Page 79 - Tafsir of surat at tawba repentance

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“He created the human being from a drop of fluid, then, behold, he
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becomes an open opponent.”

The perception of contradiction here is a result of confusion between
metaphysics, chemistry and biology, and between different stages of the process
of biological creation. The first two verses above are dealing with creation in
metaphysical terms. In the first verse, Allaah reminds human beings that He
created them and all of creation ultimately from nothing, which is one of His most
sublime attributes. In the second verse, He poses a rhetorical question to highlight
the untenable implication of atheism, “If you deny the existence of God, then do
you believe that nothingness brought you into existence?” Therefore, there is no
contradiction between these two verses.

The next three verses state that all living creatures, including those that crawl
and human beings, are created from water. This is a biological fact that no one
denies. All living creatures have water-based physiologies.

The next set of verses state that the human being was created from dust and
clay and was brought forth from the earth. There are two acceptable tafseers for
these verses. One is that they refer to Aadam, the ancestor of mankind. The other
is that they refer to the chemical composition of every human being. The elements
of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc. are present in the earth. Through
photosynthesis these elements are transformed into vegetable matter, which
human beings consume directly or by eating the flesh of animals that have
consumed plants. The source of all living creatures is thus, ultimately, the earth,
or, by another expression, the dust of the earth, which when combined with water
is called ‘clay.’

The rest of the verses refer to the biological aspects of human creation. The
word nutfah is commonly used to refer to male seminal fluid, but it is also
linguistically possible to use it to refer to the female reproductive fluids. The
fertilized zygote is referred to in the Qur’aan as nutfah amshaaj, that is, ‘a
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mingled fluid’. In a hadeeth, the word nutfah is explicitly used to refer to the

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Soorah an-Nahl (16):4.
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Soorah al-Insaan (76):2. There is a wonderful subtlety in this expression that puzzled early
commentators; the word nutfah is a singular noun, while amshaaj, the adjective that modifies it, is
a plural. Normally, the adjective must agree with the noun it modifies in number, gender and case.

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