ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Zindānī's iʿjāz ʿilmī Approach: Embryonic Development in Q. 23:12–14 as a Scientific Miracle

Abstract

This article focuses on contemporary scientific exegesis of the Qur'an, analysing ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Zindānī's unique model of embryonic development derived from Q. 23:12–14. Since the majority of Muslim legal scholars consider the three main stages of embryonic development mentioned in Q. 23:12–14 to take place within 120 days, this view has been considered as the majority Muslim view in academic research. However, I claim that since the 1980s al-Zindānī has successfully disseminated the perception that the embryonic stages mentioned in the Qur'anic text take place over 40 days. An examination of al-Zindānī's work and publications by the Commission on the Scientific Miracles in the Qur'an and Sunna (CSMQS) demonstrates that al-Zindānī uses an iʿjāz ʿilmī approach (i.e. seeking to establish harmony between the Qur'an and modern natural science) to advocate a new interpretation of the Qur'anic stages of embryonic development in order to validate the connection between modern science and the Qur'an. I argue that his model rests on three hermeneutical strategies: first, the reformulation of Ibn al-Qayyim's (d. 751/1350) model of embryonic development; second, the modification of the last Qur'anic stage from khalq to nashʾa; and third, his preference for the variant of the so-called Ibn Masʿūd ḥadīth canonised in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. Accordingly, he does not follow the fiqh tradition and excludes the stage of the embryo's ensoulment from his model. It is this exclusion of the ensoulment and the reformulation of the developmental stages that enables al-Zindānī to align his model with both the Qur'anic text and modern scientific findings.