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enter image description hereSo I have this article that was sent to me by a friend of mine and it pertains to a ruling in the Quran (that declares that silk and gold are forbidden for men to wear). So the article claims that gold lowers ones semen count and causes it to fragment(or something like that). The reason I think its nonsensical is because(correct me if I'm wrong) gold is inert and can't interact with the human body. So I wanted to ask here to see what people(without any biases) would think of the article, I've attached a screenshot of the part of the article in question along with a link to the study with the full text:

http://jhsme.muq.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-26-30&slc_lang=en&sid=1

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    is the gold ban referring to just consumption (I didn't know that needed to be banned) or any form of handling or even proximity (in which case what's the supposed mechanism)?
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 12:11
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    Even if it did work, what's the baseline for metal consumed as nanoparticles showing up in semen? If not unique in its effects why is it unique in its "forbiddance"? But anyway, more broadly, yes there is a lot of work attempting to attach scientific validity to spiritual realities in Islam (and other religions), and it tends to be highly groanworthy. I mean, even the mechanism suggested here is entirely ad hoc. But the real intention of the "forbiddance", to prevent vanity, is easy to verify in the context of the ancient Near East, and biological corroborations are totally beside the point.
    – Luke Sawczak
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 12:39
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    Welcome Cameron, we invite you to take our tour and refer to the help center as and when for guidance as to our ways. Enjoy Skeptics.
    – Jiminy Cricket.
    Commented Jun 19, 2021 at 14:38
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    Thanks for the link. The statement in the title is false: The study DOES NOT SAY wearing gold lowers one's semen count. Please link to someone who DOES say that, or change the claim to be what the paper does say: Semen from healthy men contains trace amounts of gold.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 15:13
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    The paper asks in the title "Why is gold forbidden [...]?" and never answers it. It concludes there are trace amounts of gold in semen. It says further study is needed to determine whether has an effect on fertility. The last statement in the abstract is confusing. This paper doesn't claim what you want it to claim. If you want to ask "Does wearing gold impair fertility?" there are a lot of other sources you could use instead, but we can't strawman the claims here.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Jun 23, 2021 at 11:37

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The commandment in Islam is that men should not wear gold, I.e. jewelry (https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5864) It is actually not forbidden to swallow gold for medical purposes, which was also occasionally done in the times of Muhammad (p.b.u.h) although the benefits were and still are disputed. (Renzo Console, 2013. "Pharmaceutical use of gold from antiquity to the seventeenth century", A History of Geology and Medicine, C. J. Duffin, R. T. J. Moody, C. Gardner-Thorpe)

Wearing jewelry, however, does not lead to significant quantities of gold in the body. Discussions on heavy metal from jewellery deal with alloys containing Cadmium, Lead, Nickel and other components but the gold by itself is hardly considered harmful.

experiment is hence unsuitable to give a physiological reason for the religious rule.

The existence of nano gold in semen is not unlikely because gold is very inert, and heavy metal in general stays in the body for a long time.

The proof that this has an impact is missing but implicitly assumed. I found an other article without citation that is likely to refer to this source but no scientific paper on the subject.

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  • Thank you so much this clears it up for me, but what I don't understand is why my question was flagged as off topic isn't this the stack exchange for these types of questions?
    – user59726
    Commented Jun 21, 2021 at 3:18
  • @CameronGuinn I am new to this site (mainly active on Islam se). Please post your remark under your question not under my answer so that the moderators see it
    – Jeschu
    Commented Jun 21, 2021 at 5:03
  • @CameronGuinn: Actually, we may not see it there, either. Best flag it if you want moderator attention.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Jun 21, 2021 at 7:26
  • Gold, like all heavy metals, is poisonous. It would be possible, with a little ingenuity, to take it into the body it in a way that would cause organic damage. But why?
    – RedSonja
    Commented Jun 28, 2021 at 7:40