Al Rūm

وَمِنْ ءَايَاتِهِ أَنْ خَلَقَكُم مِن تُرَابٍ ثُمَّ إِذَآ أَنتُم بَشَرٌ تَنتَشِرُونَ

20. “And one of His signs is that He created you from dust, and then, behold, you are human beings scattered (in the world).”

The best way of theology is contemplation in creation. The signs of Allah are not countable; what is mentioned contains a few ones from a great deal of them. This verse, as well as a part of the later verses, reiterates some interesting points from among the proofs of Monotheism and signs of Allah in the system of the world of existence, and it completes the former discussions. It can be said that these very noble verses, on the whole, form an important part of the monotheistic verses of the Qur’an.

These verses, all of which begin with “one of His signs” and have a special harmony, an interesting tone, and deep and effective meaning with each other, have totally been formed by seven verses, six of which are consecutive and one of them is separate from others.¹ These seven verses have an interesting division from the point of extroversive verses and introversive verses. Three verses are about the introversive verses (the signs of Allah in the man’s self, and three verses are about extroversive verses, (the signs of the greatness of Allah outside of man’s self), and one verse talks about both of them.

It is interesting that the verses which begin with this sentence are not more than eleven that seven of them have occurred in this very Surah, Ar-Room, and two verses are mentioned in Surah Fussilat, No. 41², and two verses are in Surah Shawra, No. 42³. All of these eleven noble verses are truly as a complete collection about Monotheism. Before beginning the commentary of these verses, it is necessary to mention that though what is stated in these verses, at first, is understandable for almost all people, but by the development of man’s knowledge in every field some new points are gradually revealed to the scientists, a part of which will be pointed out through the commentary of these verses.

At first, here the Qur’an refers to the creation of man for whom is the first and the most important merit of Allah. It says:

In this verse two signs of the greatness of Allah (s.w.t.) are pointed out: one is the creation of man from dust, which may be a hint to the creation of the first man, i.e. Adam, or the creation of all humankind from dust, because foodstuff, which constructs the man’s being, directly or indirectly, is wholly taken from dust. The second matter is the increase of man and that Adam’s children are scattered throughout the earth. If the speciality of scattering human beings were not created in Adam’s offspring, man would be destroyed soon and his posterity could be vanished.

Verily, how far is the distance between the dust and the man with these delicacies! If we compare the delicate curtains inside the eye, which are more delicate, sensitive and tender than a petal, or the extraordinary delicate and sensitive cells of mind, with dust we will then understand how Excellent is the Lord Who has applied an amazing power to produce such sensitive, exact, and worthy systems from dust, a dark and worthless matter? Dust itself has neither light, nor warmth, nor beauty, nor freshness, nor movement, but it is the origin of man with these wonderful qualities.

The One Who, from such a dead being that is counted as the lowest beings, produces a wonderful living creature such as man, is worthy of any kind of praise for this His endless power and knowledge:

By the way, this statement points to this fact that there is no difference between human beings and the origin of all of them is one thing. All human beings have an unbreakable relation with dust and, naturally, they all will finally return to the dust, too. It is noteworthy that in the Arabic language the word /’iŏa/ is usually used for the things which often suddenly occur. The application of it here may point to the fact that Allah gave such an ability of proliferation to man that in a short time suddenly his progeny scattered throughout the world and brought the organized human society into being.