Assalammualaikum kepada saudara marhaen..
di sini saya ingin menyampaikan sebuah artikel kiriman sahabat saya mengenai kajian terkini biologi yang mengukuhkan lagi kebenaran Islam melalui sains. Harap dapat tuan siarkan untuk kepentingan umat Islam. Saya mohon agar nama saya/pengirim tidak disiarkan.
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 (tea), 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 Quran'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 Quran 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 Quran, 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
Quran 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 pau! ses 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 Quran he came to see that there was a
remarkable correspondence of the Quran's description of embryos with
the descriptions of modern science. So we can see from this that
indeed the Holy Quran 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 Quran 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 Quranic 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 Quran 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 Quran 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 Quran could be a part of the genome. What you must
realize is that muc! h 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. MashaaAllah. 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 Quranic 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 Quran."
"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 Quran."
"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 Thiamine, Adenine,
Cytosine, a! nd 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
inshaaAllah, 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 Quran
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, hat 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 2001 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