The Thunder and Lightning

هُوَ الَّذِي يُرِيكُمْ الْبَرْقَ خَوْفًا وَطَمَعًا وَيُنْشِئُ السَّحَابَ الثِّقَالَ وَيُسَبِّحُ الرَّعْدُ بِحَمْدِهِ وَالْمَلَائِكَةُ مِنْ خِيفَتِهِ وَيُرْسِلُ الصَّوَاعِقَ فَيُصِيبُ بِهَا مَنْ يَشَاءُ وَهُمْ يُجَادِلُونَ فِي اللَّهِ وَهُوَ شَدِيدُ الْمِحَالِ  [1]

 “He it is Who shows you the lightning causing fear and hope who brings up the heavy cloud and the thunder declares His glory with His praise, and the angels too for awe of Him; and He sends the thunder bolts and smites with them whom He pleases; yet they dispute concerning Allah, and He is mighty in prowess.”

A lightning dazzles your eyes and a thunder may cause your alarm and the fear of getting on fire frightens those who are in the wilderness.

But lightning and thunders are accompanied by thunderstorms that bring down water for people and plants alike. This gives people hope and fear.

Scientifically speaking, lightning is the result of the strike of two large pieces of clouds with positive and negative electricity. This looks like the strike of two wires having different charges of electricity.

While two wires produce slight sounds, lightning is of tremendous amount of electricity; therefore it can produce great thunders. Now, sometimes a large piece of cloud having positive electric charges approaches the earth that has negative electric charges. There develops a spark between the earth and the sky that is then referred to as thunderbolt. A man wandering in a desert who is exposed to a thunderbolt might turn into ashes in an instant.

Some people do not consider lightning as serious. However, it has several benefits. We will consider three of these advantages here:

1. Rain fall: Lightning creates high degrees of heat. This may some times be fifteen thousand degrees centigrade. This large amount of heat burns the surrounding air, causing low pressure, then clouds start rain pour. That is why after the occurrence of lightning there are some storms that pour down large drops of rain. Thus one of the functions of lightning is rain fall.

2. Insecticide: Whenever there occurs lightning with its immense heat, the drops of rain will combine with extra- oxygenated water. We are aware that one of the traits of the oxygenated water is killing the microbes. This is why it is used as a disinfectant. The drops of the oxygenated water pouring on the fields will demolish the pests. So they will perform the role of a useful insecticide. That is why the following axiom is often heard: “the plant pests will take their toll any year in which thunder and lightning are rare.”

3. Feeding and Fertilizing the Soil:

The rain drops that are due to the exposure to the lightning and extreme heat turn into carbonic acids, create a kind of effective fertilizer when they strike the soil; the plants get their required nutrients in this way.

Some experts are of the opinion that the amount of the fertilizers produced due to the lightning yearly is more than tens of millions of tons which is a huge figure, indeed.

Thus, we will observe that this common phenomenon of lightning has got tremendous amount of benefits: it irrigates, it insecticides and it feeds the soil. These are just few samples of the mysteries of the world that leads us undoubtedly to the existence of Allah.

The sentence وَيُنْشِئُ السَّحَابَ الثِّقَالَ that comes at the end of the above verse may have some connection with this feature of electricity that makes the clouds heavy with the heavy drops of rain.

The next verse deals with the thunder that is not separated from lightning, however. The verse says: “The thunder declares His glory with His Praise.” Lightning and thunder are concurrent, both of which praise and glorify Allah. In other words, thunder is the tongue for the lightning that narrates the creation and the God’s glory.

The particles of the universe, all of which are mysterious and are of a complicated structure, all talk about the Purity of Allah and His Might and Power.

Some philosophers assume that all particles of this world possess some sort of intelligence, through which they continually praise and sanctify God.

All angels, too, out of their fear and reverence for God, praise Him.

At the end of the verse, God says: “He sends the thunderbolts and smites with them whom He pleases.

Yet, despite all of these clear signs for God’s Grandeur, some ignorant souls dispute His might and power. But we are sure that God is Mighty in prowess and chastisement.[2]