In Surah An-Naml (27:88), the Quran declares:
"And you see the mountains, thinking them firmly fixed, but they pass like clouds. Such is the work of Allah, who perfected all things."
This verse describes an astonishing phenomenon: mountains, which we perceive as immobile and eternal, are in fact in perpetual motion, "like clouds". This image corresponds remarkably to what modern geology established in the 20th century.
In 1912, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift: continents move across the surface of the globe. His theory, initially rejected, was confirmed in the 1960s through the discovery of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. The Earth's crust is divided into about a dozen rigid plates that move a few centimeters per year.
Mountain ranges are the direct witnesses of this movement. The Himalayas, for example, result from the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate, and continue to rise by about 5 millimeters per year. The Andes, meanwhile, arise from the subduction of the Nazca plate beneath the South American plate. Mountains do indeed "pass", on the scale of geological time, like clouds in the sky.
Note on scholarly rigor: it should be noted that many Muslim exegetes interpret this verse as a description of the events of the Day of Judgment, when mountains will be set in motion and then reduced to dust. The convergence with plate tectonics is therefore plausible and remarkable, but it does not enjoy unanimous exegetical consensus. The verse is cited here as a possible illustration, in the spirit of Maurice Bucaille's approach, without claiming an exclusive interpretation.