The later idea that Islamic scriptures themselves indicated a spherical Earth was a creative act of reinterpretation. Critics note that clear descriptions and assumptions made in the Qur'an, hadith, tafsirs, and writings of early Islamic scholars demonstrate that Muhammad and his companions did not know the Earth was spherical but in fact held it to be flat and disk like, and this is the framework within which the Qur'an operates.

Evidence does not support any of these claims, despite oft-cited statements from the works of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Hazm (see below). Today, some Islamic scholars claim that Islamic scriptures and their first audiences were fully aware of the spherical shape of the Earth and that this was also a consensus view of early scholars. While knowledge of the spherical shape of the Earth has existed to a greater or lesser degree since at least the classical Greeks (4th Century BCE), such knowledge prominently entered the Islamic milieu in the 9th century CE when many Greek texts were translated into Arabic for the first time under the sponsorship of the Abbasid caliphate. Islamic scriptures imply, adhere to, and describe a flat-Earth cosmography ( arranged in a geocentric system) which conceives of the earth as existing in the form of a large plane or disk. This map depicts 'a traditional Islamic projection of the world as a flat disk surrounded by the sundering seas which are restrained by the encircling mountains of Qaf'. Taken from Zekeriya Kazvinî's 'Acaib-ül Mahlûkat' (The Wonders of Creation).

Flat earth society world map