Surah 24:43
"Do you not see that God drives the clouds, then gathers them, then makes them (into) a mass, and then you see the rain come forth from the midst of it? He sends down mountains (of them) from the sky, in which (there is) hail, and He smites whomever He pleases with it, and turns it away from whomever He pleases. The flash of His lightning almost takes away the sight."
Claimed Miracle: Meteorology
APOLOGIST CLAIM
"The Quran miraculously describes the formation of hail inside clouds by stating God sends down hail from 'mountains' in the sky."
Refutation & Exegesis
Scientifically, hail forms dynamically within cumulonimbus clouds when strong updrafts carry water droplets into freezing altitudes; it does not fall from static 'mountains of ice' stationed in the sky. While modern proponents suggest 'mountains' is a metaphor for towering clouds, the literal reading was heavily debated by classical exegetes. Ibn Kathir notes that some early scholars believed there were literal, physical mountains of hail in the heavens from which God rained down destruction, reflecting ancient mythological cosmologies rather than modern atmospheric science.
Elective esotericism / Reinterpretation
To avoid the scientifically absurd image of literal mountains of ice anchored in the sky, apologists electively declare 'mountains' to be a metaphor for 'cumulonimbus clouds', entirely redefining the vocabulary to salvage the text from atmospheric inaccuracy.