Surah 51:47
"The sky – We built it with (Our own) hands, and surely We were (its) extenders indeed."
Claimed Miracle: Cosmology / Physics
APOLOGIST CLAIM
"The Quran anticipates the modern concept of the expanding universe, stating: 'And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander.'"
Refutation & Exegesis
The translation 'We are its expander' is a highly contested modern linguistic retroactive fit. Prominent classical dictionaries and early exegetes, including Ibn Kathir, translated the Arabic word *musi'un* as 'vast' or 'having power/capability'. The verse was traditionally understood to mean that God built the heavens with great strength and made it immensely vast, not that the temporal fabric of the universe is actively undergoing metric expansion. Shifting to an 'expanding' translation only arose after the astrophysical discoveries of the 1920s, demonstrating heavy concordist bias.
Mistranslation
This is a classic mistranslation. Proponents retroactively changed the translation of the Arabic word musi'un (which classically meant 'vast' or 'capable') to 'expanding' only after Edwin Hubble's 1920s discoveries, manipulating the Arabic language to create a mirage of scientific foresight.