Invisible electromagnetic spectrum in the Quran

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The Quran uses the word "what" (ما). Some Islamic apologists are trying to claim that "what" refers to "the electromagnetic spectrum" and since Muhammad didn't know about electromagnetic spectrum, the author of the Quran must be an all-knowing god and not Muhammad.

The "what" verse

I swear by what you see, and by what you do not see.


The vague phrase "what you do not see" is supposed to mean "the sections of the electromagnetic spectrum that you don't see" according to apologists:

1400 years ago people thought that light is what you can see. Nobody believed that there is light that you cannot see. Today we know that this is false. Most of the electromagnetic spectrum is actually invisible. God swears by light that we see and by light that we cannot see. Today we found light that cannot be seen by the naked eye.

How could an illiterate man who lived 1400 years ago have known that there is light that we cannot see?


miracles-of-quran.com [1]

The Quran talks about light a lot. A list of occurrences of the word light (نور, noor) with context can be found in the article "Sun and light word count in the Qur'an". Nowhere does the Quran talk about light that we cannot see. Now the verse 68:39 says "what (ما, maa) you don't see". In that phrase the "what" most probably refers to the object and not to the light, which is only a medium between the object and the eye. And people 1400 years ago probably didn't even realize that light is the medium. They just saw objects and what they see are the objects. And it is obvious that it is possible not to see an object.

The unseen

The concept of things existing although they cannot be seen was not new in the Arabian peninsula. There were already Jews and Christians who believed in a god, although they can't see him. Besides that, Muhammad was known to "see" things that other people didn't see, although they were looking too, so he could be referring to those things:

Narrated `Aisha:

Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "O Aisha! This is Gabriel sending his greetings to you." I said, "Peace, and Allah's Mercy be on him." `Aisha added: The Prophet (ﷺ) used to see things which we used not to see.


Unseen jinn were worshipped by many pre-Islamic Arabs.[2] Muhammad could be referring to them too.

See also

External:

References

  1. https://miracles-of-quran.com/light.htm
  2. Amira El-Zein. Islam, Arabs, and Intelligent World of the Jinn Syracuse University Press. 2009. ISBN 9780815650706. p 34.