What is the Universe and is it Expanding?

 

The Qur’an clearly expounded the expansion of the universe over 1,440 years ago. Likewise, Muslim Astronomers spent enough time explaining the expansion of the universe, yet, modern Western astronomers or cosmologists are yet to discover it. Regarding the expanding universe, the Qur’an explains in the following ayah:

 

وَٱلسَّمَآءَ بَنَيْنَـٰهَا بِأَيْي۟دٍۢ وَإِنَّا لَمُوسِعُونَ ٤٧

We built the universe with ˹great˺ might, and We are certainly expanding ˹it˺ (Qur’an, Adh-Dhariyat, 51:47).

According to NASA, “the universe is everything. It includes all of space, and all the matter and energy that space contains. It even includes time itself and, of course, it includes you. Earth and the Moon are part of the universe, as are the other planets and their many dozens of moons.”[i] We often hear now and then that new inhabitable planets are being discovered. The expanding of the universe is not one that is only dedicated to heavenwards cosmos only but also to our own earth whose expansion will one day be known to all as stated in the Qur’an. Obviously, there is tremendous outgrowth of all living things on earth that is termed as overpopulation, and there is no logical or scientific suspicion at all that the number of dying living creatures will also be widespread in every continent. Thus, for the Creator of all living things, He has a plan for the container we call earth. The expansion of the heavens has a natural meaning: to create space for the expanding living population on earth that include human species, aves species, and insects and so forth. It also includes all water species plus the Jinns that have been created from smokeless fire and are unknown to the Western Hemispheric scientists. The expansion of the earth also accommodates all dead living things. Therefore, there must also be space for the dead, meaning graveyards will cover or take a better part of the earth.

The expansion of the universe also pertains to the cosmos for there are living things or creatures that are invisible to the human eye. Planets that have been nine in number in the past but have now been reduced to eight after the removal of Pluto The solar system that includes planets like Earth, Mercury, Mars, Uranus, Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, and Saturn are also expanding and it will one day come to be known with the discovery of advanced satellites and sophisticated visual image cameras. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded Pluto in August 2006 because it is dwarf like and “has not cleared its neighboring region of other objects.”[ii]

NB: Excerpt from upcoming book. 

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[i] What is an Exosplanet? Retrieved from https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/what-is-an-exoplanet/what-is-the-universe/#:~:text=The%20universe%20is%20everything.,their%20many%20dozens%20of%20moons.

[ii] Library of Congress: Why is Pluto no longer a planet? Retrieved from www.loc.gov.

Sambur

 In Samburu language which should have been Sambur, Egypt means desert. Khartoum is adulteration of Katoum, meaning "you'll get it." The name Sambur means "white." The  man I interviewed who was Sambur claimed his father who passed away last year, had blue eyes.

Perhaps, the intermingling of different communities through acculturation, integration, assimilation and the practices of exogamous marriages and polygamy created linguistic alterations, changes in skin pigmentations, and the adulteration of the studies of etymology and toponymy.

The name Addis Ababa in Ethiopia means "New Flower."

Ilegal Arms Sales

An armed altercation occurred somewhere close to Gabon after they were invaded by 18 vehicles carrying heavily armed men. However, the Somalis managed to destroy 9 of the vehicles and the armed people on board. Likewise, they captured a lady who was their commander, but out of humanity and respect for human rights, let her go free.

They traveled nights and rested day times. In entire global Africa, it is only Somalis who often traveled at nights and it has been a common thing for Somalis to travel in the darkness using the stars for navigation without the use of compasses and the Global Positioning Services that is known as GPS in short. 

The journey took over a month and it is mind boggling how they were able to travel such a long journey with little resistance from foreign invaders.

Affluenza Style Weddings

 While every man and woman has the right to marry a partner of choice as enshrined in every community and national marriageable rights as agreed upon, wedding ceremonies have become unceremonious mainly because of the financial constraints attached. 

In the Somali occupied counties of Kenya and even deep inside the nation in places like Eastleigh that is home to a great Somali population, parents of the bride to be demand insurmountable financial resources to be misappropriated so that eventually the married couple plunge into unanticipated marriageable breakups. 

Not knowing the financial resources of the husband or the bridegroom that could serve as the future upkeep and conservation of the newly established household is a recipe for disaster. The absence of financial management and parental responsibilities, gullible and stone-hearted near or close relatives who serve as advisors, and the lack of comprises between the bridegroom and bride families' lugubrious exaggerations, are profoundly some of the factors that finally propel unanticipated family breakups.

On the material wedding day, the amount of money spent on the gormandizing guests by the hosts, is disastrously irreligious, unethical, immoral and outrightly ravenous. As if imitating the "Affluenza Lifestyle", food that could be enough for 10 guests is served to 4 men who appear not in need of food.

In the majority Somali region of Ethiopia, stringent measures have been effectuated by the ulama and the regulations seem to be flourishing. The regulations set by the ulama has been universally accepted such that many struggling  lovers are now able to fund their weddings in remarkable ways that suit their chosen ways and means

Slaughtering animals beyond the bridegroom's financial capabilities, spending lots of money on housewares, hiring numerous taxis for the wedding periods just to blow their horns as a form of social attraction even though the blaring noise from the honking is disturbance to everyone around.

 In a wedding conducted in a European country, the bride requested a helicopter to be hired to deliver her to the ceremony arena. The husband to be accepted her request. The helicopter flew upwards to a higher elevation that suited the bride's needs. After a while, it landed on top of a storey building. Leaving the pilot alone, the two took the elevator that brought them to the ground floor where  guests had gathered to welcome them with open hands. A wedding of that nature is considered traumatically contumacious and absolutely spendthrift because of it's effects on the future the newly wedded couples.

While there are limits to wedding expenditures, Kenya Somalis require to emulate their fellow Somalis of Ethiopia. When compared, Somalis of Ethiopia have grasped the exhortations of their religious scholars while those of Kenya are still entombed in the old stone age philosophical foundations of the past.

Always depending on religious scholars to answer questions related to marriages and other social lifestyles like how to live harmoniously, must be abandoned altogether because, all answers to those questions are either in the Qur'an or Hadith.