Faith versus Logic 6
Posted by: Ashfaq Ansari
Did the Prophet really go on a Skywalk?
Many hadiths are also associated with this concept of Heaven and Hell, some of which are related to the Meraj of Rasool, which states that on his journey of Meraj, Hazur Saheb had not only seen Heaven but had also visited the Hell.
If you look at this anecdote in the Quran, then the Quran in its verse tells just this — it is a sacred caste that has taken along its fellow from Masjid-e-Haram to Masjid-e-Aqsa, around which we have set holy things… (17:01). Now you will find its evidence in hadiths, which tell that on one night (in a dream-like condition), Jibreel came to his house and took the Prophet from the Kaaba (Mecca) to the Masjid-e-Aqsa (Jerusalem) on his divinely animal ‘Burrak’ and then visited the heavens.
After going through questioning they entered the First Sky (as it happens while entering at a bungalow or factory gate), where they met Hazrat Adam Alassalam and exchanged salutes. Then they reached the Second Sky wherewith the same process they met Hazrat Yahya and Jesus — Hazrat Yusuf on the Third, Hazrat Idris on the Fourth, Hazrat Aaron on the Fifth, Hazrat Musa on the Sixth and on the Seventh Sky they met Hazrat Abraham.
On this Seventh Sky, they also saw Bait-ul-Mamur — this is that heavenly holy place which is in the straight direction of Kaaba (Then it was not known that due to rotation the earth rotates in all four directions and it does not have a straight line — now that you know it, you can’t do anything about it)… Seventy thousand angels encircle the Bait-ul-Mamur and once they do, then they don’t get the next opportunity till Judgment Day.
Here both Hazrat reached at Sidrat-ul-Muntaha — the last extent of the seventh sky. Here was a tree with elephant-like leaves and pitcher-like fruits with four canals bursting from its roots. Two secret canals flow from there in the paradise and are two others Nile and Euphrates which flow on the ground… (When the Ganges can descend from heaven, why not Nile and Euphrates), then Jibril could not go further ahead from here so the Prophet went alone.
There, not only did they see the gardens of Heaven and Nehr-e-Kausar, but they also visited Hell and saw some people getting punished. Here he received a reward of fifty Namaz’es for the community, which after the process of being intervened, persuaded and sent back by Hazrat Musa while returning, was later on edited to five Namaz’es. This description is derived from Ibne Qasir, Al Tabri, Quratbi, Sahi Muslim, Sahi Bukhari and Sunan hadiths.
Skies are envisioned as a multi-story building
This whole hypothesis is such as Sky is a seven-story building where you can reach from one section to another with the help of stairs — it is your discretion to believe it or not, but according to today’s information, we can do some investigation by getting out of this big earth.
The closest body to the Earth is the Moon, but even between it, there is such a distance that thirty piles of the earth will fit in it and if we travel at a speed of hundred kilometres per hour towards the moon, it will still take one hundred and sixty days to reach there.
Then we have a nearby planet Mars which is at a distance of 225 to 400 million km (in different conditions of rotation). Where the light also takes twenty minutes to reach, nothing can move faster than the light in space and the speed of light 3 lakh km per second. The far-flung Voyager Probe in the space, which has been running at a speed of 17 km per second, it will take hundreds of years to completely exit our solar system.
Now if we exit this solar system, we will reach the Interstellar Neighborhood where there are other solar systems. In our solar system, you can measure distance in an astronomical unit (the distance of the Sun from the Earth), but on exit, Light years has to be used as a unit to measure the distance (9.461 trillion kilometres) that is, the distance the sunlight travels in a year.
Our nearest star after the sun is Proxima Centauri, which is 4.24 light-years away from us — if you try to reach it at the speed of the Voyager vehicle, it will take thousands of years. Now, this solar system is a part of the which galaxy, the galaxy itself is spread over one lakh light-years, in which there are twenty thousand crore stars and planets and the interesting thing is that we can see only one percent of them at night.
Now if we go even a little further, we will get the Local Group of Galaxies — which has 54 galaxies and it spreads (from one end to the other) to One Crore light-years.
And when you zoom out this circle, you will find Virgo supercluster — whose spread is 11 Crore light-years, so think how big will this circle be — but this big circle is also equal to just one grain of rye in the Laniakea supercluster, in which there are one Lakhs galaxies and its spread is 52 Crore light-years.
Now, this is also not everything — rather it is just a small part of the Titanic Laniakea supercluster, and the Laniakea supercluster is just a small part of the Observable Universe, which we have been able to see till date. In which there are two lakh crores Galaxies in total, the distance from our Earth to one end of this is 4,650 Crore light-years, that its total dispersion is 9,300 million light-years.
Our position is almost nothing according to the universe
The age of our universe is believed to be 137 billion years because the light before that could not be detected yet. According to the Cosmic Inflation Theory, there can also be Multiverse across it, with no accurate estimate of the exact dispersion and it is possible that the entire observable universe keeps just a status like of a football on Earth (in comparison to the entire super universe).
However, such a large local group with 54 galaxies is only 0.00000000001 percent of the Observable Universe, and it has so many planets, which are more than the particles of sand on the entire earth. Think about where we exist in the Universe and what is our status.
Think to stand in front of one of the deserts and there are some micro bacterias sticking on one of the particles, would you write their fates and deeds? Make Heaven or Hell for them? Only a person with religious intelligence can think of this, not someone with logical intelligence. However, now put the whole scenario in front and think for yourself where is the first Sky, where is the second one and what is the distance between them — and where can the word of God be?
What is the practical knowledge of people called ‘Aalim’?
Well, you will find a lot of people around you who keep memorized data related to Hadiths, Puranas and they keep giving their expert views on everything, but do you really think they are knowledgeable people… one day in my circle, I had asked a simple question in the conversation going on a religious issue between these types of people. That whatever you are saying, how do you know that? What is your source of information?
A respected one mentioned the names of some Islamic books, now that the gathering was of Sunnis, then obviously the books were related to them.
I told them three forms of one incident — one was in their book, the other in the book of Shia Hazrat and the third version was the version of independent Muslim historians. The interesting thing is that all three were different from each other… and then I asked if there was a guarantee that one of these or your writing is correct.
Apparently, there was no answer. In such cases, no one happens to have any argument other than unwavering faith in his writing. The problem with most people is that they have read one-sided books (only related to their creed) and they don’t even know what the people on the opposite side have written on the same issue.
Yes, since childhood, it is filled in the raw minds by codifying that our writing is right and what all others have written is wrong. They grow up with these values and from personal life to the virtual world of social media, they are seen fighting with sticks, that whatever is written in their books, whatever they have read-only that is the real and the last truth.
Such a tremendous belief, as if they had been an eyewitness to those things. Even for a moment, there is no doubt in them that there can be lies and adulteration in the things that reached them.
Originally published on WordSmith October 9, 2019.
