The Darkness under Sea
In a holy ayah of the Koran God, be He exalted, says, “Or [the state of a disbeliever] is like the darkness in a vast deep sea, overwhelmed with waves topped by waves, topped by dark clouds, (layers of) darkness upon darkness: if a man stretches out his hand, he can hardly see it! And he for whom Allah has not appointed light, for him there is no light.” (Sura An-Nur, ayah 40)
God, be He blessed and exalted, talks in this Koranic text about those who disbelieved in God’s ayat and denied His meeting and disclaimed the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). Therefore, those people and their works that they have done in their lives are like a man that runs behind a mirage, panting and when he reaches it, he finds nothing but his bad work. And this unbeliever is like a man living in the darkness of a deep sea and can hardly see anything because of the accumulated darkness.
Al-Imam Al-Qurtuby (may God have mercy on him) said, “(In a vast deep sea) is the sea whose bottom we cannot see and vast means the sea when the waves clash. It was recently discovered that there are interior waves in the deep seas.
Scientific fact: When scientists went down to the depths of the oceans, they found that deep seas have great darkness. At the depth of one kilometre one could hardly see anything and the darkness increases if the surface sea waves are high as they contribute to blocking the sunlight.
They have also found that at the depths of the deep seas, there are internal waves that no one can see unless he goes down to depths of more than one thousand metres and these waves could be stronger than the surface waves.
In this Koranic text there are two scientific signs: 1) Talking about the darkness in the deep seas, which scientists have recently discovered and was not known at the time of the descending of the Koran: 2) Reference to the internal deep waves which was also recently discovered by scientists and was mentioned in the ayah just as Almighty God says, “Overwhelmed with waves topped by waves.”
