Editing Screen: Surah Fatir 35 : 11

Editing: Fatir

Description <p><strong>Explanatory Note</strong></p> <p>Having referred to the fact that all life starts with water, the sūrah now refers to the start of man’s own life, beginning with pregnancy and followed by a term in this world, which can be long or short as God determines.</p> <p>Reference to man’s origin as a creature made from dust in the first place is often mentioned in the Qur’ān, as is the first element in producing a pregnancy, namely the gamete. While a gamete is something that carries the potential of life, dust has no trace of life. The first miracle is life’ itself, and no one knows where it came from or how it was mixed with the first element. This remains a closed book as far as humanity is concerned. Yet it is a fact we all see and have no option but to accept and recognize. The evidence it provides, pointing to the Creator who gives life, is irrefutable.</p> <p>The transformation that gives life to what is lifeless represents a bridge over a gap that is far greater than any distance in time and place. Contemplating such transformation will never tire a mind that looks at the great secrets of the universe. Again, the gap separating the stage of one cell, a gamete, from that of a fully formed embryo, when a male is distinguished from a female, is again too wide to imagine. It is to this latter stage that the Qur’ān refers in the sentence, <strong>“He makes you into pairs (males and females),”</strong> whether this is a reference to a couple, male and female, in the embryo stage, or to married couples after they have become adults. How far removed is the one-cell gamete from the greatly complex human constitution which includes numerous systems and functions, and also from a human being with its many characteristics?</p> <p>Next comes an image of God’s absolute knowledge, which is akin to the images given in the preceding sūrah, Sheba: “<strong>No female conceives or gives birth without His knowledge.”</strong> The reference here is not merely to women, but to all females, including animals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects and others which we may or may not know about. All of them conceive and give birth, including those which lay eggs. An egg is an embryo which does not fully develop inside its mother’s body. It is laid in the form of an egg, and is then incubated, either by its mother or in an incubator, until it completes its development, and breaks its shell to continue its growth. God’s knowledge includes every conception, of every form, and every birth throughout the universe.</p> <p>The same applies to the reference to age in the same verse: <strong>“No one attains to old age or has his life cut short unless it be thus laid down in [God’s] decree. All this is easy for God." </strong>Let our imagination follow every living thing in the universe, including trees, birds, animals, humans and others, with their different shapes, sizes, kinds, races, abodes and times. No one can imagine the total number of all these. Yet imagine that every single one of them may be allowed to attain to old age, or may have its life cut short, and that whatever happens is according to specific knowledge concerning this individual, and indeed concerning every part of every individual. A leaf in a tree may be allowed to remain green, extending its life span, or it may dry up and fall. A bird’s feather may remain in its wing or fall and he blown by the wind. A horn may remain in an animal or get broken in a quarrel. A human eye, or a hair, may stay or be removed. Yet all this occurs in accordance with specific knowledge which is ‘laid down in God’s decree’ that is part of His comprehensive knowledge. It neither requires an effort nor constitutes a burden: <strong>“All this is easy for God.” </strong></p>

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