Mountain
Building
---Allah’s Style?
Abul
Kasem
Of late, an unnamed Islamist posted an article (www.vinnomot.com)
on the Mountain building---Qur’anic style, of course. He even cited the
works of an American Professor Emeritus and a former President of the
National Academy of Sciences to demonstrate that the Qur’an is correct
in asserting that mountains are implanted with pegs buried deep under
earth to stabilize the mother earth---so that it does not fly away---so to
say. I read the essay with hilarity and was amazed at the chutzpah of the
Islamists to play with their inane argument, hoping that the gullible
readers will not discover their tricks. Having taught Basic Geology for a
number of years I can demolish all of their contention by elucidating the
mighty theories of Plate Tectonics and Continental Drift, the two primary
forces that shape our planet: everything in it, including all the
mountains and the oceans. Unfortunately this scholarly discussion will be
too heavy for the general readers---they will soon lose interest when the
technicality and the science involved are presented. Here I shall tell,
very briefly, how nature forms mountains and shapes and reshapes our
landscape for eternity. In fact, even
a High school kid will tell you that the formidable force that creates our
landscape are a series of convection cells on the lithosphere that
continually move up and down, taking along with them magma and mantle from
the outer core of the earth. This is a cycle and what we see today on
lithosphere is actually the result of activities of these convection
cells. Observe how water boils in a container---by the continuous up and
down movement of tiny water particles that circulate the heat everywhere
in the container---and you will understand how all the Tectonic activities
on earth’s surface take place. In the case of boiling water the process
is just a few minutes---in case of earth, it is millions of years: this is
the only difference.
Observing this phenomenon, geologists have formulated
the theory of Plate Tectonics, followed by the concept of Continental
Drift. Plate Tectonic activity can be viewed as the result of the
convection cells that causes land transformation, and Continental Drift is
the slow process of moving of land masses and the creation of mountains,
oceans, seas, lakes etc. Booth of these processes works together to shape
and –reshape our landscape. Except for occasional violent volcanic
activities, human life-span, unfortunately, is too short to observe or
experience any such formation: it takes millions of years for any such
event to materialize---and it is an extremely slow process—beyond our
perception. Weathering and denudation are other associated causes by which
today's mountains might disappear in a few million years
.
We teach Alfred Wegener's theory of Continental drift
to our students. This theory, along with the theory of Plate Tectonics,
forms the foundation of modern geology. If, what this Islamists wrote,
citing one Professor's opinion is to be taken as true then the entire
geology syllabus and all the current geology books become completely
redundant; instead, we have to teach the Qur'an and Hadith as the basis of
geology, come to think of it!
It is possible for a mountain to be formed from the
eruption/explosion of volcanoes in land or even under ocean. Some
geologists speculate that regular, huge volcanic eruptions do take place
under the
Atlantic
and the Pacific oceans, the results of which may, one day be, new land
masses and mountains and the further drifting apart of the African and the
South American continents. If someone calls the underside of these
mountains as pegs then that is fine. It is similar to the base of
anything---even a tree has a base, same goes for any terrestrial
object---even the oceans have their bases!
On the other hand, a mountain can also be erased by
the relentless action of weathering, their base might remain intact. When
we drill out rock cores from underneath and study them closely this truth
emerges absolutely. As an example, the entire
Sydney
basin was a mountain range, now has been rendered into a flat plain. How
come Allah forgot to mention how, He too, removes the mighty
mountains---slowly and steadily? The answer, of course is Allah had no
knowledge of what Alfred Wegener, the German geophysicist discovered and
Allah was completely dumb on the issue of omnipresent weathering actions
that are in work forever to change the surface of the earth. Therefore,
how is it possible to maintain stability if today’s mountain is removed?
I am curious why this Professor does not write a new
text book based on the Qur’anic theory of mountain formation.
As stated previously, the principal cause/s that
shapes our earth’s surface are two important geological theories: Plate
Tectonics and Continental Drift. These concepts are the foundation of
modern geology. Mountains are never viewed as the stabilizing
objects/forces. The highest mountain, like the Himalayan range was formed
when the Indian plate collided with the Asian plate around 50 million
years ago. It is believed that
India
was connected with
Antarctica
and Australiasia about 300 million years ago. Then the plate separated and
the Indian continent started drifting northwards. When it collided with
the Asian plate the sea level rose and the mountain range formed from the
bottom of the sea. The evidence is that, high at the top of Himalayan the
geologists have discovered fossils of sea creatures, thus, proving
conclusively that the Himalayan rose from the bottom of the sea. The other
truth is that the Himalyaya is the youngest mountain range in the world.
It is not finished yet--the height of Himalayan mountain- peaks are still
rising. This means that the seal level is rising. So, how is it possible
to provide stability under this situation? Can we not, therefore, say that
the idea that the mountains provide stability to the land mass does not
arise at al? Furthermore, based on the Continental Drift pattern, the
geophysicists have even constructed how the earth landscape will look like
fifty million years in future. It is anything from what we see today,
believe it or not! The Australian continent will move closer to Japan, the
Indian sub-continent will mover further eastwards and the Africa and South
America will drift apart further---increasing the expanse of the Atlantic
and the Pacific Oceans! Mind you, when the land masses move they move
along with all their mountain ranges, oceans, lakes---everything on them.
So what happens to the stability of the earth? May I ask this simple
question to the unnamed Islamist?
Without any authentic reference the anonymous
Islamist wrote,: “Likewise, the modern Plate Tectonics holds that
mountain work as stabilizers for the earth.” I would request him to
provide evidence of such a claim by Plate Tectonics theorists.
There are excellent articles on Plate Tectonic and
Continental Drift in the Internet. Just type those two key words in Google-search
and you will find hundreds of articles with excellent sketches and
photographs. When you peruse one of these articles you will, for sure,
discover how false the Islamists’ claims are. |