Assalaamu 'alaykum wR wB,
Dear all,
Ada yang sudah baca ini ?
Kalau berita ini benar, alangkah, alangkah....... ahh, I don't know what
to say.
Just read it, okay ! Maaf masih dalam bahasa Inggris, no time to
translate, ada yang bersuka-cita untuk mentranslatenya ?
Yang sudah baca maaf yah, forwarding posting nih, tapi dijamin bukan
chain letter kok
Wallahu 'alam,
Wasalaamu 'alaykum wR wB,
arief muLya
Banda Aceh, DI aceh ("Masih" Indonesia :)
---------------------------------------------
"There's always a light in the heart of ones who Love"
********FORWARDED LETTER**************
Assalaamu'alaikum wr. wb.
It's another great finding ... forward it to all of your friends ...
Salam,
Abd Shomad
-----Original Message-----
To: any islam mailing list
Date: Sunday, July 11, 1999 03:00
Muslim Scientist Profiles: Dr. Ahmad Khan
by Sameer Chouwadhary
Upon arriving at Dr. Ahmad Khan's laboratory, I can tell from the
boisterous way he says salaam that it is not going to be a typical
interview. Dr. Khan, to say the least, is glowingly euphoric, and he
seems
to be consciously trying to lower the level of excitement in his voice.
By all accounts this is the same Dr. Khan known to his geneticist
colleagues as soft-spoken and shy- given to a calm, straight-faced
demeanor.
As he offers me some piping hot chai, and bades me strenuously with his
hands to sit within his office chambers, I begin to wonder if in fact I
had
heard correctly what he, to my utter consternation, had thought brought
me
to see him. Dr. Khan begins to tell me that he had not only found
evidence
of the Holy Qur'an's authorship, but, in fact, the authorship of
mankind.
Little did I know before walking into the sleek mirrored-face "GenLab"
on
the campus of the University of New Mexico, that on the fifth floor I
would
find a scientist, who by the sheer scope of his findings may very well
end
up as familiar a name as a Galileo, Newton, or Einstein. I thought
quite
simply that I was going to be interviewing Dr. Khan about his book in
development, which I was told previously was to be a synthesis of
genetics
and Islam. I figure, hey, a little about the morality of cloning here,
another little bit about genetic engineering there, and badaboom
badabang- a
simple little volume which puts genetics in its proper perspective. My
expectations exponentially surpassed, I ask my first question with my
mouth
agape - "You're kidding? Right?"
"Nehi! Subhan Allah! Nehi!" He laughs, the largest conceivable grin
on
his face, as he brushes aside a few of the sundry piles of papers
clogging
his pigsty of a desk. I cast a glance at the wall behind his desk, bare
save for a framed ayat-ul-kursi and a family portrait of his former
beardless self along with his wife Nur, and their two small children. I
don
't find any evidence of the ostentation one might expect from some one
who
graduated summa cum laude from Duke University. I distinctly get the
impression that despite his status as a young (31 years of age) and up
and
coming geneticist, that his love remains solely for Allah and his
research.
Diplomas and awards are nothing more than clumps of paper to him.
My list of questions made irrelevant by Dr. Khan's revelation, I begin
to
try to ascertain what exactly he had discovered and how, asking him just
to
divulge a little of his research and how he had come about it.
"For a few years now I have mused during my Ph.D. training that there
was
the possibility for information other than that for the construction of
polypeptides to be encoded by individual codons or nucleotides of DNA.
But
it was only after a Jum'ah khutbah where I heard the Imam mention a
verse in
the Holy Qur'an where I put two and two together."
Ahmad, as I now call him, rises up from his seat and reaches to the top
of
the massive bookshelf to the left of his desk, grasping hold of the
Qur'an,
by its looks very worn. An interesting combination I think to myself- a
lab
coat and a white kufi. But I have little more time for such musings on
the
fashions of the day, as he kisses the Qur'an and opens it to his
selected
verses.
"Audhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajeem. Bismillah Ir-Rahman Ir-Raheem.
Sanureehim ayatinaa filafaaqi wafi anfusihim Hatta yatabayyana lahum
annahu
ul-Haqq, awalam yakfi birabbika annahu 'ala kulli shayiin shaheedoon."
He
pauses for a breath, and his index finger moves over to the English
text:
"Soon will We show them Our Signs in the furthest regions of the earth,
and
in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the
Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses all things?"
"Which Sura is that?" "It is from the forty-first Sura, Fussilat, the
fifty-third ayat." "Shukriyya, go on..."
"You may have heard of a study by a non-Muslim scientist by the name of
Keith Moore?" "Yes, but if you could refresh my memory..."
"Quite simply Keith Moore is the world authority on embryology, and
after
having read the Holy Qur'an he came to see that there was a remarkable
correspondence of the Qur'an's description of embryos with the
descriptions
of modern science. So we can see from this that indeed the Holy Qur'an
has
shown us a sign in our own souls, our own selves, by relating
information
that due to its microscopic nature could not have been known fourteen
hundred years ago."
"What I've come to realize is that the Holy Qur'an has many levels of
meaning, some of which are known only to Allah subhana wa t'ala himself.
But what I recognized is that if we look at the Arabic, the ayat in
question
uses the same word for Qur'anic verses- 'ayaat.' And it says as you
read
along, that those same verses are 'fi anfusihim'- are in themselves- in
the
human beings. Coming as I do from the specialty of genetics, I realized
that the verses of the Qur'an could indeed be within each human being-
coded
within our DNA."
"But aren't you just speculating that the meaning of the ayat is that
ayaat
>from the Qur'an appear in some form or another within the genome?"
"Yes, at first....At first it was speculation, but then I began to piece
together more indications that there was a possibility that verses of
the
Holy Qur'an could be a part of the genome. What you must realize is
that
much of the DNA in our genome doesn't code for the production of
proteins at
all. The non-coding regions- introns- are often called junk DNA.
Mashaa
Allah. As it turns out, it is the farthest possible thing from junk, it
is
the words of our Creator, a great sign that it was Allah who gave us the
breath of life."
"So how did you test your hypothesis, and who else have you consulted?"
"GenLab had a government grant to study the genetic roots of
intelligence,
and at the time this idea struck me, we were focusing on mapping the
central
region of chromosome 19. I talked with my younger brother, 'Imran, who
is a
systems analyst, and consulted with him about developing a way to see if
any
Qur'anic ayat could be found within the intron regions of chromosome 19
that
had been mapped."
"It was quite a project, because we had to figure out what Arabic letter
each different possible codon stood for, by iterating each possible
coding
system through the introns and seeing if any of those combinations
resulted
in ayaat from the Holy Qur'an."
"January 2nd, 1999. Two o'clock in the morning we found our first
ayaat.
Alhamdullilah! Audhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajeem. Bismillah Ir
Rahman Ir Raheem. Iqra bismi rabbika ladhi khalaq. Read in the name of
your Lord who created! Region p38q!"
"The first ayat revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, Sal Allahu Alaihi wa
Salaam!?"
"Yes, I was just as astonished as you are now. But the thing is, with
each
ayat we found, finding the next ayat came faster and faster, as we began
to
compile the full coding system. After that it has been a breeze. Our
only
trouble with finding more ayat has been that not enough of the genome
has
been mapped by geneticists to be searched. So far we only have found
1/10
of the Qur'an."
"Although we obviously want to make our findings known to the greater
Muslim- greater world in general, we are taking precautions to make sure
our
heads are screwed on right...you can never be too careful. In the past
few
weeks I've been talking with individual Muslim scientists, just so I
could
get some feedback, and make sure that our findings are ready to be
published
come next fall."
"But I am confident that we've found a phenomenon of great interest,
such
that I am willing to put my entire career on the line. I've revealed my
findings to my fellow geneticists here at GenLab, and believe me- this
has
been the first time I've found Martin or Clive [two of his co-workers]
even
willing to discuss religion or Islam. I've also written to two
non-Muslim
skeptics inviting them to analyze my findings: Dan Larhammar of Uppsala
University in Sweden, and Aris Dreismann at the Technical University of
Berlin. I doubt they'll remain skeptical for long..."
"There is such a tremendous amount of data that we're going to have to
be
analyzing it over the next few months, but I hope to create both a book
for
popular consumption as well as submit an abstract to Science very
shortly."
"I'm speechless! Subhan Allah! But can you show me some of the verses
you
've found?"
Just then I find out what some of the sheets of paper are on his desk.
He
hands two sheets to me, one covered with four roman letters, T, C, G,
and A,
sprawling across the sheet, separated in columns of three letters. The
other in Arabic script is clear as day- after many 'lam's, and a couple
of
random 'ayn's and 'qafs' I see what looks like a sentence. I ask him
the
meaning.
"From Sura al baqarah, the sixth ayat. In English it says: 'As to those
who reject faith, it is the same to them whether you warn them or do not
warn them; they will not believe.'"
"The other page is a listing of the actual sequence of nucleotides, of
which there are four types. Every three code for an Arabic letter." He
pulls out a laminated table, with Thymine, Adenine, Cytosine, and
Guanine
written vertically for the first nucleotide, then horizontally across
the
top for the second, and horizontally again for the third."
"Instead of amino acids, as you can see from this table there are two
codons for every Arabic letter, as well as for the ta' marbuta and
hamza.
There is also a code for the end of each ayat, just like there would be
codons which would stop gene transcription."
"Subhan Allah. I just feel so blessed to find such a miracle at such a
young age- I can only marvel at what else we might find inshaa Allah,
you
know.. I can only hope that within our lifetimes other Muslim
scientists
find out the meaning of the other 'ayaat' in nature that Allah makes
reference to."
"Would you happen to have any last words for our readers?"
"I just hope that after the publication of my book 'The Holy Qur'an and
Genetics' that Muslims begin to better understand how Allah has made
Islam a
complete way of life. We cannot compartmentalize our religion, keeping
Islam out of our politics, education, arts, and sciences without grave
detriment to ourselves, and loss of the true meaning of the Final
Revelation
to the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace."
"I also hope that non-Muslims see that there is no need for the
controversies between religion and science, although no doubt some of
them
will ignore the evidence even if it is right before their very eyes."
I take one last sip of my chai, looking intently at Dr. Khan's dark
brown
eyes and olive complexion, knowing full well, that inshaa Allah I am
looking
at the face of the Ummah's future.
----------------------------------------------
Permission is given for reproduction and distribution of this document
in
all media for non-commercial use, provided that this notice is not
deleted.
Copyright 1999. Sameer Chouwadhary.
This article is to appear in the inaugural edition of "North American
Muslim
Science Journal" to be published quarterly beginning with the Fall 1999
issue.
For subscription information, or a list of submission guidelines please
write to:
North American Muslim Science Journal
Re: (subscription or submissions)
P.O. Box 140306
Dallas, TX 75214
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