Part 10

Reflect on what He iterated in His book concerning the beginning of creation and re-creation, calling you meanwhile to ponder over all this, for no reason but to increase the benefit you have from it and to guide you to the truth. Do not feel bored by the length of this chapter and the repetition in it, because it aims to drive the lesson home, since it is badly needed, and can prove to be greatly beneficial. Consider, then, what the Lord has privileged you with, raising you above all ignorant animals: He made you stand upright, sit comfortably, receive things, and approach any object at will, thereby enabling you to take care of things, have control of them, and manipulate them. If you were like the four-legged animals facing downward, your uniqueness would have not crystallized and come to light, and you would not have fulfilled much of your potential.

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Layers of the Epidermis

The active layers are two; the upper layer is pushed upwards, turning into the granulated outormost layer Below this, the cells constantly divide,

upwards to the scaly layer.

* The skin’s thickness ranges from .5 mm in the eyelids to 6 mm on the heels of the feet. Apart from some exceptions, like the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, the skin is covered with hair, whose density ranges from 40 to more than 800 per cm?. There are, in addition, 300 sweat pores in each square centimetre. A pore allows liquids to pass out of the body, but does not allow liquids from outside the body to pass inside, as they have one-way valves.

* There are, below the surface of the skin, about 515 million ‘air conditioners’ of the body. A sweat gland acts as a conditioner, as the evaporation of the sweat

through the skin absorbs a remarkable amount of body temperature. The skin’s surface, which is 1.8 square metres, is unequally spotted with sweat glands. A sweat gland is a long twisting tubule that pumps sweat, and has special characteristics. It has a secreting capacity of about one litre per day. The total length of the sweat glands that are below the skin surface is about 4-5 kms.

Allah’s honouring of man

We read in the Qur’an:

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“Verily We have honoured the children of Adam. We carry them on the land and the sea, and have made provision of good things for them, and have preferred them above many of those whom We created with a marked preferment.”(17: 70)

Glorified be the Lord, who bestowed on man all aspects of honour: mind, knowledge, expression, speech, appearance, good looks, impressive aspect, fair stature, the acquisition of sciences through inference, reflection, and the upholding of righteous, decent ethics, such as loyalty, obedience and responsiveness. There is a world of difference between his state as a drop of clotted blood inside the womb, and his state when the angel will come to greet him in the Gardens of Eden!

The world is a village and a believer is its chief. Everyone is eager to work in his interest, and everybody

has been directed to serve him and endeavour to run his errands. The angels, who are bearers of the Compassionate’s throne, and those around it, pray in his favour; the angels who are assigned to accompany him protect him; the angels who are entrusted with rain and plants work hard to ensure that he gets his allotted earning, and they work for that; the orbiting bodies of heaven are obediently moving to fulfill his needs; the sun, moon, and stars run dutifully in their orbits so that he may refer to them in setting his times and schedules, and in taking care of the expenses of his property; space is subservient to him — its winds, air, clouds, birds and the rest of its creatures; the earth is all controlled to be in his service, to fulfil his needs — its land, mountains, seas, rivers, trees, fruits, plants, animals and all that exists on it. This is the meaning of the following Qur’anic verses:

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“Allah it is Who has made the sea of service unto you that the ships may run thereon by His command, and that you may seek of His bounty, and that haply you may be thankful; and has made of service unto you whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth; it is all from Him. Lo! herein verily are portents for people who

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“Allah is He Who created the heavens and the earth, and causes water to descend from the sky, thereby producing fruits as food for you, and makes the ships to be of service to you, that they may run upon the sea at His command, and has made of service to you the rivers; and makes the sun and the moon, constant in their courses, to be of service unto you, and has made of service unto you the night and _ the day. And He gives you of all you ask of Him, and if you would count the bounty of Allah, you cannot reckon it. Lo! man is verily a wrong-doer, and

A person who travels around seeking to learn about Allah’s bounty and to reflect on His wisdom and the splendour of His attributes is more broad-minded and a sharper thinker than the one who clings to his homeland and the traditions of his people, who would not hear of abandoning their way of life. The latter would say: I follow their (my people’s) example. Do I not belong to Rabi’ah or Mudhar (two Arab tribes)? However, — precious merchandise will not be obtained except by a person who takes the trouble to travel in the land and to look around in the various parts of the earth, until he is exhausted and longing to return; such a_ person will find easy what the indolent deem insurmountable, and will become familiar with what they find odd.

The miracle of the muscles

* A baby crawling on the floor. An adult scratching his nose: do you believe that behind these movements, little valued or noticed, there are more exact and subtle processes than the structure of the hydrogen bomb. Muscles have puzzled eminent scientists and researchers, and they are still often mystified, despite their ingenuity, by the secrets of muscles.

* Muscles account for more than half the weight of the human body. They have been described by a scientist as “The most splendid article that nature exhibits in its wonder-filled gallery,” since they perform their vital role from birth until death. It is the muscles that start expelling a fetus from its mother’s womb, a process that is accomplished by the action of the womb’s muscles. It is the muscles that provide us with almost all our internal temperature. It is the muscles that push food down the alimentary canal; it is they that draw air into the lungs; and it is they that squeeze tears from the tear glands.

And, lastly, it is they that announce the cessation of life, as the cardiac muscle stops its beating, after having beaten 2.5 billion times in seventy years.

People often speak of iron muscles; what they do not notice is that the iron physique we feel when touching contracted muscles is caused by a jelly-like soft substance, and that this substance, when contracted, can lift a weight one thousand times its own weight. This is the most amazing fact of nature in the human body.

The series of chemical and electrical reactions that happen in a tiny muscle in less than a second — like the closing or opening of an eye — would take hours or even days if a researcher were to produce them in his laboratory.

There are three kinds of muscles:

* The striated muscles — muscles of voluntary movements that have the appearance of bundles of fine capillaries, It is they that propel us when we walk; it is they that we use when we lift a spoon, or shake our heads!

* The smooth muscles, whose movements are involuntary, control such processes as the motility of

food in the intestine during digestion, and the opening of the iris of the eye.

* The third kind is the heart muscle, which has unique characteristics. Its structure is midway between the above two kinds.

All three kinds of muscles are no more than devices for converting chemical energy (i.e. food) to mechanical energy (i.e. action).

Hundreds of books and articles have been written about muscles, but not one has adequately explained how muscles contract, or how the toe of the foot moves! So glory be to the Lord when He said:

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“Above everyone who is endowed with knowledge, there is One who knows all.”

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The blessing of senses

Think again of yourself; reflect on the great wisdom of the All-Knowing Creator as attested by your creation. Think of the senses which are like windows from which to observe things around you. See how the Lord has caused most of them to be in the head, like lights placed at the top of a light-house, to explore things. He did not place them in organs that are exposed to rough jobs like the hands and feet: otherwise they would have received injuries that result from actions and movements; nor in organs in the middle of the body, like the belly or the back, for it would be uncomfortable for you then to turn to things and perceive them. Because no other organ is fit to hold the senses, the head was deemed to be apt to hold them, being the fittest and finest part of the body. It is the shrine of the senses.

Observe then the wisdom of making the senses five, to counterpart the five types of stimuli, and so no stimulus is left without a sense organ to react to it. Vision reacts to visible things, hearing reacts to audible things, smell reacts to the various scents, taste reacts to the various tastes, and touch reacts to tactile stimuli. Is there any perceptible thing left without a sense to perceive it? If there were, you would have been given a sixth sense to react to it. As the rest of things can be reacted to by the internal organs, He bestowed on you the internal senses. This system is so comprehensive that they say of a deep thinker: he uses his five to counter six, meaning that while he has only five senses, and the directions are six, his mind is so active that it helps the five senses to cope with six directions in his eagerness to search for answers.