Origin & Expansion of the Universe

What the words say

رَتْقًا ratq means something closed up, stitched or fused together with no opening. فَتَقْنَا fataqnā means “We unstitched, split open”. The verse says the heavens and the earth were once “closed up (as one piece)”, and that God “opened (i.e. parted)” them.

Classical commentators recorded more than one reading. Ibn Kathīr gives as the primary meaning that “in the beginning they were all one piece, attached to one another… then He separated them”. Another early reading, also reported from the Companions, is that the sky was “closed” (no rain fell) and the earth was “closed” (nothing grew), and God opened the one with rain and the other with plants. The verse continues with water and life, which fits that second reading well.

What science says

Modern cosmology holds that everything in the observable universe, all its matter and energy, was once packed into an extremely hot, dense state about 13.8 billion years ago, and has been expanding and cooling ever since. This is the Big Bang model, first proposed by the Belgian priest-physicist Georges Lemaître (1927, and his “primeval atom” of 1931). It was confirmed by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965, for which they received the 1978 Nobel Prize.

One subtlety: the Big Bang was not an explosion of matter into empty space. It describes space itself expanding from a hot, dense beginning. Physics cannot yet describe the very first instant.

How close is the match?

The first reading, a single fused mass that was split apart, matches the broad picture of a unified beginning remarkably well, and it was the primary meaning for scholars like Ibn Kathīr long before modern cosmology. But the verse is short and general, and it is not a technical description of the Big Bang. We grade it a strong possible reading.

What the words say

دُخَانٌ dukhān is the ordinary Arabic word for smoke, a mixture of hot gas and fine suspended particles. Several classical commentators linked it to a vapour rising from water.

What science says

For its first 380,000 years the universe was a glowing plasma. After it cooled enough for atoms to form, it was filled with dark, neutral gas, mostly hydrogen and helium. The first stars and galaxies condensed from that gas a few hundred million years later. Stars are still born today inside clouds of gas and dust. The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula are a famous example. Interstellar dust grains are typically around a tenth of a micrometre across, similar in size to the particles in smoke.

How close is the match?

“Smoke” is an apt everyday word for a hot, dark mixture of gas and fine particles, and it is a striking choice. The verse also belongs to a passage (41:9–12) whose sequence of creation scholars have discussed at length, and it is not a physical model. We grade it a possible reading.

What the words say

لَمُوسِعُونَ la-mūsiʿūn is an active participle from the root w-s-ʿ, “to be wide, vast”. The form awsaʿa means “to make wide, extend”. An active participle in Arabic can describe an ongoing activity, “We are the ones making it vast”, as well as a permanent attribute. The phrase bi-aydin was explained by Ibn ʿAbbās as “with strength”.

Classical commentators, who had no idea of an expanding cosmos, explained the phrase as “We made it vast” (Ibn Kathīr) or as “We are possessors of vast power and means”. The translation shown here, “it is We Who give vastness”, keeps the same openness. Both meanings are linguistically sound.

What science says

• 1917: Einstein, like almost everyone else, assumed the universe was static. He added a “cosmological constant” to his equations to keep it that way.
• 1922: Alexander Friedmann showed that Einstein’s equations naturally allow an expanding universe.
• 1927: Georges Lemaître derived the expansion and estimated its rate from galaxy data.
• 1929: Edwin Hubble published the relation between galaxies’ distances and their recession speeds. Since 2018 the International Astronomical Union recommends calling it the Hubble–Lemaître law.
• 1998: Two teams discovered that the expansion is accelerating (Nobel Prize 2011: Perlmutter, Schmidt, Riess).

How close is the match?

The Arabic comfortably bears the meaning “We are expanding it”, and the verse was revealed some thirteen centuries before scientists accepted that the universe expands. It was not read that way classically, though, and the word can also mean vastness or power. We grade it a possible reading, and among the most compelling ones.

What the words say

أَيَّام ayyām (singular yawm) means days, but in Arabic yawm is also used for an era or a decisive period, as in “the days of the Arabs”, meaning their famous battles. The Qur’an itself speaks of a Day “like a thousand years of your calculation” (22:47) and of a Day whose duration is “fifty thousand years” (70:4).

What science says

The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, the Sun and Earth about 4.6 and 4.54 billion years. Science describes creation as a sequence of long epochs, not a single week.

How close is the match?

Reading the six “days” as six stages or periods is a long-standing interpretation, not a modern invention, and it removes any conflict with cosmic time-scales. The Qur’an does not say how long each period was, and attempts to map the six onto specific scientific epochs are speculative. We grade this a possible reading.

What the words say

ʿĀlamīn is the plural of ʿālam, “world”. Most commentators take it to mean all the kinds of created beings: humans, jinn, angels, animals. Al-Rāzī went further and argued that nothing in revelation or reason rules out other worlds beyond ours, and that God’s power certainly extends to them.

What science says

The observable universe is about 93 billion light-years across and contains hundreds of billions of galaxies, perhaps more. Estimates range up to about two trillion. Each galaxy holds billions of stars, and most stars have planets. Whether anything exists beyond our observable universe, such as a “multiverse”, is an open and speculative question. Some cosmological theories predict it, but there is no observational evidence either way.

How close is the match?

The verse does not describe astrophysics. It does show that classical Muslim theology was comfortable with a creation far vaster than people could see, some seven centuries before astronomers showed, in the 1920s, that our galaxy is one among countless others. We grade al-Rāzī’s reading a possible reading, and the multiverse itself remains unproven.

What the texts say

The seven heavens are described as layered one above another (ṭibāqan), with the lower heaven “adorned… with lamps (i.e. stars)” (67:5). The hadith of the Night Journey (al-Miʿrāj) describes the Prophet ﷺ ascending through them. Each heaven has a gate, and in them he meets earlier prophets. These are realities of the unseen.

Why we don’t map them onto science

The atmosphere is usually divided into five main layers (troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere), and other schemes give other numbers. Matching seven heavens to any such list requires choosing a scheme to fit, and it clashes with the Qur’an’s own statement that the stars adorn the lower heaven. Stars lie far beyond any atmospheric layer. The honest position is that the seven heavens belong to the unseen, and science has nothing to say about them either way.

What the texts say

The heavens will be rolled up “as the angel Sijill rolls up the books of deeds”. This translation follows a view reported from some early authorities, such as al-Suddī, that al-sijill names an angel. Ibn Kathīr and others prefer the meaning “a written record”. Creation will be restored as it was first made. Elsewhere the Qur’an says “the sunlight is rolled up” and “the stars shall fall off”. These describe the Hour, which the Qur’an presents as a decree of God, not the slow result of natural processes.

What science says

• The Sun has converted roughly half of the hydrogen in its core into helium. In about 5 billion years it will swell into a red giant and then shrink to a white dwarf.
• For the universe as a whole, the “Big Crunch”, where expansion reverses and everything collapses, was once a popular scenario. Since 1998 the evidence has favoured continued, accelerating expansion.
• Recent surveys (for example DESI, 2024–25) hint that dark energy may be changing over time. The ultimate fate of the universe is still an open question.

How close is the match?

People sometimes link 21:104 to the Big Crunch. That parallel depends on a scenario current data do not favour, and it treats a description of the Hour as a prediction of physics. We classify it as beyond empirical science. The verse’s own claim, that the One who began creation can repeat it, is a statement about God’s power.