demanded a miracle. Thus, through the hand of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, God split the moon into two and rejoined the two pieces together again to reform the original form. Muhammad (peace be upon him) would recite the following verses: “The Last Hour draws near, and the moon is split asunder! And if they see a sign (miracle), they turn away and say, ‘Passing magic!’— for they are bent on giving it the lie, being always wont to follow their own desires.” (Qur’an, 54:1-3), and “The Last Hour draws near, and the moon is split asunder!” (Qur’an, 54:1)

This miracle of splitting the moon was confirmed by the eye witnesses who have transmitted this knowledge of this miracle from a generation to generation. This miracle should encourage the Muslims and non-Muslims to have their faith in Qur’an. The miracle opened the minds of the researchers to study more on the sun, earth and moon rotation. For long, in the second BC, the western scientists and philosophers had been arguing that the earth remained still at the center of the universe while the other bodies such as stars, moon, and the sun revolved around it; however, Qur’an had indicated that sun rotates. However, in 1512, Nicholas Copernicus came up with the Heliocentric Theory of Planetary Motion that the sun was placed at the center of the solar system and was motionless while the planets have been the ones revolving around it (Bucaille, 1978). Later, Yohannes Keppler, a German Scientist, published the “Astronomia Nova” in 1609, which argues that the planets revolve around the sun following their elliptical orbits; they rotate at varying speeds upon their axis. With this knowledge, it was then possible for the Europeans to analyze the sequence of the day and night. Due to these discoveries, people thought that the sun has always been motionless, unlike the earth and moon.

However, after considering the Qur’anic verse “It is He Who created The Night and the Day, And the sun and the moon: All (the celestial bodies) Swim along, each in its Rounded course” (Al-Qur’an 21:33), we then realize that even the sun being one of the celestial bodies was created to swing around its rounded course. This insight which the Qur’an has illuminated, has therefore been proved by modern science, which states that the sun takes 25 days to complete the rotation of its axis. The Qur’an also backs up the argument that sun rotates in Al-Qur’an (36:40), which says that, “It is not permitted to the Sun to catch up the Moon, nor can the Night outstrip the Day: Each (just) swims along in (its own) orbit (according to Law).”

References

• Bailey, R. (2019). The Purpose of Fingerprints. ThoughtCo
• Hamayun, S. (2017). A Barrier between Seas – Discoveries Agree with the Quran | About Islam. About Islam
• Husairi, A. (2019). Embryology In The Qur’an And Hadith: Expanded Multidisiplinary Perspective. Atlantis-press.com
• IslamSearch. (2016). Quran about Embryology ┇ Quran and Modern Science ┇ IslamSearch.org [Video]