Muslim 304 is the Muslim-collection version of the sun-cosmology hadith (the Bukhari version was treated under entry b06). The two versions are substantively similar but have distinct chains and slightly different wording. Both record Muhammad teaching that the sun travels each day to a specific location beneath Allah's Throne, prostrates, asks permission to rise, and is granted permission until eventually permission is denied and the sun is commanded to rise from the west — the eschatological sign of the Last Day.

The Muslim version is treated separately because: 1. It is in Sahih Muslim, the second-highest-rated Sunni collection, providing independent attestation. 2. The wording differs slightly from Bukhari, indicating multiple authentic transmissions of similar content. 3. The eschatological coda (sun will eventually rise from the west) is more emphasised in this version.

The scientific issues are identical to those discussed in entry b06: the sun is a star ~150 million km from Earth, with no spatial 'beneath' relative to a celestial throne, and no mechanism for prostration or for asking permission. The cosmology described is pre-modern flat-earth/geocentric, matching pre-Islamic Near Eastern myth (Egyptian Ra in his solar barque, Babylonian sun-god, Greek Helios) but not actual astronomy. Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543) established that the Earth orbits the sun — not the reverse — making any framework in which the sun 'travels to' a fixed spatial point beneath a throne incoherent on basic heliocentric terms.

The additional eschatological claim — that the sun will eventually 'rise from where it sets' — is a major Islamic eschatological sign of the Last Day. The hadith claims that, at some future point, Allah will deny the sun permission to rise, and the sun will instead rise from the west. This is repeatedly mentioned in eschatological hadith (Bukhari 7121, Muslim 248) as one of the major signs of the Hour.

The theological problems specific to this version:

1. Eschatological prediction tied to wrong cosmology. The 'sun will rise from the west' eschatological sign depends on the underlying cosmology being correct. If the sun does not actually 'travel to and from' specific locations, the predicted eschatological event is incoherent. Modern astronomical reality — that 'sunrise' is a perspectival illusion of Earth's rotation — means the sun cannot 'rise from the west' in any literal sense unless Earth's rotation is reversed. This is a different eschatological claim than the hadith makes; the hadith specifies a sun that is being given or denied permission to rise.

2. The Quranic interpretation. Muhammad explicitly interprets Q 36:38 ('the sun runs to a resting place') as referring to this cosmology. This means a Quranic verse is being given a tafsir that requires pre-modern flat-earth cosmology. The verse cannot be re-interpreted to refer to modern stellar physics without abandoning Muhammad's own interpretive guidance. Ibn Kathir's Tafsir al-Qur'an al-'Azim confirms this exegetical commitment: citing the same Abu Dharr hadith on Q 36:38, Ibn Kathir explains that the sun's 'fixed course' refers to its location beneath the Throne, and that the Throne is 'the roof of creation,' not a sphere as astronomers claim, but 'a dome supported by legs or pillars, carried by the angels, above the universe' — a thoroughly geocentric cosmological model presented as authoritative Quranic interpretation. Ibn Kathir adds that at midnight, when the sun is at its furthest point from the Throne, it prostrates and requests permission to rise — precisely the cosmology the Abu Dharr hadith describes.

3. Cross-collection independent attestation. Muslim 304 + Bukhari 3201 = two of the most authoritative collections both recording the sun-prostration cosmology. The redundancy makes the teaching difficult to dismiss as a one-off transmission error. The doctrine is solidly anchored in the canonical record.

4. The 'sun's eventual disobedience' problem. The hadith implies that the sun has agency — it 'asks permission,' 'returns,' is 'commanded.' This personifies the sun in a way consistent with pre-modern animism. The same agency-language is used elsewhere (the sun 'prostrates,' the sun 'travels'). The cumulative picture is a sun-as-agent cosmology, not a stellar-physics cosmology.

5. Modern impact. The sun-prostration hadith continues to be cited in Islamic eschatological literature. Modern apologetic responses have attempted to reconcile the prostration language with post-Copernican science — claiming the 'prostration' refers to the sun's motion through the galaxy, or to the orbits described by general relativity. These reconciliation attempts are exegetical reach: the hadith specifies a daily event at a spatially localised point beneath a Throne, directed at a personalised sun that requests and receives permission — none of which maps onto solar physics. Mohammad Ali Tabatabaʾi and Saida Mirsadri, in "The Qurʾānic Cosmology, as an Identity in Itself" (Arabica, 2016), caution against exactly this anachronism: the Qur'anic and exegetical cosmos is a self-contained pre-modern system — a stationary earth beneath a domed heaven — and reading post-Copernican astronomy back into it distorts what its authors and earliest commentators, as the Ibn Kathir and al-Nawawi traditions show, plainly assumed. The pattern of reading post-Copernican science back into texts whose authors assumed a geocentric universe is a recurring feature of modern Islamic scientific apologetics generally.