Page 173
wa-ʾidh ʾakhadha rabbuka min banī ʾādama min ẓuhūrihim dhurriyyatahum wa-ʾashhadahum ʿalā ʾanfusihim ʾa-lastu bi-rabbikum qālū balā shahidnā ʾan taqūlū yawma l-qiyāmati ʾinnā kunnā ʿan hādhā ghāfilīna
When your Lord took from the Children of Adam, from their loins, their descendants and made them bear witness over themselves, [He said to them,] ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said, ‘Yes indeed! We bear witness.’ [This,] lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘Indeed we were unaware of this,’
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah al-‘Araf – Verse 172
172 . “And (remember) when your Lord took from the children of Adam, from their backs, their descendants and made them bear witness over themselves, (and said): ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said: ‘Yes! We do bear witness.’ (This We did) lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection: ‘Verily we were unaware of this’.”
The Qur’ānic term /ŏurriyah/ means small children, but it is often used for all the children of a person. The circumstance of Allah’s taking covenant from the children of Adam has not been stated in this verse. As some Islamic traditions indicate, after the creation of Adam, all his progenies came out from his back in the form of some intelligent particles and were addressed by the Lord. They confessed to the Lordship of Allah. Then, all of them returned back to the loin and soil of Adam, in order to come into this world gradually and naturally. This world is called the world of ‘Tharr’ and that covenant is called the ‘covenant of ‘Alast’ or ‘the world of pre-existence’.
The purpose of the world of ‘Tharr’, maybe, is the same world of talents, and the covenant of innate disposition and creation. That is, at the time of departure of Adam’s children from the loins of fathers into the wombs of mothers in the shape of sperm, which are not more than some minutes, Allah sets the talent and nature of monotheism and seeking truth in their constitution and this divine secret, as an innate sense, is settled in the institution and natural disposition of everybody.
The help of Allah reflects in their intellect in the form of a self-cognizance fact. Allah has asked them through the tongue of creation, and they have answered through the same tongue, too. We should know that Allah has established monotheism in the innate disposition and constitution of humankind. The verse says:
Thus, human beings can observe the sense of theism in the depth of their own selves, since they have confessed it in the world of pre-existence.