Embryology in Islamic Scripture: Difference between revisions

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According to multiple ahadith, it is only after the mudghah phase (days 81-120) that an angel of the Lord determines the gender of the baby. But in fact, modern genetics shows that the gender of the baby is determined at the moment of conception, nearly four months before the Islamic date of gender differentiation.  

In articles published widely across Islamic websites, [[Dr. Keith Moore|Keith L. Moore]] goes on the record to provide a favorable assessment of the Qur’an and hadith in the light of modern knowledge about embryology. But a review of his “analysis” shows the incredibly liberal interpretation he has to use for both the Islamic scriptures and modern science in order to arrive at an interpretation that allows the known facts of embryology and the Islamic scriptures to be in harmony:  

1. He translates Arabic into terms that no Arabic speaker would consider justified, but that allows him to pretend the Arabic is closer to truth than it really is. For example, in spite of the fact that almost all translations of “alaqah” agree that its meaning in the Qur'an is “clot,” Moore writes instead that “The word "alaqah" refers to a leech or bloodsucker”, which may be true in some other circumstances but is almost certainly not the case here.   

2. He ignores the timing of phases dictated by the hadith, for to consider them renders even his mistranslation unintelligible. For example, after mistranslating “alaqah” to mean “a leech or bloodsucker,” he then compares it to the human embryo at 24 days gestation. But 24 days is still firmly within the “nutfah” phase, when the embryo should actually look like a “drop of seed.” He does the same with “mudghah,” comparing it with the embryo at 28 days, still in the “nutfah” phase and only four days later than he had assigned to “alaqah.”