Doing Islam A Disservice

As Muslims we know that our religion is The Truth. There are no ifs and buts about it. However as Allah has given us the brain to think and with human's curiosity, it is natural that we want more answers and proof to strengthen our faith. There are plenty of things and happenings around us to show His Greatness and even science has proved it. However there are still people who makes things up in order to show the truth of Islam. Instead giving Islam more credibility among the non-Muslims, it makes us a laughing stock. Take the following calim I found in a forum. Bear in mind that there are still the truth in that guy's claim. However mixing made-up 'facts' with the truth doesn't make the story 100% the truth! 

"The Kaabah is not only the Qiblat, but also the focal point of Man in his everyday life. The simplest example is our Astro satellite dish. Did you notice that most of them faced the Qiblat? That is because Makkah is the centre of the world....."

Some things in this world remain mysterious and no amount of scientific exploration can find the truth; others can be revealed and shows the Truth of Islam. However, trying to justify Makkah/Kaabah as the centre of everything by using the Astro sat-dish as example is simply pathetic. Our Astro dishes receive their signal from MEASAT-1 and MEASAT-3 commsats sitting 23,000 miles (or something like that) above the Indian Ocean at longitude 91.5 degs East and so it happens that some sat dishes have their orientation coinciding with the Qiblat, so there. And the guy's third sentence contradicts himself - why did he write 'most' instead of 'all'?

The Headhunters!

When I was a kid, we children were warned not to wander or play alone because some nasty guy armed with a sickle might spot us and lop our heads off. The severed heads will then be buried underneath bridging projects so that the 'water spirits' are appeased and won't interfere with the projects. As kids we were really terrified of such stories and terrified still whenever we came across farmers who bring their sickle around (actually they need the sickle to gather weeds and grass for their livestock). The growth and development of Malaysia during the late 70s and early 80s with a number of infrastructure projects going around give more 'substance' to story, especially during the building of the Penang Bridge.

As time goes by, such stories faded from our collective mind, although it still surfaces from time to time although not as frequent as it was in the 1980s. The reason I wrote about this entry is because I probably have found out the myth behind such stories. It didn't even originate here, it was in London! Bored at the end of the office hour, I checked out the Wikipedia and it was theorised that the popular nursery rhyme 'London Bridge Is Falling Down' refers to the burying of children under the bridge's foundations so that the bridge won't collapse unless human sacrifices were made - which was debunked by archeological findings.

So, there you go. There were actually no sickle-swinging men looking for human sacrifices, it was just a tale brought by the Brits and adopted by us generation after generation....just like a bunch of other urban legends....

Man On The Moon Revisited (Again!)

The debate whether man has set foot on Earth's only natural satellite rages on 39 years after the last flight of the Apollo space program in 1972. Many conspiracy theorists point out the 'irregularities' showing up in the photos but recently a forumner said that his own SCIENCE teacher is not convinced that Neil Armstrong et al has reached the moon. His reason?

"The moon's too hot...even hotter than the volcano (lava that is)...At night its too cold...colder than the Poles (North and South Poles that is, not people from Poland!) so that engines and equipment  are unable to function"

And also "Combustion needs oxygen....how can the engines fire when there is no oxygen on the moon?"

Bear in mind that it was a SCIENCE teacher who said that.....

As a note:

1. The moon (or indeed, the space) is very hot during the 'day'...but not as hot as lava. Average 'day' temperature on the moon is 117 degrees Celcius whilst lava is anywhere from 700 to 1,200 degrees Celcius. At 'night', it is indeed colder than the Poles with an average of -203 degrees Celcius.

2. That range of temperature exists not only on the moon but also just outside our atmosphere where there were hundreds (if not thousands) of satellite operating perfectly since Sputnik in 1957.....

3. About the last point, has the teacher never heard of liquid oxygen?