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Dr. Hossam Badrawi writes for Al-Mawqi‘: In the Beginning Was Movement

Why does everything move and rotate?

If we contemplate the universe deeply, we will discover a truth that neither the eye nor the mind can deny:

Nothing is still… everything moves.
From the smallest particles in the nucleus of an atom, to the largest galaxies at the edges of the universe;
from the flow of blood in human veins, to the circulation of ideas in consciousness.

Movement is not a secondary feature of existence—it is its fundamental condition.

Rotation is the silent language of the universe.
It does not move in a straight line.
It knows no stillness and recognizes no stagnation.

Electrons orbit the nucleus.
The Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the Sun.
The Sun moves within its galaxy, and galaxies themselves are in constant motion.

Even time, which we imagine as linear, is lived in cycles:
day and night, seasons, birth, growth, and aging.

It is as if the universe is telling us, silently:
movement is not chaos—it is a higher order.

The stationary observer may assume that motion is disorder,
but science tells us otherwise.

Rotation creates balance, prevents collapse, distributes energy, and preserves continuity.
If the Earth stopped rotating, its balance would be lost.
If the heart stopped beating, the body would die.
If thought froze, the mind would die—even if the body remained alive.

Movement is order at a depth too profound to be easily seen.

Evolution is not merely a change in form, but a movement in understanding.
Humanity evolved when it left the cave, when it questioned instead of submitting, when it doubted and thus understood, when it erred and then learned.

Societies that halted their intellectual movement preserved form, but lost spirit.
Progress does not happen because time passes, but because it turns.

Even great ideas do not grow in straight lines.
Every living philosophy returns to the question, revises itself, and circles truth from multiple angles.

But an idea that is frozen and sanctified without movement transforms from guiding light into historical burden.

Here lies the paradox:
Religion, in its essence, is a movement of consciousness.
But rigid religiosity turns it into deadly stagnation.

Faith is not in stopping at the first understanding, but in continuous movement around meaning.

The universe grows only through movement—and so does life.
Growth does not occur in comfort, but in friction.

Muscles strengthen through motion.
The mind matures through questioning.
The soul expands through experience.

Every attempt to freeze life at a single moment is an unconscious resistance to a cosmic law.
What does not move… decays.

Wisdom lies neither in blind motion nor in clinging to stillness under the name of stability,
but in conscious movement—one that understands existence as a journey, and that stopping is not a station… but an end.


This line of thought led me to a cosmic approach to understanding consciousness in the Qur’an.

When we read the Qur’an through a cosmic lens—not merely a linguistic one—we discover that it does not present a historical narrative of creation, but an existential vision of the nature of the universe, its laws, and humanity’s relationship with them.

The first striking feature of this vision is that the Qur’anic universe is not static, nor completed in a single moment.
It is a reality in continuous motion and ongoing formation.

Stability is not the origin—movement is.
Stillness is not the rule—change is.

In the Qur’an, the universe is a verb, not a noun.
It is not described as a “thing,” but as an ongoing act:

“He directs the matter from the heaven to the earth”
“Every day He is in a state of action”
“And the heaven We built with strength, and indeed, We are expanding it.”

Creation here is not a finished event, but a continuous process.
Existence is not a static condition, but motion under divine governance.

This aligns perfectly with modern science:
an expanding universe, transforming energy, systems that emerge and change.

Movement is a condition of existence, not its result.

In contemporary physics, there is no such thing as absolute stillness.
Even emptiness teems with quantum fluctuations, and even “stable” particles are defined only by their motion.

This opens a profound Qur’anic contemplative question:

Can creation be understood as motion set in motion, rather than matter placed in space?

The Qur’an does not say that God “placed” the universe, but that He created, fashioned, proportioned, and guided—all verbs of movement.

When it says:

“His command, when He intends a thing, is only that He says to it: ‘Be,’ and it is.”

This “saying” is not a spoken sound, but the release of a law of existence.
“Be” is not a letter—it is a transition from potential to actuality,
from non-being stillness to existential motion,
from timelessness into time.

Here we reach a profound reconciliation between:
“In the beginning was the Word”
and
“In the beginning was movement.”

And we can state clearly:

If creation is movement,
and consciousness is movement,
and time is movement—
then stillness is not rest,
but a departure from the law of existence.

Dr. Hossam Badrawi

He is a politician, intellect, and prominent physician. He is the former head of the Gynecology Department, Faculty of Medicine Cairo University. He conducted his post graduate studies from 1979 till 1981 in the United States. He was elected as a member of the Egyptian Parliament and chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee in the Parliament from 2000 till 2005. As a politician, Dr. Hossam Badrawi was known for his independent stances. His integrity won the consensus of all people from various political trends. During the era of former president Hosni Mubarak he was called The Rationalist in the National Democratic Party NDP because his political calls and demands were consistent to a great extent with calls for political and democratic reform in Egypt. He was against extending the state of emergency and objected to the National Democratic Party's unilateral constitutional amendments during the January 25, 2011 revolution. He played a very important political role when he defended, from the very first beginning of the revolution, the demonstrators' right to call for their demands. He called on the government to listen and respond to their demands. Consequently and due to Dr. Badrawi's popularity, Mubarak appointed him as the NDP Secretary General thus replacing the members of the Bureau of the Commission. During that time, Dr. Badrawi expressed his political opinion to Mubarak that he had to step down. He had to resign from the party after 5 days of his appointment on February 10 when he declared his political disagreement with the political leadership in dealing with the demonstrators who called for handing the power to the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore, from the very first moment his stance was clear by rejecting a religion-based state which he considered as aiming to limit the Egyptians down to one trend. He considered deposed president Mohamed Morsi's decision to bring back the People's Assembly as a reinforcement of the US-supported dictatorship. He was among the first to denounce the incursion of Morsi's authority over the judicial authority, condemning the Brotherhood militias' blockade of the Supreme Constitutional Court. Dr. Hossam supported the Tamarod movement in its beginning and he declared that toppling the Brotherhood was a must and a pressing risk that had to be taken few months prior to the June 30 revolution and confirmed that the army would support the legitimacy given by the people

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