Keep learning

As a learned and still learning individual about the human anatomy, diseases and cures, I feel blessed for having the opportunity to study medicine.

I understand now that the pursuit of knowledge need not be a means to an end. Parents send their children to school for pragmatic reasons; so that they can get good grades, earn the right certificate and get good jobs and pay for good things. Somewhere in the race to get straight A's, society had forgotten to teach children that knowledge by itself is power. Power to the universe and all its secrets.

I can't reiterate how much I feel about this issue but perhaps with some examples I came across recently from studying for exams; that the individual who persistently pursues knowledge will be rewarded with the existence of truth.

The more we push to find out more, the more we learn about the miracles that surround us. And that these truths were long known during an age when such intimate knowledge of the human body could not possibly be known. And the discovery of such truth is a gift.

For my dearest non-med friends, Moore and Persaud are a famous pair of embryologists (people who study the origins and development of the human body) who wrote amongst other famous books, the The Developing Human, a medical textbook much used and revered by medical students around the world.

"For the past three years, I have worked with the Embryology Committee of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, helping them to interpret the many statements in the Qur'an and Sunnah referring to human reproduction and prenatal development. At first I was astonished by the accuracy of the statements that were recorded in the 7th century AD, before the science of embryology was established. Although I was aware of the glorious history of Muslim scientists in the 10th century AD, and some of their contributions to Medicine, I knew nothing about the religious facts and beliefs contained in the Qur'an and Sunnah."[2]At a conference in Cairo he presented a research paper and stated:"It has been a great pleasure for me to help clarify statements in the Qur'an about human development. It is clear to me that these statements must have come to Muhammad from God, or Allah, because most of this knowledge was not discovered until many centuries later. This proves to me that Muhammad must have been a messenger of God, or Allah." [1]

"...Because the staging of human embryos is complex, owing to the continuous process of change during development, it is proposed that a new system of classification could be developed using the terms mentioned in the Qur'an and Sunnah. The proposed system is simple, comprehensive, and conforms with present embryological knowledge."The intensive studies of the Qur'an and Hadith in the last four years have revealed a system of classifying human embryos that is amazing since it was recorded in the seventh century A.D... the descriptions in the Qur'an cannot be based on scientific knowledge in the seventh century..."[1]

~Professor Keith Moore~(Professor Emeritus, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, University of Toronto. Distinguished embryologist and the author of several medical textbooks, including Clinically Oriented Anatomy (3rd Edition) and The Developing Human (5th Edition, with T.V.N. Persaud)

"It seems to me that Muhammad was a very ordinary man, he couldn't read, didn't know how to write, in fact he was an illiterate...We're talking about 1400 years ago, you have some illiterate person making profound statements that are amazingly accurate, of a scientific nature...I personally can't see how this could be mere chance, there are too many accuracies and like Dr. Moore, I have no difficulty in my mind reconciling that this is a divine inspiration or revelation which lead him to these statements."

~Professor Persaud~ Author and editor of over 20 books, and has published over 181 scientific papers. Co-author of The Developing Human (5th Edition, with Keith L. Moore). He received the J.C.B. Grant Award in 1991. Professor Persaud presented several research papers.

[1] al-Zindani, Abdul-Majeed A, This is the Truth (video tape). Scientific Signs of the Qur'an and Sunnah containing interviews with various scientists. Available in Arabic, English, French, Urdu and Turkish. A full English transcript of this video with illustrations is also available: Al-Rehaili, Abdullah M., This is the Truth, Muslim World League, Makkah al-Mukarrammah, 1995.
[2] Moore, Keith L. and al-Zindani, Abdul-Majeed A., The Developing Human with Islamic Additions, Third Edition, W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1982, with Dar Al-Qiblah for Islamic Literature, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 1983, page viiic. Limited Edition.

Click if you're interested (I'm just only discovering these facts myself): Embryology and the Quran , Medicine and the Quran, Scientists on the Quran