Does the Quran say the Sun sets in a muddy spring?

Mar 10, 2019 | Articles | 3 comments

In the past few years there has been a resurgence of critical analysis of Islam and its beliefs, this has led to a large number of people joining the religion, and a few leaving it. One of the reasons people have left is because of arguments such as “The Quran says the sun sets in a muddy puddle”. Lets examine this.

86حَتَّىٰ إِذَا بَلَغَ مَغْرِبَ الشَّمْسِ وَجَدَهَا تَغْرُبُ فِي عَيْنٍ حَمِئَةٍ وَوَجَدَ عِندَهَا قَوْمًا ۗ قُلْنَا يَا ذَا الْقَرْنَيْنِ إِمَّا أَن تُعَذِّبَ وَإِمَّا أَن تَتَّخِذَ فِيهِمْ حُسْنًا
18|86|Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it setting in a murky spring, and found a people in its vicinity. We said, “O Zul-Qarnain, you may either inflict a penalty, or else treat them kindly.”

One of the more recent critics of Islam is a YouTuber called “The Masked Arab”, lets call him TMA for short.  He has produced a video of the issue of the Quranic verse, 18:86, which does a good job of compiling all of the arguments in one video. I plan to examine each claim he has made and see what is the truth.

For clarity, and to make the issue actually quite obvious, I will first quote the relevant part of the Quran in full:

18|83|And they ask you about Thul-Qarnain. Say, “I will tell you something about him.”
18|84|We established him on earth, and gave him all kinds of means.
18|85|He pursued a certain course.
18|86|Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it setting in a murky spring, and found a people in its vicinity. We said, “O Zul-Qarnain, you may either inflict a penalty, or else treat them kindly.”
18|87|He said, “As for him who does wrong, we will penalize him, then he will be returned to his Lord, and He will punish him with an unheard-of torment.
18|88|“But as for him who believes and acts righteously, he will have the finest reward, and We will speak to him of Our command with ease.”
18|89|Then he pursued a course.
18|90|Until, when he reached the rising of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had provided no shelter from it.
18|91|And so it was. We had full knowledge of what he had.
18|92|Then he pursued a course.

So essentially the verses are about a figure called “Thul Qarnain”, who has extensively resources and travels from to West (setting of the sun) to the East ( where the sun rises). As we can see form the above text the position of the sun is used to indicate a location on the Earth. The point being that Thul Qarnayn has gone from the far east to the far west. Now lets see what TMA says.

at 0:06 seconds he makes an error by saying the Quran makes a claim of where the sun sets every evening, and then points to the verse above. We know that is not the claim being made in the Quran. We know this to be false as the Quran above was pointing out that in a particular place it appeared to set over a muddy water. Obviously in different locations, it will appear to set in different places, over a valley, a mountain, the sea etc. TMA has assumed for some reason that this is the only and real place of the setting of the sun, something we do not find in the actual text. As if the globe of the sun actually goes down into the water itself.

at 3:43, he acknowledges that the historical figure Thul Qarnayn was a man whom had great power and travelled the world. Then at 3:49, he quotes just verse 18:86 to imply that he has reached the actual sun, rather than just a place in the west where the sun was setting over a muddy pond. By just quoting a small fraction of the story, it gives his argument more weight, hence why I have quoted the whole story first, so the reader can see the reality of what the story is about. Just quoting one sentence and then trying to guess the context is never a great method.

At around 4:15 he then goes on to claim that if this verse was found in the Bible or Hindu books, it would be laughed at by Muslims. What TMA does not seem to appreciate is what Ayataollah Kho’ee accurately described in his book “Al-Bayan fi Tafsir al-Qur’an”, that the Quran needs to be read and understood in the apparent meaning. So mathematical verses should be read in a mathematical way, legal verses in a legal way, allegorical verses in a allegorical way etc. For example, if I said “the man was punched into next week”, you should not read it in the literal sense, and think that the man has time travelled. This type of error TMA makes constantly, and this will be noted throughout his video.

So at 4:22 TMA claims that if we do no accept the literal meaning of the words, then we are denying the verse. As I stated above, this is not logically sound. I have written a whole article on this topic here. Its basically common sense. He goes on to make the same mistake in 4:57. He says it has to be literally the sun went down into the muddy spring, and denying this, is denying the Quran. A desperate position if ever I saw one.

At 5:15 he makes the argument that if the sun really did set in a puddle, we would take this as a miracle and say “we told you so”. Except that the Quran had already used this terminology in other places, so the argument that it was literal was never ever made, here is an example :

18|17|You would have seen the sun, when it rose, veering away from their cave towards the right, and when it sets, moving away from them to the left, as they lay in the midst of the cave. That was one of God’s wonders. He whom God guides is truly guided; but he whom He misguides, for him you will find no directing friend.

So no Muslim has ever said, “our belief is that the sun sets in muddy puddle”. I have never come across anyone who has said that, or read any text to that effect.

At 5:30 we see a big admission. He doesn’t want to discuss the possibility that the verse is written from the perspective of Thul Qarnayn. This really is a death blow for honestly and unbiased analysis. He basically make the point that TMA is only willing to argue that this is Allah stating facts, not describing Thul Qarnayns experience. The reality is really hard for TMA to accept, and heres why, lets remind ourselves on the text, and I will highlight some key words :

18|83|And they ask you about Thul-Qarnain. Say, “I will tell you something about him.”
18|84|We established him on earth, and gave him all kinds of means.
18|85|He pursued a certain course.
18|86|Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it setting in a murky spring, and found a people in its vicinity. We said, “O Zul-Qarnain, you may either inflict a penalty, or else treat them kindly.”
18|87|He said, “As for him who does wrong, we will penalize him, then he will be returned to his Lord, and He will punish him with an unheard-of torment.
18|88|“But as for him who believes and acts righteously, he will have the finest reward, and We will speak to him of Our command with ease.”
18|89|Then he pursued a course.
18|90|Until, when he reached the rising of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had provided no shelter from it.
18|91|And so it was. We had full knowledge of what he had.
18|92|Then he pursued a course.
A simple reading of the text is all that is required to destroy TMA point, however, he has admitted, he does not want to even discuss this. I wonder why !
The reality is quite clear, and an honest reader can see that the verse is written from the perspective of Thul Qarnayn.
At 6:00 he then claims that the wording “he found it” has to mean “it is literally true”. For example, “if I found my friend was over the moon about this article” TMA would then argue that because the word “found” was used, it has to be literal and that my friend has now passed the moon and heading towards Mars!
Obviously this is not how language works, and even a child knows that context can not be found from a single word, but rather the sentence or paragraph. He again goes on to make the argument that a single word can only be used in a single way. This is clearly not how language works.
I hope he “finds” the humour in this sentence 🙂
At 9:11, TMA says that Thul Qarnayn reaches the point of the sun setting, as in the actual sun descending into the floor. This is not what is claimed.
At around 11 minutes he tries to analyse the story as a whole. This is where he really gets stuck. He has to admit the story is about a man travelling long distances around the earth, from barren hot places, to places where they dont speak the same language etc He tries to make the point that Muslims are arguing that the verse refers to time rather than place? No one has ever argued that as far as I know, and appears to be a giant straw man. He dodges the obvious argument that actually, when you look at the whole story, you can see that the the setting of the sun refers to the far west, and the rising in the east, he doesn’t even discuss that as an option.
At around 13 minutes TMA makes the point that “Ayn” means spring of water, and that there is no way you can see the sun set over a muddy section of water. Im not sure what he is trying to claim here, as I have witnessed the sunset over muddy fields with puddles most of my life !
At around 15 minutes he mentions a Sunni Scholar Al Tabari, and says “he is the most senior scholar”, this is factually incorrect. He then gives us a short quote from Tabari which just re states everything from the verses without actually saying anything. He just points out that the east and west are different and the sun sets in a different place each day and there are seasons etc.
At around 19 minutes TMA starts going through tafseers to see if we can see what early Muslim scholars say about the verse. To his surprise they just commented on the verse and didn’t extrapolate any meaning. TMA takes this to mean that they accept its literal meaning, rather than the apparent one. Why he believes this, I don’t know.
The next few minutes from 21 onward are simply TMA guessing about what verses may mean and what he thinks the origins of certain verses are. At 23:11, he seems to imply that because the scholars didn’t comment on the verse, they understand it differently, and that if we understand it in any other way than TMA, then we are criticising the earlier scholars knowledge of Arabic language. How he links these things, is beyond me, however, suffice to say the argument is a non starter. Even if scholars had tried to guess at the meaning, and were wrong, what would that mean? Simply that there guess was wrong, and we know that we should not try to guess the meaning of verses which are not clear. We have a clear verse describing this situation
3|7|It is He who revealed to you the Book. Some of its verses are definitive; they are the foundation of the Book, and others are unspecific. As for those in whose hearts is deviation, they follow the unspecific part, seeking descent, and seeking to derive an interpretation. But none knows its interpretation except God and those firmly rooted in knowledge say, “We believe in it; all is from our Lord.” But none recollects except those with understanding.
At 23:57, he again assumes that if no scholar comments otherwise, then they take the words to be literal. No one has ever thought this way.  For example, when we read the verse, 48:10 “the hand of Allah is over their hand”,  if no one writes anything, do we take the verse literally? As in does TMA think that God will literally have a hand, and it will come down and he will give the companions a big high five? This kind of “analysis” he is using would not stand up in any context or academic exercise. He tries desperately to use the lack of argument as evidence, however, the well known phrase :
Absence of evidence doesn’t mean evidence of absence
It is a shame TMA doesn’t refine his methods, as if he is genuine, we would all benefit.
Finally at 25:30 he tries to sum up all the arguments. He even quotes occums razor as evidence in his favour. However, its quite clearly against him. The much simpler, more likely scenario is that Thul Qarnayn simply reached an area far away, when the sun set it appeared to set in a muddy puddle, which was very different from how it appeared in other places, hinting they have travelled a long way.

Conclusion

The reality is that most things are a perception.  There is no colour, its just a perception that we see, so when we see the phrase dark mud, its just the way it looks to us. Just as time, its relative to us, the sun setting at a particular time is only from ones perspective, to a different person somewhere its rising. So just as in this verse, we can see its describing the situation from the perspective of Thul Qarnayn. The real death nail for TMA is the word “wajadha”, meaning, “he found”, eg from his perspective he found it this way. This really end the argument that TMA is making, and really if one just read the verse in the first instance his 26 minute video wouldn’t be necessary at all.
The reality is that the sun and the moon don’t set at all, but only appear to do so, as God says :
36|40|The sun is not to overtake the moon, nor is the night to outpace the day. Each floats in an orbit.

3 Comments

  2. Medina Minds
    Medina Minds on December 23, 2019 at 4:28 pm

    It does not talk about the details or activities of what happens on other planets. It does make reference the stars, planets, and the vast universe. We do have references to other planets and civilisations, a few quotes can be found ere :

    https://www.medinaminds.com/are-we-alone/

    Reply
  3. BRMCX
    BRMCX on December 13, 2022 at 3:46 pm

    if i had to guess, i’d say Christian and atheist never see a sunset at the beach or mountains before 😹😹😹
    what is so hard to understand? He reached to a very far away land and he can see the sun set into the water. no more land. he can’t go any further.

    Reply

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