Jihad by Word #3: The ‘daḥa’ deception; or, the Earth is not shaped like an ostrich egg in the Quran

To mark Ashura, a day of celebration or mourning depending on whether you are a Sunni or a Shia Muslim, here is the third Jihad by Word instalment. Jihad by Word is a semi-regular series from Jalal Tagreeb in which he relates how, through being exposed to the flaws in Islamic apologetics during debates with nonbelievers, he left Islam and became a freethinker. The introduction to and first instalment of the series can be found here and other instalments in the series can be found here.

After being defeated in several debates against secularists, I offered my secularist opponents a conditional surrender, admitting that, while I had been unable to defend some arguments, other aspects of the Quran and hadith were still defensible. My opponents rightly refused this offer. Now I have come to realise that it was untenable to hold on to selective interpretations while admitting that much of the apologetics I had believed in was flawed. To do so was to undermine the objective of the debates I freely chose to engage in: that is, to seek truth and challenge the veracity of religious claims through rigorous examination and rational discourse. A conditional surrender was antithetical to the comprehensive nature of this intellectual pursuit.

My opponents insisted on an unconditional surrender, an admission that all of my arguments in defence of Islam had been thoroughly debunked. Eventually, I relented, and I am glad I did, not only for reasons of intellectual integrity but also for the freedom from religion that such an admission granted me.

Below is an edited copy of a transcript from another of these debates. This debate concerned the ‘daḥa deception’, as many secularists call it: the view, popular in Muslim circles about ten years ago, that the word daḥa in verse 30 of surah 79 of the Quran, which contains an account of Allah’s creation of the world, refers to the Earth being shaped like an ostrich egg, thus indicating a spherical Earth and demonstrating the Quran’s scientific validity. This, of course, was apologist gibberish. I hope others can benefit from seeing how I was disabused of this notion.

The daḥa debate

Jalal: It has been argued that the Quran says the Earth is flat. But, in fact, the meaning of the verse with the Arabic word ‘daḥa’ suggests that the Earth is round, as far as I can remember.

Secularist: That argument has already been debunked, my friend. Go check the lexicons—daḥa has the connotation of the nest that an ostrich makes (i.e. a flattened round surface) within which to place its eggs, as Edward William Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon makes clear. It is not a round egg. It is actually more proof that the Quran talks of a flat Earth.

Jalal: But it also means making a thing round. As you know from previous discussions, many Arabic words have multiple meanings. You have to choose the right one for the context. And daḥa in the sense of making a thing round is the proper meaning in this context!

Allow me to double-check this claim by looking it up. … I see that the meaning is to flatten a thing. Nothing points to making things round. And yes, there is also a meaning for a nest, you are right. Admittedly, the flattening meaning makes more sense in the context.

…

OK. But the process of flattening something is applied to something that is originally not flat. That is why a bird flattens a round structure of sticks to make the nest. Now, God created the Earth as a nearly round structure—the Earth is not perfectly round—and that made it look like a flat object to us. This goes more with the context of the verse.

Secularist: The ‘rounding’ that an ostrich performs is not the flattening of a mound into a round shape. Actually, they dig out a flat area to make a disk-like shape to sit in. You can see some good pictures of what I mean here. So the Quran is using a word referring to a flattened disc and not a round spherical shape. This is why the classical exegetes of the Qur’an describe the Earth as flat. For example, the leading Sunni authority Ibn Kathir said in the 14th century that the Earth is like a building with floors stacked on top of each other and that heaven is akin to a dome over the Earth—i.e. the Earth is a flattened disk.

The reason that some earlier Muslims speak of a spherical earth is that they were guided by the astronomers of the time (the spherical nature of the Earth had been known for centuries). However, the increasing trend of literalism in understanding the Quran and hadith meant that, eventually, the flat Earth model prevailed. So, by the 10th century, we find the leading Islamic exegete al-Suyuti saying this:

As for His [God’s] words sutihat, ‘laid out flat’, this on a literal reading suggests that the earth is flat, which is the opinion of most of the scholars of the [revealed] Law, and not a sphere as astronomers (ahl al-hay’a) have it, even if this [latter] does not contradict any of the pillars of the Law.

Notice that this says that going from the text of the Quran alone indicates a flat Earth. Muslims ended up moving away from the scientific ideas of astronomers and returned to the simpler Quranic flat Earth model.

In summary, the lexicons and the most revered exegetes all point to the Quran describing a flat Earth. This shows that daḥa does not refer to an egg shape, nor does it mean the Quran describes the Earth as spherical. You have even admitted yourself that it is not a reference to an egg. Yet popular Islamic apologists like Zakir Naik still insist on this meaning, thus misleading their audiences.

Jalal: OK. 

Secularist: OK what? Tell the world about your jihad by word/tongue/debate. 

Jalal: OK, you are right. 

Secularist: Accept your defeat loudly and clearly, please. We answered you using your own Islamic sources. 

Jalal: I accept my defeat in this debate and I admit my inability to defend the daḥa argument.

My secularist opponent was a little ruthless towards the end there, but I am happy that he was. You can see how I flailed during that debate, and it took a forthright rebuttal to make me admit and accept the truth of my defeat.

Today is Ashura, an Islamic day of commemoration. For Sunni Muslims, it celebrates Islamic triumphs, while for Shia Muslims, it is a day of mourning, a remembrance of defeat and loss. The latter is more appropriate: today, I have shown that jihad by word is as much a failure as jihad by the sword. Jihadists by word can be made to surrender, too: I once vowed to defeat secularists in debate, yet here I am on Ashura, celebrating the defeat of Islamic apologetics. Robust debate did more than just open my mind: it freed it.

Jalal’s ‘statement of defeat’ by secularists in debate can be found here.