Medical and Scientific Inimitability — Accepted Examples and Prohibitions

Meaning:
Scientific inimitability: correspondence between Quranic allusions and recently discovered scientific facts — used as evidence that the Quran is from Allah.

Accepted examples (permitted by the majority of contemporary scholars):

• "Did those who disbelieve not see that the heavens and earth were one mass and We split them?" (21:30) — allusion to the Big Bang theory.
• "We made from water every living thing" (21:30) — water as the basis of life.
• Embryonic stages "a clot, then a chewed lump" (23:14) — correspondence with modern embryology.

Prohibitions in scientific inimitability:

1. Linking verses to unstable scientific theories — if the theory changes, the Quran appears challenged.
2. Interpreting a verse in a way no early scholar held without necessity.
3. Claiming the Quran is a science textbook detailing all disciplines — it is a book of guidance.
4. Asserting that a Quranic allusion means exactly the modern scientific concept — this is presumptuous.

Comprehensive criterion: "Scientific inimitability is resorted to only where the scientific fact is stable and certain, and the Quranic allusion is explicit or close to explicit." — Permanent Committee for Scientific Research.