Wa `alaykum as-salam wa Rahmatullah wa Barakatuh

In the Name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Mercy-giving

All praise is due to Allah. Peace and blessings be upon His Prophet Muhammad.

 

The splitting of the moon was a miracle that Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) showed to the people Mecca after that had asked him to show them a miracle to prove his prophethood.

 

This incident was reported by a number of the Prophet’s companions as narrated by Al-Bukhari, Muslim, and other collectors of Prophetic traditions.

 

The rejection of and doubts raised about the incident, as mentioned in the question, are not new. They have been raised long time ago and were handled by scholarly refutations that could be summarized in the following points:

 

1- It is not true that the incident is not mentioned in other books of history. The incident have been mentioned in some Indian and Persian manuscripts in London’s library, as asserted by some researchers.

 

2- There are reports that the people of Mecca asked travelers who came back to Mecca after the incident and they affirmed to them that they witnessed it.

 

3- Even if we accept the claim that no one else over the earth had witnessed it, still this does not mean that it did not take place.

 

The incident took place at night where most people at that time were either sleeping or inside their homes and thus had no interest in watching the celestial bodies. Even these days, so many times lunar eclipses take place while the majority of people are heedless of and never pay attention to them.

 

4- In addition, the time for such splitting was so short (perhaps less than one minute) that it could have gone easily unnoticed. This also means that even the very few persons who might have seen it outside Mecca might have thought that the middle area of the moon was shortly concealed by clouds or any other celestial body.

 

5- If we take the rotation of earth around its axis and the rotation of the moon around the earth, we will come to realize that the moon does not appear but to some parts the of the globe where there is night, while other parts are still in the daylight. This excludes a large number of the inhabitants of the globe from the possibility of witnessing the incident.

 

6- It is well known the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) faced various challenges and arguments raised by the polytheists, Jews and Christians of his time. There is no report that such enemies of Islam took advantage of this claimed incident to attack the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) or doubt his credibility.

 

Almighty Allah knows best.