Featuring "Quran's Scientific Wonders", the forum was held Tuesday night at the conference hall of Tehran's Holy Defense Garden-Museum. Hojat-ol-Islam Biazar Shirazi cited verse 89 of Surah Yunus "And We took the Children of Israel across the sea, and Pharaoh and his soldiers pursued them in tyranny and enmity until, when drowning overtook him, he said, 'I believe that there is no deity except that in whom the Children of Israel believe, and I am of the Muslims," and verse 92 of the same Surah "So today We will (safely) deliver you with your body that you may be a sign to the ones succeeding you; and surely many among mankind are indeed heedless of Our signs,” and explained the story of Maurice Bucaille, who was born in France and grew up a Christian but later converted to Islam because of these verses. The story goes back to 1981 when the mummy of Egypt’s pharaoh was transferred to a special wing at the French Monuments Center, and renowned archeologists, surgeons and anatomists started to conduct a study on this mummy in an attempt to delve into its mysteries. The senior surgeon and the scientist in charge of the study on this mummy of the Pharaoh was Professor Maurice Bucaille. While the processors were busy making restoration to the mummy, their head (Bucaille) was thinking otherwise. He was trying to discover how this Pharaoh died when, late at night, he concluded his final analyses. The remains of the salt stuck in his body was a shining evidence that he had drowned and that his body was retrieved from the sea swiftly after he drowned; it was also obvious that they rushed to mummify his body so that his body would remain intact!! But Maurice Bucaille puzzled over a question: How did this body — to the exclusion of other mummified bodies of other ancient Egyptians — remain that intact although it was recovered from the sea?” Maurice was busy conducting a final report while thinking as to whether the pharaoh’s body was recovered from the sea and mummified immediately after he drowned. But one of his company whispered in his ear, saying “There is no need to rush about this issue, since the Muslims say that this Pharaoh did drown.” At first, he vehemently rejected this and did not believe it, citing that such a discovery would be reached only through sophisticated, modern and accurate computers. Another one accompanying him surprised him more when he told him that the Muslims’ Quran in which they believe narrates the story that says he drowned and that his body remained intact even after he drowned. He got more surprised and kept on asking” Where did the Muslims’ Quran quote these data from while the mummy was not discovered until 1898, i.e. about 200 years only, given that the Quran has been recited by Muslims for over 1400 years, and given also that until a few decades ago the entire mankind including Muslims did not know that the ancient Egyptians had mummified their pharaohs? Maurice Bucaille stayed up all this night gazing at Pharaoh’s body, thinking deeply of what his fellow researcher told him about the Muslims’ Quran explicitly establishing that this body was recovered after drowning, while the Christians’ Gospel (Matthew and Luca) narrated only the story of Pharaoh when he was chasing Prophet Musa (peace be upon him) without mentioning the fate of his body at all. “Is it believable that Muhammad (peace be upon him) knew about this over 1,000 years ago while I have only just known it?” he thought. Maurice spent a sleepless night, and asked for a version of the Torah. But it only furthered Bucaille’s astonishment; since even Torah did not narrate that the body was recovered and remained intact due to the processing and restoration, which it did undergo. Maurice Bucaille spent 10 years conducting a study as to how far the recently scientific facts match that mentioned in the Holy Quran, trying to reassure himself that the Quran has never contradicted with any single scientific fact, so that he eventually came up with the conclusion that Allah Almighty said of the Quran, “Untruth does not come up to it before (Literally: between its two hands) it nor from behind it; a successive sending down from (One) Ever-Wise, Ever-Praiseworthy.” He came up with an earth shaking book on the Holy Quran which jolted the entire Western states, with the title of the book reading, “The Bible, The Quran and Science, The Holy Scriptures Examined In The Light Of Modern Knowledge.” The book sold out and even hundreds of thousands of it were translated from French to Arabic, English, Indonesian, Persian, Turkish and German, extending to include nearly all East and West bookstores. In the preface of his book, Maurice Bucaille said, “These scientific areas which Quran established to the exclusion of other Scriptures filled me with deep surprise early on, since it never struck my mind to see such a large amount of scientific issues in such a variable and accurate way that they are a mirror image of what has recently been discovered in a book which has existed for more than 13 centuries.!!
/149