STORY

THE STORY OF MAURICE BUCAILLE’S INSPIRING CONVERSION TO ISLAM

Maurice Bucaille was born to a French parent and, like his family, he grew up a Christian. After his secondary education, he joined Faculty of Medicine, France University. Later, he became the most renowned and cleverest surgeon ever in modern France, but a story happened to change his life completely.

France is known for its unique interest in archeology and heritage. When French Socialist President François Mitterrand assumed power in 1981, France asked Egypt, late in the 80’s, for the mummy of Egypt’s pharaoh so that it would conduct a string of monumental and processing experiments. Actually the body of Egypt’s most notorious tyrant was transferred to France, and, strangely, the French president and his ministers as well as senior officials in the country lined up near the plane carrying the pharaoh’s body and bowed down to him as if he were still alive!

After the ceremonies of the royal-like reception to Egypt’s pharaoh were over, the tyrant’s mummy was carried nearly in the same red carpet reception way he received. Then the mummy was transferred to a special wing at the French Monuments Center, and renowned archeologists, surgeons and anatomists started to conduct a study on this mummy in an attempt to delve into its mysteries.

The senior surgeon and the scientist in charge of the study on this mummy of the Pharaoh was Professor Maurice Bucaille. While the processors were busy making restoration to the mummy, their head (Maurice Bucaille) was thinking otherwise. He was trying to discover how this Pharaoh died when, late at night, he concluded his final analyses.

The remains of the salt stuck in his body was a shining evidence that he had drowned and that his body was retrieved from the sea swiftly after he drowned; it was also obvious that they rushed to mummify his body so that his body would remain intact!!

But Maurice Bucaille puzzled over a question: How did this body — to the exclusion of other mummified bodies of other ancient Egyptians — remain that intact although it was recovered from the sea?” Maurice was busy conducting a final report while thinking as to whether the pharaoh’s body was recovered from the sea and mummified immediately after he drowned.

But one of his company whispered in his ear, saying “There is no need to rush about this issue, since the Muslims say that this Pharaoh did drown.” At first, he vehemently rejected this and did not believe it, citing that such a discovery would be reached only through sophisticated, modern and accurate computers.

Another one accompanying him surprised him more when he told him that the Muslims’ Qur’an in which they believe narrates the story that says he drowned and that his body remained intact even after he drowned.

He got more surprised and kept on asking ”Where did the Muslims’ Qur’an quote these data from while the mummy was not discovered until 1898, i.e. about 200 years only, given that the Qur’an has been recited by Muslims for over 1400 years, and given also that until a few decades ago the entire mankind including Muslims did not know that the ancient Egyptians had mummified their pharaohs?

Maurice Bucaille stayed up all this night gazing at Pharaoh’s body, thinking deeply of what his fellow researcher told him about the Muslims’ Qur’an explicitly establishing that this body was recovered after drowning, while the Christians’ Gospel (Matthew and Luca) narrated only the story of Pharaoh when he was chasing Prophet Musa (peace be upon him) without mentioning the fate of his body at all.

“Is it believable that Muhammad (peace be upon him) knew about this over 1,000 years ago while I have only just known it?” he thought.

Maurice spent a sleepless night, and asked for a version of the Torah. But it only furthered Bucaille’s astonishment; since even Torah did not narrate that the body was recovered and remained intact due to the processing and restoration, which it did undergo.

France sent back the mummy to Egypt in a splendid glass coffin. But, since he knew about the story circulated by Muslims on the intactness of this body, he decided to pack his baggage and travel to Saudi Arabia where a medical conference happened to be held with a galaxy of Muslim anatomists attending.

There, told them about his discovery, i.e. that Pharaoh’s body was kept intact even after he drowned.

One of the conferees opened the Qur’an and read out the Ayah in which Allah Almighty said, “So today We will (safely) deliver you with your body that you may be a sign to the ones succeeding you; and surely many among mankind are indeed heedless of Our signs.” (Yunus: 92)

In his excitement, he stood before the attendants and loudly said, “I have converted to Islam and believed in this Qur’an.”

Back to France, Maurice Bucaille spent 10 years conducting a study as to how far the recently scientific facts match that mentioned in the Holy Qur’an, trying to reassure himself that the Qur’an has never contradicted with any single scientific fact, so that he eventually came up with the conclusion that Allah Almighty said of the Qur’an, “Untruth does not come up to it before (Literally: between its two hands) it nor from behind it; a successive sending down from (One) Ever-Wise, Ever-Praiseworthy.”

He came up with a earth shaking book on the Holy Qur’an which jolted the entire Western states, with the title of the book reading, “The Bible, The Qur’an and Science, The Holy Scriptures Examined In The Light Of Modern Knowledge.”

The book sold out and even hundreds of thousands of it were translated from French to Arabic, English, Indonesian, Persian, Turkish and German, extending to include nearly all East and West bookstores; one has come to see it with any Egyptian, Moroccan or Gulf person in the US.

In the preface of his book, Maurice Bucaille said, “These scientific areas which Qur’an established to the exclusion of other Scriptures filled me with deep surprise early on, since it never struck my mind to see such a large amount of scientific issues in such a variable and accurate way that they are a mirror image of what has recently been discovered in a book which has existed for more than 13 centuries.!!

The Bible, The Qur’an and Science, The Holy Scriptures Examined In The Light Of Modern Knowledge was such a marvelous piece of writing that, in the year 1988, the French Academy awarded him its prize in history.