The article claims that “Found within the Qur’an and Hadeeth are accurate descriptions of anatomical structures, surgical procedures, physiological characteristics, and medical remedies.” This is a staple of contemporary Islamic apologetics, but does such a claim really have a place in a scholarly medical journal? One wonders if The International Journal of Cardiology would publish an article about how Christian or Buddhist texts reflect some modern scientific understanding.
Do you really need to wonder about the answer?
“The heart and cardiovascular system in the Qur’an and Hadeeth,” by Matt Young at Panda’s Thumb, February 6 (thanks to Suzanne):
That is the title of an article to be published in The International Journal of Cardiology, a presumably reputable journal published by Elsevier. Avijit Roy, the editor of the pro-science website Mukto-Mona, published in both Bengali and English, takes Elsevier to task on Talk Reason here.
Roy, an engineer, details a number of misconceptions in the Koran (the preferred spelling, according to Merriam-Webster) and argues that the paper should never have been published in a scientific journal….
Roy demolishes the article so thoroughly that it’s a wonder that The International Journal of Cardiology didn’t close up shop immediately upon receiving his letter. Here is a sampling:
I am disappointed to see a reputed journal publishing, or even accepting a cleverly crafted religious propaganda. Careful study of Qur’an, Hadeeth and other Islamic resources for years, I know that like other ancient books, these scriptures also contain lot of errors and weird misconceptions in embryology, biology and medicine. For example, in one verse of Qur’an it clearly declares that sperm originates between the back and the ribs (sura At-Tariq 86:6-7) i.e, it comes from the kidneys! Note that, Greek physician Hippocrates theorized this wrong idea long before Muhammad that sperm passed through the kidneys into the penis. For centuries this was an accepted (and incorrect) belief of the origins of sperm. Aristotle though correctly described the function of the umbilical cord, also amusingly believed that sperm testicles functioned as weights to keep the seminal passages open during sexual intercourse. Not only this, Qur’an, as a whole, has a whole lot of ambiguity and meaningless statements. For example, occasionally it tells that we are created from earth (11:61), sometimes it claims from dry clay (15:26,28,33, 17:61, 32:7), sometimes “from nothing” (19:67), sometimes “NOT from nothing” (52:35), sometimes from wet earth (23:12), or from mire (38:71), sometimes from water (25:54, 21:30, 24:45), sometimes from dust ( 3:59, 30:20, 35:11) or even sometimes from dead (30:19, 39:6) etc.. So which one is true? Those contradictory ambiguous statements actually do not reveal any scientific facts regarding either how we created or what exactly we are made of. If we go forward we will see – according to Qur’an and Hadeeth, Allah’s Angels ‘take charge’ while sperm enters a woman’s womb (see Sahih Bukhari 1.6.315, 4.54.430, Sahih Bukhari, 8.73.17, 18, Sahih Muslim, 33.6392 etc.), Human limbs can ‘carry Islamic Sins’ (Sunaan Nasai, 1.149), or Human organs can even talk like a human being (41:20, 41:21, 36:65, 24:24 etc). These are becoming simply meaningless and entirely laughable if we consider the knowledge of today’s context.
But aside from the laughable nature of the article’s “scientific” claims, the real problem is that it was published at all. Is someone paying The International Journal of Cardiology? Someone from, say, Riyadh or Jeddah?