Epigraph

وَمِن كُلِّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقْنَا زَوْجَيْنِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَكَّرُونَ

Of everything We have created pairs that you may reflect. (Al Quran 51:49)

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

The Muslims take the Quran to be the literal word of All-Knowing God. The non-Muslims either are unsure about it, don’t have an opinion on this, or may think of it as word of Muhammad, his own words or borrowed from some helper.

I propose to write a series of articles on this theme, discussing one verse at a time. Today, we will examine the verse quoted as epigraph to this article.

The Prophet Muhammad, may peace be on him, knew about pairs, genders or twosome only in humans and domestic animals. He had no knowledge of pairs in plants, for example, and we have an incident that positively records that.

Once in Medina, the Prophet saw the farmers climbing up the palm trees to perform what we have learnt in recent centuries to be pollination and he made a cursory remark, to the farmers to let go of this unnecessary waste of time, but his suggestion proved unhelpful. As a result the dates-crop failed that year. So he declined to offer further advice, saying, “I am only human. If I ask you to do something concerning religion, then accept it. But if I ask you to do something on the basis of my personal opinion, then remember, I am only human.”[1]

I have previously written a detailed article about discovery of, gametes and pollination in plants, in recent centuries: Plant Kingdom: A Proof of Allah’s Divinity According to the Quran.

The Prophet had no knowledge of pairs, gametes or twosomes in nature, other than what was common knowledge. If he were the writer of the Quran, he had no need or purpose to introduce a random and apparently meaningless subject. Such a verse could be revealed only by One, Who knows the secrets of the heaven and the earth.

This reminds me of the opening verses of the Surah Furqan:

Exalted is He who has sent the Differentiator down to His servant so that it may be a warning to all people. It is He who has control over the heavens and earth and has no offspring––no one shares control with Him––and who created all things and made them to an exact measure. Yet the disbelievers take as their gods things beneath Him that create nothing, and are themselves created, that can neither harm nor help themselves, and have no control over death, life, or resurrection.
The disbelievers say, ‘This can only be a lie he has forged with the help of others’––they themselves have done great wrong and told lies––and they say, ‘It is just ancient fables, which he has had written down: they are dictated to him morning and evening.’ Say, ‘It was sent down by Him who knows the secrets of the heavens and earth. He is all forgiving, all merciful. (Al Quran 25:1-6)

It is only in recent centuries that mankind has discovered pairs not only in plants, but, also at a quantum level in the last century: The Holy Quran and the Pairs in Quantum Physics.

We started this article with a video of a mind boggling pairing at the quantum level, named entanglement and we will conclude with one:

Reference

1. Muslim bin Al-Hajjaj, Al-Sahih, Translated by Nasiruddin Al-Khattab, (Riyadh, Darussalam, 1997) Hadith 6126 (139-2360)