The Qur’an and the Beginning of the World
Allah says:
Allah (alone) originates the creation, then He will repeat it, then to Him you will be returned
(30:11)
Allah clearly states in this verse that He is the One Who created and brought into existence everything in this universe from nothing. In fact, Allah describes the beginning of the universe saying: The Originator of the heavens and the earth. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, 'Be,' and it is. (2:117)
Allah informs us once more in this verse that the universe was created from nothing. All that took place before its creation is from the knowledge of the unseen world, which only Allah knows. Human intellect is incapable of realizing and grasping what the substance matter of the first creation was, for Allah did not inform us about it. Humans can only produce hypotheses and theories concerning the world with which they interact.
Allah says: Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were once a joined entity, and We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe? (21:30)
This verse makes unmistakable reference to the fact that Allah created the universe from a single entity, and He is All-Capable over all things. Allah then ordered this “single entity” to split, which it did, and turned into a cloud of smoke. From this cloud of smoke Allah created the heavens and earth. This is mentioned in the words of Allah: Say, ‘Do you indeed disbelieve in He who created the earth in two days and attribute to Him equals? That is the Lord of the worlds.’ And He placed on the earth firmly set mountains over its surface, and He blessed it and determined therein its [creatures'] sustenance in four days without distinction - for [the information] of those who ask. Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it was smoke and said to it and to the earth, ‘Come [into being], willingly or by compulsion.’ They said, ‘We have come willingly.’ And He completed them as seven heavens within two days and inspired in each heaven its command. And We adorned the nearest heaven with lamps and as protection. That is the determination of the Exalted in Might, the Knowing (41:9-12)
Modern astrophysicists assert that the entire universe originated from one entity, the result of what is known today as the “Big Bang” (1)
Allah says: Then He (rose over) the heavens while it was something like smoke, and said to it and to the earth, ‘Come both of you willingly or unwillingly.’ They said, ‘We come willingly. (41:11)
This verse affirms that the sky, during its early stages was like smoke, a point affirmed by modern science.
James H. Jeans (2) said:
We have found that, as Newton first conjectured, a chaotic mass of gas of approximately uniform density and of very great extent would be dynamically unstable; nuclei would tend to form in it, around which the whole of matter would ultimately condense.