Part 4

impulse to thebrain. If the inhaled air contained some pollen from a flower or a rose, and the particles of pollen came in contact with some of the fibers of the sensory nerve cells, also linked up with the brain, you would sneeze.

Odour lasts for three minutes. After that, it either disappears or you become accustomed to it. The sense of smell is still a mystery to scientists. They say that when odour particles enter the nose, they are picked up by olfactory sensory cells, located high in the nasal cavity in an area called the olfactory epithelium. Fibres from these cells extend into the olfactory bulb, where the odour particles are dissolved and a reaction takes place with thousands of fibres of olfactory cells, specialized in chemical reactions, and then they are distributed to 6-8 nerve transmitters that convey the results of the reaction to the brain.

The basic odours are seven, and all the odours are blended from these. Glory be to Him who created, originated and shaped.

The Almighty also provided man with the mouth, choosing for it the most suitable location, endowing it with abilities and instruments of taste and speech, and with tools of cutting and grinding that overwhelm an observing person. Look at the tongue, one of the signs that point to the Lord: it is an interpreter of the king of organs (the heart), that expresses what the heart wishes to convey or declare, in the same way that the Lord willed that the ear should be a messenger that keeps the heart briefed and informed. The ear is the courier that conveys the news to the king of organs, a counterpart to the tongue, a courier and messenger that transmits what the heart wishes to make known.

The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, disposed that this organ should be sheltered, preserved, and concealed; not visible or exposed like the ear, the eye, or the nose. Having the task of receiving messages from outside, those organs need to be in touch with the outer world, while the tongue is there to express messages to the world, not to receive them, and so it needs to be preserved and guarded. Besides, as_ the tongue is apart from the heart, the noblest of organs, and as it is a kind of interpreter and vizier of the heart, it needs to have a pavilion that conceals it and protects it. It is protected in that pavilion in a way similar to the protection of the heart in the chest. The tongue is also one of the most tender and wet organs, and it can perform only with that wetness surrounding it, and 50, if it were exposed, it would be harmed by heat, dryness and rigidity that would inhibit its functions. There are other reasons besides these for the extra protection of the tongue.

The Lord also adorned the mouth with teeth, a handsome and agreeable sight to look at, a vital contributor to human survival and the tool of nourishment. Some of the teeth are tools of grinding, and some are tools of cutting. The Almighty made firm their roots, and gave sharpness to their edges. He gave them a white colour, and arranged them in two straight well-arrayed rows, like a necklace of pearls in their whiteness, purity and splendour. Curved over the teeth are two walls, the lips, which have a number of benefits and functions. The Lord has willed that the lips have an agreeable colour and shape, a nice position and appearance. He destined them to be a keeper of the mouth, a final and finishing station for the uttering of sounds, in the same way that the soft palate is the starting station and the tongue is the middle station. The

tongue is the most active organ in the production of letters, since it functions as the mediator. In His infinite wisdom, Allah disposed that the lips are just flesh, without bone or nerves, so that a human may use them for sipping drinks, and have no difficulty in opening and closing them. He confined movement to the lower jaw which, as the lighter jaw, is more adapted to movement, and also because the upper contains precious organs that should not run the risk of movement. He destined humans’ throats to be. of infinite variety in narrowness and width, coarseness and smoothness, softness and hardness, and in length and shortness. In consequence of this, there is an endless variety of voices, in such a way that very rarely do any two voices resemble each other. An offshoot of this is that we believe a blind person’s witness is legal, since he can distinguish people from their voices in the same way that a sighted person can distinguish them from their looks; the possibility of confusing sounds is similar to the confusion of looks.

-~— Dentin Figure “6” Singular root

A sketch of teeth, set in the upper and lower jaw-bones, each identical pair opposite to each other

The Almighty Lord adorned the head with the hair, making of it a cover that is essential for the head; and adorned the face with hair at various locations and of various shapes: there are the brows, which protect the eyes from what might descend on them from the skin of the head; and He made them curved, agreeable to see. The eyelids are adorned with eyelashes. A male’s face is further adorned with the beard, which gives integrity, dignity and venerability to the man; and his lips are also adorned with the moustache above and the beard below.

The hands, fingers and finger nails

The hands are another wonderful creation of the Lord’s. They are a human’s main instrument, weapon, and the means for earning a living. The arms are long enough to reach all parts of the body, and the palm is wide enough to fold and spread. It is provided with five fingers, and each finger is further divided into three phalanges, except the thumb which has two. The four fingers are placed in such a way that the thumb faces them, and so it can meet any of the fingers.' It does that splendidly well. The hand can,

"The Almighty says in the Qur’an: ~ ee Merce Re 4 ae eed 4 Ae A oF [eet dala] C66 Code 5 FOR ee Mioylcel >

“Thinketh man that We shall not assemble his bones? Yea, verily. Yea, We are able to restore his very fingers!” (75:3,4) No two fingerprints of any two humans are identical in the whole world, or over the span of history. No two people in all the billions of humans now on the surface of the earth have identical fingerprints, and none will have in all the future of mankind. There is a law of biology, which is that nature, a creation of Allah, never repeats itself in the sphere of plant, animal, or man. The secret of fingerprints is accounted for by a hundred features of the fingerprints, by which their details are so numerous that it would be quite overwhelming to imagine the possibility of two prints being identical, whether between two persons or between two of any of the ten fingers of the same person. Not even twins have identical

because of this fact, be efficient in spreading and tightening, and in doing what it has to do. No other position of the fingers can be imagined to be as good, not if all mankind from the earliest times until now met to think of an alternative position. Glorified be He Who destined the hand to be in this form: He could as easily have chosen to make it like one plate, and a human would in that case not been able to carry out many tasks and actions and exact jobs like writing. He spreads his hand, and it will be a plate on which he puts things, and he closes it, over a club or another tool of strength; or he halfspreads it, and then he will have a scoop, which can be filled with a variety of things.

Then on the edge of the fingers, the Lord fixed the nails, an adornment, support and protection. They are essential for handling fine things that the fingers alone cannot pick up. In other animals the nails are claws that are the animal’s weapon and_ the means for catching its food. Finger nails are very useful for scratching the body. So you see how the nail, which is the least worthy part of the human body, can be badly missed if one loses it. If one needs to scratch some part of the body where it itches,

fingerprints. This remarkable fact has made all countries of the world adopt fingerprints as the subject of a science that provides scientific proof in determining the identity of a person, since it was felt certain, since the beginning of this century, that fingerprints are distinctive marks of individuals. It might be sufficient to mention that the fingerprints of an Egyptian mummy were taken, and were found to be as good as a contemporary fingerprint, and that the fingerprints of a corpse found in Denmark were dated by specialists as being more than 2000 years old. All of this reminds us of the miraculous information in the following Qur’anic verse:

“Yea, verily We are able to restore his very fingers!"(75: 4)

one cannot find a_ substitute for the nails. It is a blessing that a human can reach the spot where it itches without difficulty; even in sleep or absent-mindedness one does not need to be aware of where one needs to scratch. If one needed another to scratch for him, that other would be sure to waste time and cause trouble before finding the relevant spot.

The structure of bones

Consider now the great wisdom embodied in the bones. The bones of the lower half of the body have been made sturdy and thick, since they play the part of a foundation, while the bones of the upper part are less thick and bulky, since they are not required to carry the weight. Consider then how the neck has been made a vehicle for the head to mount on, how the Lord has destined that it should have seven vertebrae, hollow and circular in the middle, how He laid them one on the other. See how each vertebra is made in perfect structure and careful position, so that they all make a compact whole like one body. See how the neck has been mounted on both back and chest, and the back has been constructed from the top to the sacrum from twenty-four linked vertebrae, all interlinked to each other, forming a meeting point for the ribs, holding them lest they become loose and get disconnected. Observe how these bones are all connected, the bones of the back are connected to the chest’s, the shoulder’s to the upper arms’, the upper arms’ to the forearms’, the forearms’ to the hands’ and so on to the fingers’. See how the broad bones, like the back’s and the head's, are sheathed in a properly shaped layer of flesh; how the thin bones, like those of the fingers and toes, with a layer of flesh that is designed to fit them perfectly; and so are the medium bones, like the upper arms’ and the forearms’, clothed with flesh that suits them. The total number of bones is three hundred and sixty, two hundred and forty-eight with cartilage, and