Was Prophet Muhammad a seaman?

“What most surprises the non-Muslims who study on Qur’an is that it appears to be much different than they expect. What they really expect is an old book written in Arabic deserts fourteen centuries ago. They assume that it is all about deserts and life of individuals and communities living in them” Gary Miller, (TV Programmer)

While I was in Toronto, Canada, I happened to hear an interesting story on a convert. It was a story about a man who chose to be a Muslim. As a sailor, he had spent his whole life sailing in oceans.

One day, one of his close friends lent him a translation of Qur’an. Having no knowledge at all about Islam, he started to read it with great curiosity and finished it in a short time. The authenticity and vividness in description of sea-storms impressed him deeply. While giving the borrowed the book back to his friend, he asked:

– Would you tell me, if Muhammed was a sailor?

When his friend replied that Muhammed wasn’t a sailor and that he had spent his life in deserts, he became a Muslim without hesitating.

He himself had experienced many sea-storms while sailing in oceans and thus knew the psychology of a man in such circumstances. The Qur’anic words gave a perfect description of a storm in sea which made him think that Muhammed must have seen a sea-storm, because it looked impossible for someone to make such an authentic picture of a sea-storm without having witnessed one. Surah The Light in Qur’an describes the future state of unbelievers as below:

“The state of unbelievers is like the depths of darkness in a vast deep ocean, overwhelmed with billow topped by billow, topped by (dark) clouds: depths of darkness, one above another: If a man stretches out his hands, he can hardly see it!”

At this point, I’d like to intervene and say that the above mention phrases have niceties that only scientists can understand, because Qur’an informs us of dark points a few hundred meters below the sea surface that even sunlight can not reach. Those points are so dark that one can hardly see one’s finger. At the end of Verse, Allah says:

“For any to whom Allah giveth not light, there is no light.”

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Source: http://zaferdergisi.com/article/?makale=953