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Spirit of Islam Issue 35 November 2015
NATURE BEARS WITNESS
To the Glory of God
In all the known
universe, only the
earth permits man
to survive and bring
a civilization into
being.
I
F one were to claim that by mixing crushed pieces of stone with
wood, petrol can be produced, people would laugh at the suggestion.
No man has in him the power to make such things happen. But far
stranger events of such a nature take place in this world every day.
Nature’s chemistry causes innumerable occurrences, which remain
only as an unintelligible mystery to the uninitiated.
Take hydrogen and oxygen, for example. Nature blends these two gases
in a particular proportion and the resulting combination takes the form
of a liquid—crystal clear water. When carbon and hydrogen are mixed
together under certain conditions, crude oil, a very precious thing,
is formed. When certain salts and minerals are mixed with carbon,
life comes into existence. A magnetic field
and movement brought together gives the
astonishing force called electricity. In a similar
way, when a magnetic field and electricity are
brought together, an immensely powerful
movement comes into being. When a seed is
sown in the soil, it is transformed into wood,
leaves, flowers and fruits.
Innumerable miracles like these keep
occurring at any given moment. On seeing
them, man is dumbfounded. He realises that
none of these objects have any power to come into existence on their
own, nor does man possess the power to create any of these things.
How, then, is all this happening?
In an attempt to explain this, some people claim that all of this is a part
or component (
Ansh
) of God. It is God Himself Who is manifesting in
innumerable forms.
The Quran, however, rejects such explanations as misleading. According
to the Quran, these things are not part of God, but are created at His
command (
hukm
). God has created them by His power, rather than
manifesting Himself in those forms.
For ages, the stars have remained at the centre of the romantic
imagination of poets. Since antiquity, man has considered the sun and
moon as gods. The truth, however, is that these are nothing of the sort.