Refuting Dawahganda: Harun Yahya

Dawahganda Argument

Premises

1) The Qur'an describes Earth using the word daha

2) The word daha means "to be Ostrich-egg shaped"

2.1) Daha derives from the root word duhya (meaning Ostrich Egg)

3) Ostrich-egg is a spheroid (just like the Earth).

Conclusion

Therefore, Qur'an describes the earth as a spheroid (before anyone knew).

Source for Argument

1. Harun Yahya – The Earth's Geoid shape

http://www.miraclesofthequran.com/scientific_17.html

2. Zakir Naik - Ostrich-egged-Earth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SiI-QWtsEI

Verses

وَالْأَرْضَ بَعْدَ ذَٰلِكَ دَحَاهَا

(Pickthall Translation)

79:30 - And after that He spread the earth;

(Transliteration)

79:30 - Wal-arda baAAda dhalika dahaha

For other translations, visit http://quranx.com/79.30

For word-by-word analysis, visit http://quranx.com/Analysis/79.30

Objections

1. The argument is based on a misconception
2. Daha is not rooted in “duhya” & Daha does not mean "to be ostrich-egg shaped"
3. Does the Earth look like an ostrich egg?

1. The argument is based on a misconception

The argument is based on the presupposition that the spherical shape of the earth was not known in ancient times. This however is a result of a popular misconception known as the ‘Myth of the Flat Earth”, whereby it is thought that, until the 16th century, everyone believed the Earth was flat. However, it is has been widely recognized by historians that knowledge of a spherical earth has existed since the Ancient Greeks and has been passed down through late antiquity as well as the middle ages.[1] [2] As the historian Jeffrey Russel notes,

“It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat. A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a few dissenters--Leukippos and Demokritos for example--by the time of Eratosthenes (3 c. BC), followed by Crates(2 c. BC), Strabo (3 c. BC), and Ptolemy (first c. AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all educated Greeks and Romans.
Nor did this situation change with the advent of Christianity. A fewóat least two and at most five--early Christian fathers denied the spherically of earth by mistakenly taking passages such as Ps. 104:2-3 as geographical rather than metaphorical statements. On the other side tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, and scientists took the spherical view throughout the early, medieval, and modern church. The point is that no educated person believed otherwise.”[3]

Therefore, even if the Qur’an states that the earth is a sphere or a spheroid, the information does not qualify as foreknowledge and thus apologists are wrong to present this verse as miraculous.

2. Daha is not rooted in “duhya” & Daha does not mean "to be ostrich-egg shaped"

The claim that daha means “to be ostrich egg-shaped” is unfounded. It should be notable that the apologists promoting this claim are never able cite any authoritative text of the Arabic language where daha is directly and specifically defined as “to be ostrich egg-shaped”. The primary reason for such an omission on the part of the apologists is due to the fact that the authoritative texts of the Arabic language contradict their argument. Moreover, such texts also present certain clues as to the possible origins of this claim.

For example, Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, reports that the term "daha" is rooted in the triconsonantal root, dal-ha-waw.[4]

The entry for the term "daha" in Lane's lexicon states that the word is used to signify the spreading, expanding, extending or widening of a surface.

Lane's lexicon also provides an example of the usage of the word with the following statement, "also, said of an ostrich, he expanded, and made wide, with his foot, or leg, the place where he was about to deposit his eggs". Here the, the term daha is meant to signify the action performed by the ostrich i.e. the ostrich spreads out the ground in order to make a nest. There is no mention here (or any other reputable dictionary) that daha means "to be egg-shaped".

In a consistent manner, Lane’s lexicon defines udhiya, a cognate of daha, as the place where the ostrich lays its eggs.

Udhiya can thus be understood as the surface upon which spreading or flattening (daha) has taken place. Thus, it should abundantly clear that daha does not mean “shaped like an egg”.

It is possible, that the apologist who came up with this mistranslation, either deliberately contorted the example involving the ostrich and the egg, or unintelligently interpreted the example.

3. Does the Earth look like an ostrich egg?

The remaining contention of whether the Earth has the same shape of an ostrich egg is irrelevant since it has been show that the term daha does not mean “ostrich-egg shaped”.

It should also be noted that dawahgandists have made several forced and fabricated attempts to make the ludicrous claim that the shape of the Earth is exactly like that of an ostrich egg.[5]

Nonetheless, this exercise is left for the reader, i.e. to compare the shapes of the Earth[6] and an ostrich egg.[7]

Conclusion

Knowledge of a spherical earth precedes the Qur’an. The word in question, daha, does not mean “ostrich-egg-shaped” as advocated by apologists. The lexicons of classical Arabic reveal that the term means spreading out or flattening. Lexicons give examples of an ostrich “spreading out” the ground for a nest. It can be suspected that such an example is the root of the mistranslation of daha as “ostrich-egg-shaped”. Thus this miracle claim is false and debunked.

[1]. Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1991), Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and modern historians, New York: Praeger. Page 3

[2]. For more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

[3]. Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1997), "The Myth of the Flat Earth", Studies in the History of Science (American Scientific Affiliation) . http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/history/1997Russell.html

[4]. Lane, Edward William; "An Arabic-English Lexicon"; Librairie Du Liban, 1968. Vol. 3, page 857. http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume3/00000023.pdf

[5]. DetInspectorMonkFish's Ramadan and the Eggsact shape of the Earth. 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXeh8AG7FpU

[6]. Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen. Earth from Space. NASA GSFC 2000. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=885

[7]. Raul654. An ostrich egg. Taken at Disney's Animal Kingdom. 2005. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ostrich_egg.jpg

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Additional Links

Video Presentations

1. Nabeel al-Khalidy's (aka LearnQuranicArabic) Does the Quran describe the earth as being in the shape of an ostrich egg?