Prophetic Cloak and Experts- Turkey

 
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf in the 2012 Rihla spoke about miracle of burda/cloak (which was worn by the Prophet in his isra wa l-miraj -heavenly journey) of Prophet in Turkey. He mentioned where some cloth experts studied the burda/cloak of the Prophet (Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) and were shocked and concluded that it must be from heaven and that they've never seen anything like it.

See al Jazeera's video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJea_q2l25A&feature=player_embedded
 
The video is displaying a miracle, listen to it near the end. The Burda al-Nabi  was in a box alongside the Turban of Sayyiduna Uways al-Qarani, however the scientists and experts examining the two pieces found that the Burda al-Nabi  was free from any Bacteria, whilst the Turban did have some. This shocked the experts as both pieces were in the same box. 

This burdah is held in Hirka-e-Serif Camii. It is available for viewing in the month of Ramadaan only - and only after Zuhr for men (the times i went), thereafter for women. Google this name and you will see images of the Burdah (or hirka in Farsi) in a square-ish glass box.

Over the years, more and more immoral attire was being worn in front of these Holy Relics. The Curator and Director of the Topkapi Palace Museum decided that it was best only to show a few - so they re-did the whole section and put things in glass reliquaries to the side of the walls, whilst previously the area was bustling and bulging with artifacts. 

The Yogi and the Sheikh

A yogi tried to convert sheikh Safi ad-din Gazaruni and told the sheikh 'come, show me your superiority!'. But the sheikh retorted 'you show me your superiority, since you're trying to convert me'.
So the yogi soared from the ground into the air, till his head touched the ceiling. Then he turned to the sheikh and said 'now you show me your superiority'
Then the sheikh turned his face to the sky and said 'O Allah, you have given this superiority to a stranger. Grant me some miracle of like quality'.
After that, the sheikh soared from his place and flew toward the qibla (to Makkah), then north, and then reversing himself, flew to the south, finally landing in his original place. Then he sat down.
The yogi was awestruck. Placing his head at the feet of the sheikh, he said 'I cannot display such power. I can only go straight up from the ground and come back down. I can't turn in mid-air and fly to the righr or the left, but you can turn in whatever direction you wish. This is Allah's work. It is divinely inspired. What I do is both false and futile' (source Fawaid of Nizam ad-din Awliya)

Qur'an and the Big Bang

Some Muslims have been arguing that its uneducated people who don't know the Qur'an or Islam properly, and thus incorrectly say that the Qur'an mentions something similar to the big bang.

Let's see the Qur'an (Chapter 21, verse 30) "Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before we clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?"


"Then He turned to the heavens when it was smoke.."
[Noble Quran 41:11]

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf mentioned that the word "smoke" was the best word as the Arabs didn't have a concept of gas at the time of the Qur'an, and the most encompassing Arabic word for gas was "smoke", and that can be used to refer to the "from the Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago, which created a hot, dense gas of elementary particles" (http://www.learner.org/courses/physics/unit/text.html?unit=4&secNum=7)

Apart from a number of well read and qualified scholars (like Sheikh Abdullah Hamid Ali) saying that the Qur'an talks about something similar to the big bang (we can't say it exactly talks about the big bang, since the details of the big bang theory, and even the big bang theory can change. Yet the basics of what the big bang shows, corresponds with the Qur'anic description of the creation of the universe), the GREAT scholar and Wali, Sheikh Ahmed al Alawi (in A'dhab al-Manahil, p. 33.) believed that 21:30 referred to something like the Big Bang, and predicted that it would be discovered by 'those who disbelieve' to whom the verse is addressed. 

And indeed it is the non-Muslims who first scientifically proved the big bang theory.

Although the Qur'an is not a book of science, we naturally expect that it would speak about the creation of Allah swt, and thus you see similarities with some scientific facts and theories.

Allahu A'lem.