Fundación Mezquita de Sevilla Fundación Mezquita de Sevilla y Centro Cultural Islámico de Sevilla®
The Isra (night journey) followed by Al-Miraj (heavenly ascension) was one of the miracles in the life of Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.
According to the most accepted opinion, it happened on the 27th of Rajab, the seventh month of the Hijri calendar, in the tenth year of Muhammad’s prophecy.
In the Hadith literature it is reported that the Messenger of Allah was carried from the Sacred Mosque of Makkah to the “Farthest Mosque” (Al-Masjid al-Aqsa) in Jerusalem on a creature called Al-Buraq in the company of the angel Jibril, peace be upon him. There he led a congregational prayer in which all the prophets of God were present.
He then ascended along with Yibril to the heavens, where he met the prophets Adam, Yahia, Isa, Idris, Harun and Musa, peace be upon them all. In the seventh heaven, he met Ibrahim, peace be upon him.
He was then taken to the Divine Presence. The details of this encounter are beautifully detailed in the beginning of Surah of the Night Journey and the beginning of Surah of the Astro:
Glory be to Him Who one night made His servant travel from the Inviolable Mosque to the farthest Mosque, the one whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him part of Our signs! Verily He is He Who heareth and Who seeth. (The Night Journey, 17:1)
And He was from Him at the distance of two bows or even nearer. And He inspired His servant with what He inspired Him. And the heart did not lie in what he saw: can ye deny what he saw? He had already seen it in another revelation by the Lotus of the Boundary. [According to the commentary of the Qurtubi, it refers to the Prophet Muhammad, may Allah give him His grace and peace, who saw Allah with his heart on this other occasion mentioned here]. Beside which is the garden of Refuge. When the Lotus was covered by that which covered him. He did not avert his gaze nor did he prone himself. And he saw some of the greatest signs of his Lord. (The Astro, 53:9.18)
The meanings of this journey are many and the teachings vast, but what we are not interested in understanding here is something different, it is the nature of this miraculous journey.
The Night Journey and the nature of miracles
For today’s modern mind to accept that the Prophet Muhammad traveled, physically and spiritually, from Mecca to Jerusalem, ascended to the heavens and was in the presence of God, which most scholars of Islam claim happened, is inconceivable because it breaks all the laws of science.
The modern mind cannot admit the occurrence of a miracle like this, or any other, because they are anomalies of the ‘natural’ functioning of things. The reason for this is that we have given the scientific media the power to dictate what is true and what is not, so that the media (science) becomes reality itself, and anything that defies that possibility is rejected as false.
But science itself faces an insurmountable paradox. The paradox posed by Newtonian mechanics and quantum physics.
The paradox of quantum physics and Newtonian mechanics
Newtonian mechanics affirms, and it is verifiable through the tools of science, that the universe is governed by certain laws that govern it, that it is composed of solid matter that responds to these laws and that human beings can observe and measure this in an objective way. The result is a mechanistic conception of the universe.
On the other hand, quantum physics affirms that it is impossible to know the laws governing the motion of the smallest particles of matter, the protons and neutrons that make up atoms, and that one can only know their situation at a given moment. He also affirms that matter is a wave and a particle at the same time in a state of constant motion and not a rigid element. Thus the laws that apply to the processes of Newtonian mechanics do not apply to quantum physics and the result is a universe in constant change and unpredictable in quantum processes. In the same way, the human being is not separate from these processes, but has a direct effect on them and cannot be considered an objective observer.
If we heat water, when it reaches one hundred degrees, it begins to boil. Something similar happens with the evaporation process that occurs throughout the earth and is vital for the balance of ecosystems. If we throw an object from any height, it will fall to earth (if nothing prevents it), which we know as the law of gravity. The earth orbits around the sun, the succession of day and night occurs and in this way we maintain a calculation of time. All natural constants happen without apparent alteration, but at the quantum level, there is no ultimate reason why they have to be so, but they are so and we observe and are guided by them, but it has no teleological purpose.
That is, they are like that but they could also be otherwise, and we do not know why they are like that for any other reason than because they are. Allah says in the Qur’an:
We have made the day and the night two signs: the sign of the night is darkness, and the sign of the day is brightness, that they may seek the favor of their Lord, and We have made it so that by these two signs they may know the number of the years and the reckoning of the months. All things We have explained in detail. (Al Isra wal Miraj, 17:12)
Between quantum physics and Newtonian mechanics
This contradiction between quantum physics, which says that one cannot be certain that something is always determined in the same way, and Newtonian mechanics, which defines constant laws of nature, is something that scientists have been working on for the last hundred years, without arriving at a formula that unifies them.
This is so because they are two principles that are true but mutually exclusive: if something is uncertain it cannot be determined and vice versa, and even so.
The only way to harmonize these two basic principles of the universe is if we understand and accept that it is God who created matter, who maintains it in existence and who determines it at every moment.
That is to say, from the uncertainty inherent in matter to the determination of natural laws, an agent is needed who determines that something is at each moment and who determines that this something is the same as it was at the previous moment, that is, in another way. That agent is God.
The possibility of the Night Journey
From this understanding, the Night Journey is perfectly possible. By this we mean that while it is a break from the constant of natural laws to travel through time and space in a physical and spiritual way, when we take into account what are the laws that govern the constant form of these journeys – without taking into account time travel which would be the subject of another article – and that they are not so for any other reason than because it is how we observe it, we can accept that other forms of travel are possible, if so determined by the One who determines everything at every moment.
In this case we are not talking then about an impossible breaking of the laws of physics, but we are talking about the determination of another possibility of these laws that is as possible as the one we constantly observe.
This is so because if God has established these natural laws, but at the same time He is the one who makes them continue to be in force at every moment, and this is what we deduce from quantum physics; then He has the Power and the Capacity to make them not to be fulfilled when He wants.
This is part of the nature of miracles. It is God showing the human being that the universe is not a rigid and mechanical entity, but that the universe is what it is because He makes it so and to show that it is not so, contradicting these laws, is a demonstration of His power.
By: Luqman Nieto
