Bismillāh.
The Prophet (s) said: “Shaʿbān is my month, and Ramadān is the month of God. Whoever fasts a day of my month, I will be his intercessor on the Day of Judgment, and whoever fasts the month of Ramadān will be freed from the Fire.”
Wasā’il al-Shī’ah, vol. 10, p. 503
ٱقْتَرَبَتِ ٱلسَّاعَةُ وَٱنشَقَّ ٱلْقَمَرُ
The Hour has drawn near and the moon is split.
Sūrat al-Qamar, No. 54, Āyat 1
One of the outstanding miracles of the Noble Messenger of Allah sallallāhu ‘alayhi wa ālihi, prolifically narrated by both Sunnī and Shī’ī scholars of hadīth, is that of him splitting the moon (shaqq al-qamar). This story is also referred to in the above verse, the opening verse of Sūrat al-Qamar.
The story is as follows. One year prior to the hijrah, on a night of the full moon, some of the leaders of the polytheists in Makkah approached the Prophet (s). They asked him to perform this miracle saying, “If you are truthful then split for us the moon into two pieces.” The Prophet (s) asked them, “If I do so, will you then believe?” They agreed, upon which the Prophet (s) asked Allah to fulfil their request and indeed the moon did split such that the mountain of Hira was seen to be in the middle of the two pieces of the moon. A short time later these two pieces again came together. Unsurprisingly, the obstinate leaders of the Quraysh still refused to submit, saying “Muhammad has bewitched us.” (Bihār al-Anwār, v. 17, p. 347)
A number of questions have been posed with regards to this account. One is that how can it be possible that the moon split in two and then shortly later returned to its original form? Does this not defy the laws of physics? If the pull of gravity is holding the surface of the moon together it would not allow the moon to split apart, and if it is not holding it together then it would not allow the pieces to once again come together! A second question regarding this account is that how can it be that such a significant celestial event transpired yet no other civilization recorded it? Surely people in the advanced civilizations of that time like Rome, Persia or India would have noticed such an event and recorded it for posterity. Yet no such record has reached us aside from Islamic traditions.
In response to the first objection, it can be said that the nature of a miracle is that it is an extraordinary event that denies normal laws. That is what makes it special; that is how it proves the prophethood of the prophet who performs it! It is not something completely impossible, such as a contradictory claim that for example, 2 is equal to 3. In fact, t is still subject to a system of cause and effect, but its cause is something greater than the apparent causes of the physical world. It is a divine intervention, an immaterial cause that steps in and changes the standard course of events. The same way that the splitting of the moon itself was a miracle and doesn’t need to abide by the laws of physics, similarly the re-joining of the moon can be explained as a miracle.
With regards to the second objection, Muslim scholars have given the following responses. Firstly, it is possible that people in other civilizations simply did not notice this incident that happened over the span of a few minutes. After all, it is not the case that everything that happens in nature is always noticed by people:
وَكَأَيِّن مِّنْ آيَةٍ فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ يَمُرُّونَ عَلَيْهَا وَهُمْ عَنْهَا مُعْرِضُونَ
How many a sign there is in the heavens and the earth that they pass by while they are disregardful of it! (Q 12:105)
Secondly, the land of Makkah was surrounded in those days by illiterate Arabs who did not have astronomers interested in watching the sky. They did not have observatories to observe the moon, and were not likely to take notice of such events let alone record them. The faraway lands that did have scholars and records of history do not share the horizon with Makkah. For example, by the time the sun set in Rome or Greece and the people in those lands looked up at the moon, this miracle would have long finished. As a final point, we do not expect non-Muslims to narrate an account that would help Muslims prove the truth of Islam.
We pray to Allah, by the sake of the Noble Messenger (s) in this blessed month that is associated to him, that He forgive our sins and allow us to enter the month of Ramadān in a state of purity. We ask Him to relieve the Muslim ummah of all the suffering it is going through, by the quick re-appearance of the awaited Mahdi (aj).
Sources: Allāmah Tabātabā’ī, Al-Mīzān.