Myths we don't use

Armstrong denied this repeatedly during his lifetime. In 1983 he was receiving so many invitations to Islamic events that he worked with the US State Department to send a message to embassies in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. The message said that reports of his conversion were inaccurate, and it asked staff to tell enquirers "politely but firmly" that he had not converted. The Moon has no air to carry sound, and the Apollo 11 recordings contain no such episode. Part of the confusion came from his home town, Lebanon, Ohio, which some people mistook for the country.

The photo that circulates shows Rima Ariadaeus, a long, straight valley (a "linear rille") on the Moon's near side. NASA describes rilles of this kind as faults formed by tectonic activity, or possibly as the surface expression of volcanic dikes. They are not a seam that runs around the whole Moon. When a NASA lunar-science institute was asked directly about the claim, its scientist answered that no current scientific evidence shows the Moon was split into two or more parts and then reassembled.

There is no evidence that Cousteau became a Muslim. Forbes reported in 2004 that the rumour still endures in the Muslim world but that his family "has respectfully denied it often". Also, the fact that river water and seawater meet in a mixing zone instead of blending at once was not a discovery of Cousteau's. It is basic estuary science, and it can be seen at river mouths.

In the 1980s several non-Muslim scientists attended conferences in the Muslim world, and short remarks from them have been quoted ever since. The Wall Street Journal (2002) reported that one of the most quoted, the obstetrician Joe Leigh Simpson, is a church-going Presbyterian, and that he now calls some of his remarks "silly and embarrassing" when taken out of context. Keith Moore did co-author a special 1983 edition of his embryology textbook, "with Islamic Additions" by Abdul-Majeed al-Zindani, and spoke favourably at such conferences. By 2002 he declined to be interviewed on the subject, saying it had been about ten years since he was involved with the Quran. We found no statement from Moore himself saying that he became a Muslim. Stories of his conversion circulate without a source.

The "Code 19" theory was popularised in the 1970s and 80s by Rashad Khalifa. His own published appendices show where it led. To make his counts work, he declared that two verses of the Quran (9:128-129) were "false injections" and removed them, and he claimed to be "God's Messenger of the Covenant". Muslim scholars reject both claims. Numerical patterns also depend heavily on choices about what to count (spellings, word forms, which verses to include), so with enough freedom such patterns can be found in any long text. The Quran itself says that the number nineteen (74:30) was given "as a trial" (74:31), not as a proof built on arithmetic.

The verse says that the affair ascends to Allah "in a Day, the extent of which is a thousand years of those which you count". Classical and modern tafsir read it as a statement about Allah's command and the scale of His days, not as a formula. The popular calculation (by Mansour Hassab-Elnaby) only works through choices made after the fact. It counts 12,000 sidereal months (the Moon's 27.3-day orbit), although the months people actually count are the 29.5-day lunar months. It uses a sidereal day, not an ordinary day. It also "screens out" the Sun's effect on the Moon's orbit, an adjustment the verse never mentions. With the months people actually count, the numbers no longer match. Other verses give different lengths of a "day": 1,000 years in 22:47, and 50,000 years for the ascent of the angels and the Spirit in 70:4. A method that gives a different "speed" for each verse is not measuring anything.

This saying is widely quoted, but hadith scholars did not accept it as an authentic statement of the Prophet ﷺ. Ibn Hibban called it baseless (batil), Ibn al-Jawzi placed it among fabricated reports (al-Mawdu'at), and al-Albani judged it baseless (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa, no. 416). Al-Bayhaqi said its wording is famous but its chain is weak, and that it is narrated in several ways, all weak. A few later scholars thought the chains might support each other, but the majority rejected it. It is not in the admitted corpus of this site.

Hadith scholars searched for a chain of narration for this saying and found none. Al-Albani graded it "no basis" (la asla lahu) in al-Silsila al-Da'ifa (no. 57). It may be a later scholar's remark about differing legal opinions, but it is not a saying of the Prophet ﷺ and should not be quoted as one.

The popular wording, "Paradise is beneath the feet of mothers; whom they will they admit…", narrated from Ibn Abbas, was graded fabricated (mawdu') by al-Albani (al-Silsila al-Da'ifa, no. 593). The meaning is still supported by an authentic report with different wording. A man came to the Prophet ﷺ wanting to go on an expedition, and the Prophet ﷺ asked whether he had a mother. When he said yes, he was told, "Then stay with her, for Paradise is beneath her feet" (Sunan an-Nasa'i 3104, graded hasan sahih by al-Albani).