Dr. Keith Moore

Keith Leon Moore (born 5 October 1925 in Brantford, Ontario) is a professor emeritus in the division of anatomy, in the Faculty of Surgery, at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Moore is associate dean for Basic Medical Sciences in the university's Faculty of Medicine, and was Chair of Anatomy from 1976 to 1984. He is a founding member of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA),^[1][2][3] and was President of the AACA between 1989 and 1991.^[4]

Dr. Moore is notable as the only embryologist directly quoted by Islamic sources in an attempt to prove embryology as described in the Qur'an is scientifically correct. In the 1980s he accepted an invitation by the Embryology Committee of King Abdulaziz University to produce a special 3^rd edition of his his most successful book "The Developing Human" specifically for use by Muslim students in Islamic Universities. He was financially patronized by the Saudi royal family for the use of his name, and for no real additional work. The textbook he delivered to the Saudi Universities that commissioned the work is titled, "The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology with Islamic Additions." (ISBN 0-7216-6472-5). The base textbook was work that Moore had completed years before. He did nothing new for this new edition. The “Islamic additions” are actually the work of an Abdul-Majeed A. Azzindani, and not Dr. Moore’s at all.

This version is not an academic book and subsequent editions omit and contradict the "Islamic additions", basically admitting that the embryology in the Qur'an is a repetition of Greek and Indian medicine^[5] For example, in 1986 he wrote that "The drop or nutfa [in Surah 23:13] has been interpreted as the sperm or spermatozoon, but a more meaningful interpretation would be the zygote which divides to form a blastocyst which is implanted in the uterus ("a place of rest"),"^[6] but in the eighth edition of The Developing Human (published 2007), he writes that "Growth of science was slow during the medieval period... human beings [according to the Qur'an] are produced from a mixture of secretions from the male and female. Several references are made to the creation of a human being from a nutfa (small drop). It also states that the resulting organism settles in the womb like a seed, 6 days after its beginning."^[7]

This shows that Moore's previous statements on embryology in the Qur'an were not based on science, but merely the result of patronage by A. Azzindani. Moore's CV also does not reflect any involvement with Islam, the Qur'an or Islamic embryology. It also omits mentioning the 3rd edition of The Developing Human. Nor does he mention his lecture in Saudi Arabia or any of his activities in Islamic countries.

Also, J. Needham, a well known authority on the history of embryology and a reference cited in Keith Moore's books as well dismissed embryology in the Qur'an as merely "a seventh-century echo of Aristotle and the Ayer-veda."^[8]