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On September 16, 1978, there was an eclipse of the moon in Riyadh. Late one afternoon it became visible: a dark shadow moving slowly across the face of the pale moon in the darkening blue sky. There was a frantic knocking on the door. When I opened it, our neighbor asked if we were safe. He said it was the Day of Judgement, when the Quran says the sun will rise from the west and the seas will flood, when all the dead will rise and Allah's angels will weigh our sins and virtue, expediting the good to Paradise and the bad to Hell. Though it was barely twilight, the muezzin suddenly called for prayer--not one mosque calling carefully after another, as they usually did, but all the mosques clamoring all at once, all over the city. There was shouting across the neighborhood. When I looked outside I saw people praying in the street.

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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Allah's Apostle [Muhammad (peace be upon him)] said, "The deeds of anyone of you will not save you (from the fire [of hell])." They asked, "Even you (will not be saved by your deeds), O Allah's Apostle?" He said, "No, even I (will not be saved) unless and until Allah bestows His mercy on me. Therefore, do good deeds properly, sincerely and moderately, and worship Allah in the forenoon and in the afternoon and during a part of the night, and always adopt a middle, moderate, regular course whereby you will reach your target (Paradise).

 

Holy Prophet Muhammad

 

Afterwards that incomparable Philosopher Sir Isaac Newton, improv'd the hint, and wrote so amply upon this Subject as to make the Theory of the Tides his own, by shewing that the Waters of the Sea rise under the Moon and the Place opposite to it: For Kepler believ'd "that the Impetus occasion'd by the presence of the Moon, by the absence of the Moon, occasions another Impetus; till the Moon returning, stops and moderates the Force of that Impetus, and carries it round with its motion." Therefore this Spheroidical Figure which stands out above the Sphere (like two Mountains, the one under the Moon and the other in the place opposite to it) together with the Moon (which it follows) is carried by the Diurnal Motion, (or rather, according to the truth of the matter, as the Earth turns towards the East it leaves those Eminencies of Water, which being carried by their own motion slowly towards the East, are as it were unmov'd) in its journey makes the Water swell twice and sink twice in the space of 25 Hours, in which time the Moon being gone from the Meridian of any Place, returns to it again.

 

Johannes Kepler

 

In the heavens, the Sun and Moon are, by interpreters of dreams, put for the persons of Kings and Queens; but in sacred Prophecy, which regards not single persons, the Sun is put for the whole species and race of Kings, in the kingdom or kingdoms of the world politic, shining with regal power and glory; the Moon for the body of the common people, considered as the King's wife; the Stars for subordinate Princes and great men, or for Bishops and Rulers of the people of God, when the Sun is Christ; light for the glory, truth, and knowledge, wherewith great and good men shine and illuminate others; darkness for obscurity of condition, and for error, blindness and ignorance; darkening, smiting, or setting of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, for the ceasing of a kingdom, or for the desolation thereof, proportional to the darkness; darkening the Sun, turning the Moon into blood, and falling of the Stars, for the same; new Moons, for the return of a dispersed people into a body politic or ecclesiastic.

 

Isaac Newton

 

Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight — a lunar eclipse, a new moon.
A new moon. I shivered, though I wasn't cold.

 

Stephenie Meyer

 

Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

 

Paul Bowles