Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Future events mentioned in past tense in the Quran

Q: Yesterday evening, while studying arabic, (Holy Quran 36:51), I asked my teacher why is the 'The trumpet shall be sounded' mentioned in past tense and we read it as future tense?

A: My teacher explained that it is a special style of speech in Arabic (known as 'balagat') that when there is no doubt about a future event's happening, to emphasise, the event is discussed as it has already happened.
My mind kept wandering to Harun Yahya's book 'Eternity has already begun' and the comparison of our life to that of a pre-recorded videotape where you know exactly what happens at which part of the tape.
At night, I casually flicked through 'Parallel Worlds' by Michio Kaku, and subhan'Allah, open before me was page 154, where Pierre Simon de Laplace's work is mentioned, and I quote "He wrote that if a being could know the position and velocity of all the particles in the universe, 'for such an intellect, nothing could be uncertain; and the future just like the past would be present before his eyes.' " And then, on Pg 155, I quote from Einstein's position: ".... Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control.... for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious time, intoned in the distance by an invisible player."

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