A viral video clip has sparked outrage on social media after Kerala Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan (Congress) was attributed with a controversial statement praising Prophet Muhammad for allegedly predicting modern scientific facts centuries ahead of time.
In the clip circulating widely, Satheesan is heard saying, "Even scientific matters were predicted in advance. Even in the era when people widely believed that the Earth was flat, the Prophet said that it is a sphere revolving around the Sun in an orbit. Science proved that only later. Science proved it later. All the things that science proved later were already predicted in advance. That's why I often say that these are events that happened ahead of their time."
Satheesan, a key Congress figure positioning himself as a CM contender amid internal rivalries with leaders like Ramesh Chennithala and K.C. Venugopal, is accused of making the remark to appease the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a crucial UDF ally.
Shape Of The Earth As Per Islamic Theology
The statement attributed to V. D. Satheesan-that the Prophet Muhammad described the Earth as a sphere revolving around the Sun centuries before modern science-finds no support in primary Islamic sources. Neither the Qur'an nor established hadith collections contain any explicit assertion of heliocentrism or a scientifically defined spherical Earth. While certain Qur'anic verses describe celestial bodies as moving in orbits, they do not specify a Sun-centered system or outline planetary motion in modern astronomical terms.
Islamic scripture, particularly the Qur'an, contains several verses that have been interpreted by literalist readers as describing a flat Earth. For instance, Surah Al-Ghashiyah (88:20) asks believers to reflect on "how the earth is spread out" (sutihat), a term that can imply flattening. Similarly, Surah Ar-Ra'd (13:3) and Al-Hijr (15:19) describe the earth as "spread out" (madda, madadna), while Surah Nuh (71:19) likens it to a "carpet" (bisāṭan) and Surah Al-Baqarah (2:22) calls it a "bed" (firāsh). Taken together in a strictly literal sense, these descriptions portray the Earth as an extended, level surface laid out for human habitation, which some interpreters argue aligns more naturally with a flat-Earth conception than a spherical one.