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50.0%ANMag Issue 24 Global Awareness
Unity in Diversity
By Ali Sadeeq, Staff Writer
Kano, Nigeria − Q39:6 "He created you all from one being."
It is known that in so far as life and living matter can be investigated by science, plants and animals cannot be described as being alive in different degrees. Animals and plants are closely related. They are alike in their fundamental characters, and the actual boundaries between plants and animals are artificial and are based solely on the ingenious analysis of the systems. The most obvious distinction is that the animal's cell wall is either absent or composed of nitrogenous materials, whereas the plant cell wall is composed of carbohydrate material known as the cellulose.
All forms of life on this planet are found in cells or are the product of the activity of cells. The cell has no counter part in natural inanimate objects except perhaps the atom. The cellular structures of all cells are the modulation of a common plan. Plants and animals require food to repair waste, build up new tissues and provide materials, which, by chemical change may liberate the energy, and this appears in the process of life. Both have the same general chemical composition being made up of water, inorganic salts, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Both take their water and inorganic salt directly as such.
The distinction between plants and animals is in fact obviously secondary and adaptive and points clearly towards the conception of common origin for the two forms of life; a conception which is still more probable by the existence of many low forms of life (the protist), in which the primary difference between plants and animals fades out. Besides, in the above verse God said we all came through "one being" and not one man as popularly assumed.
Water
God told us in the Qur’an chapter:
Q21:30: "We have made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?"
And in the Old Testament:
Genesis 1:20: And God said "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life."
Science has already established that the first emergence of life on this planet from inorganic beginnings had only happened once in the history of the earth from water. The first living cell emerged in an aquatic habitat about 3.5 billion years ago. The ozonosphere was in the process of accumulation, not developed enough to protect organisms on land. At that stage, under these conditions life was only possible deep inside the ocean at which depth all the ultraviolet rays would have been absorbed.
In the above verse, God told us he created every living thing (plants, animals and protists) from water. You may ask, are all living things adaptable to water? Of course not. Rather, God is telling us that the first form of life to have emerged was from water, which subsequently gave rise to all forms of life. Scientists have remarkably explained how chemicals in the oceans with the aid of other external agencies helped in making the first living cell to emerge. How does it manage to produce its descendants?
Mate (Eve)
After the creation of Adam (the first living cell), God decided to evolve all other living things from him. For this task, there must be an agency that will be responsible for the procreation because for any new individual to be brought into being, there must be cooperation between the male and the female sex organs (sperm or spermatozoa and ovum or egg).
God says in Qur’an chapter:
Q7:18: "It is he who created you from a single person and made his mate of like nature, in order that he might dwell with her (in love)."
And in the Bible:
Genesis 3:20: "And Adam called his wife’s name Eve: because she was the mother of all living."
So from the single cell, within its parts, God creates the opposite sex "of like nature," possessing the same constitution and properties. We all know that sexuality is not an either/or determination. Some organisms (like the first living cell) reproduce by simple meiosis, just as ordinary cells do. Some organisms produce both sperm and egg (the Hermaphrodites) while other organisms have the opposite sex in separate organisms.
The reproductive process of all living organisms shows the male sex cell always seeking the female sex cell and they have affinity for each other, which is the love mentioned in the above verse. The first being God created was Adam whom God planned to be the progenitor of all living things, not only Humans, as the majority of people wrongly assume. He created Adam (the first living cell) in water and programmed him with all the information and the biochemical processes (the chromosomes and genes) that subsequently gave rise to all other classes of living things. And that is what God says "Taught Adam the nature of all things," not only humans but also the whole animal, plant and protist kingdoms. To a lesser degree, we can also see that any individual comes into existence after the fertilization of the ovum by a sperm, which produce a zygote. This microscopic cell undergoes a process of proliferation and differentiation that develops into a fully-matured individual.
The first living cell gave rise to all other cells and is no more over-whelming than the zygote producing an individual with billions of cells. The basic genetic mechanism is fundamentally the same in all living things.
In further elaboration God says:
Q39:6: "He created you all from one being, and then from that being he made its mate. And he provided for you eight heads of animals kind. He created you in wombs of your mothers; he created you in stages one after another. In three veils of darkness. Such is God, your lord and cherisher".
This verse in a nutshell summarizes evolution. Islamic scholars, when explaining this verse tend to restrict the meaning to only creation in the womb. Their difficulty arises in the inclusion of animals in the verse (they could not fathom the roles of animals in the scheme of things), as they lack evolutionary knowledge.
In another verse in chapter:
Q36:71: God says "Do they not see that it is we who created for them -from that which our hands have fashioned- cattle which are under their dominion?"
God here is calling on mankind for twelve centuries to understand that all animals have evolved from "that which God’s hand have fashioned." What is that specifically?
God supplied the answer in the next two chapters:
Q38:75: (God) said:" O Iblis (Satan)! What prevents you from prostrating yourself to one whom I have created with my own hands?"
Adam, the first living cell, is the only one created by God's own hands, meaning he is the only one to come directly out of inorganic matter. All others came through existing living parents or parent. Adam is the progenitor of humans as well as animals as the above two verses confirm. The former verse was talking about three stages of evolutionary development, which God calls "the three veils of darkness". One, we all came from that first living cell which contained all the information needed to develop into the three kingdoms (some scientist are now calling for four or five kingdoms, the bacterial and viruses apart). Then back to our kingdom, the animal kingdom: God ordered the division of the kingdom into eight heads. Those are:
1. Kingdom: This is the division between the three forms of living organisms that exist in this planet, namely the plants, animals and protists. The animal kingdom is distinguished from the other two as God says in chapter:
Q29:60: "How many are the creatures that carry not their own sustenance".
More than half of about three million species that populated this planet are animals, and all animals are incapable of synthesizing carbohydrates and proteins from inorganic or simple organic substances but must ingest them in complex form as food, and they have freedom of spatial movement.
On the other hand, plants are capable of synthesizing carbohydrates and proteins from inorganic or simple organic substances, and they do not have freedom of spatial movement. For protests, they combine the characteristics of both kingdom; e.g. bacteria and protozoa.
2. Phylum: This constitutes the primary division of the animal kingdom into vertebrates and invertebrates
3. Class: Those that have similarities common to the group but differ from members categorized in primary group together; e.g. mammals
4. Order: Composed of families of similar construction; e.g. carnivores and omnivores
5. Family: Composed of those genera having certain characteristics in common; e.g. cats, tigers, and lions.
6. Genus: These are species that are structurally or phylogenetically related or consisting of isolated species showing universal differences; e.g. horses and zebras are of the same genus.
7. Species: Those with common characteristic, being genetically distinctive and reproductively isolated natural population; e.g. Homo sapiens.
8. Variety: Which is the geographical distribution of a population that differs from each other in minor details; e.g. in dogs you have the spaniel and shepherd.
Every individual came into being through the process of fertilization of an ovum and through the process of proliferation and differentiation of that single cell; he develops into a new individual with full pledge organs composing of billions of cells. God calls these processes "stages" and "veil of darkness"; can anyone explain better?