- Interpretation Of Quran / The long version
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- (007) Al Araaf
Honorable brother, this is the fifth lesson of Surat Al-Araf, where we look at the tenth Verse corresponding to His Words:
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth, and appointed for you therein livelihoods. Little give ye thanks! ﴿
Meaning of empowerment in the human body
To empower, my dear brother, is to firmly establish in a place, where no one can do you harm. Empowering has a narrow sense, and can be understood as well in a broader sense.
Aspects of empowerment in the human body
1 – Standing and walking on two feet:
How do you walk on two feet? Who gave you the skeleton? How did this skeleton become solid? It consists mainly of calcium, but Who made the salts of this metal dissolve in some of our foods, then settle as sediment in our bones, so that we have a strong skeleton that can stand firm under the pressure of 500 kg? The neck of each thighbone can withstand 250 kg of weight, half a ton together, how did He strengthen you with this skeleton, without which Man would be a bundle of soft matter cast on the ground? Stand on two feet? Who fastened the muscles to the bones to provide motion? Who made you a perfect human being?
﴾ Verily, we created man of the best stature ﴿
Who made you walk on two feet? Where it not for an extremely delicate device of the ear, the inner ear balance organ, you would not be able to walk on two feet, you would need a very wide space to move freely in, the feet would be too large, and walking would be hard labor, How He empowered you on earth? He made you erect, dynamic, perceptive, hearing, seeing, articulate.
2 - Involuntary muscle work:
Dear brother, Who spared you the work done involuntarily by numerous muscles? The heart works in an autonomic manner. Were the heartbeats by conscious choice, you would face one of two things: death or no sleep at all.
Who made breathing a reflex? Would you believe that in a rare disease which affects the rhythmicity centre which controls automatic breathing, after long research and development, a cure was discovered, a medicine that you need to take every hour through the night, if you sleep at eleven you have to get up at twelve to take your medicine and so on … or die.
3 – Resting asleep, while systems work steadily:
Who enabled you to sleep deeply while lungs continue working? Who enabled you to sleep deeply while the heart continues beating? Who enabled you to sleep deeply while a set of systems are working according to day and night rules: during the day the blood pressure rises, the heart beats faster and the kidneys and the secretion systems become active; at night, some of the systems that process harmful leftovers like the kidneys take a rest and sleep with you so you can rest. Who made it possible for you to sleep? It is Allah Glory be to Him!
4 – The absence of nerves in the hair:
Who made the hair a crown for Man, but without sensory nerves? If He had designed it with sensible nerves, then shaving would become a surgical operation needing full anesthesia.
5 – The body’s biological clock:
My brother, the biological clock is a natural clock seated deep in the eye, if light reaches the depth of the eye, it sends day specific programs to dozens of systems, when light disappears from the depth of the eye this biological clock sends orders to numerous systems to start the night scheme, by Whose Hands?
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
Empowerment through creation, Who fit your body with this true army in the full sense of the word?
6 – The immune system:
A reconnaissance squad…Should a germ enter the body, scouts are dispatched to analyze its chemical composition and codes.
A weaponry division…
This division manufactures lethal counter weapons as soon as it receives the germ’s composition.
Who equipped a third division for combat?
Fighting forces, white cells…
Who geared up the logistics division, the magnificent commandos that devour cancerous cells at their early stages?
The acquired immune system is a true army in the full sense of the word. Who made these fighters unlearned and lethally equipped? Who taught them to distinguish enemy from friend? It is a small gland called the thymus, which doctors wrongly considered useless, a military academy where the white cells join to spend two years on benches like in university lecture halls. These white cells are called by scientists uneducated T-cells, and once graduated they become known as educated T-cells able to make the distinction between enemy and friend.
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
7 – The senses:
You have senses that inform you of the outside world. The eyes embrace large areas but when you lie in bed they are limited by the walls. If you detect a sound at night, who is the responsible in charge? It is the ear. And if a mouse slips under your bed and dies, you cannot see it or hear it, who detects it? The third sense: smell.
﴾ Have we not made for Him a pair of eyes? and a tongue and a pair of lips? and shown Him the two way ? ﴿
If the water in the eye were to freeze at zero, then all those living in the poles would loose their sight. Who designed the eye’s water with freeze resistant substances? It is the Lord Allah Glory be to Him! Who placed in the retina 130 million rods and sticks so you can see things in their minute details? The human eye can distinguish between 8 million colors. Who made the cornea perfectly transparent so your vision can be pure. How is the cornea nourished? By a pump-leak system, the first cell gets its nourishment and that of its environment.
﴾? Have we not made for Him a pair of eyes ﴿
Who gave you your tongue so you can speak? Who taught you your language?
﴾The Most Beneficent! has taught the Qur'ân , He created man. He taught Him eloquent speech. ﴿
You listen and understand, speak and express yourself, but how is knowledge conveyed from one person to another, from teacher to student, from generation to generation? By way of written language.
﴾ Read! In the Name of Your Lord, who has created, He has created man from a clot. Read! and Your Lord is the Most Generous, who has taught by the pen ﴿
There are texts at your disposal. Imam Qurtubi wrote his exegesis and passed away, but people still benefit from it.
How can a language be written and read? Who passed cultures on from one nation to another? By way of translation.
﴾O mankind! we have created You from a male and a female, and made You into nations and tribes, that You may know one another. Verily, the Most honourable of You with Allâh is that who has At-Taqwa Verily, Allâh is All-Knowing, All-Aware. ﴿
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
8 – If you knew how the heart was empowered to work !!!
After several weeks into life, this heart is a beating part of the clot, then it becomes the heart we know and goes on beating until death.
The heart muscle is one of the greatest signs of the Greatness of Allah, it contracts and expands, and between the two it rests, and this rest enables it to go on contracting and expanding.
Who made these arteries flexible as though they were true hearts? When the heart beats they expand, and when, because of their elasticity, they resume their original shapes they act like an additional heart. Who made the vessels a closed duct forty thousand kilometers long? We each possess enough blood vessels to p the earth circumference forty thousand kilometers long.
﴾And We have given you power ﴿
9 – You eat what you desire unaware of the secrets of digestion
Digestion is a very complex process: teeth, saliva, esophagus… The esophagus is a set of pharyngeal muscles made in such a way that even if a man is hung upside down, the food he eats will go up against gravity, and if he drinks the water will travel upwards to the stomach. Who designed the esophagus?
10 – In your sleep saliva gathers in your mouth, does this worry you?
In your sleep the saliva gathers in your mouth, so an alert is sent to the brain: too much saliva and you are in deep sleep. The brain is awake. It sends orders to the pharynx, the epiglottis, to open the way to the esophagus and block the way to the lungs. Whose deed?
The immune system is a Sign, the heart and vessels are Signs, the digestive system is a Sign.
11 – How was the body empowered to generate heat?
How is heat produced in your body? By combustion. But how is it possible for sugar to burn at 37 degrees? Indeed, take a spoonful of sugar in the palm of your hand: nothing happens… It is a simple substance, the insulin that burns the sugar to provide energy, and in the process it produces carbon dioxide waste. Man exhales the carbon dioxide, the primary gas for plants. Plants take the carbon dioxide from you and give you oxygen in exchange.
Who established this balance on earth? Who indeed?
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
12 – And the placenta …
What is the placenta? It is a round piece of flesh that performs duties doctors are incapable of!
The blood circulations of mother and fetus, two different blood types meet in the placenta. And it is known that if you give somebody blood different from his own type, death will ensue by hemolysis or dissolution of the red cells. So how can the mother’s blood and the fetus’ blood, two bloods of different types, be present at the same time in the placenta? This is because they are separated by a membrane called by doctors the intelligent membrane. This intelligent membrane does wonders that are hard to believe. It takes oxygen from the mother’s blood and conveys it to the fetus’ blood, acting like the respiratory system the womb does not have. It takes sugar from the mother’s blood and lays it in the fetus’ blood acting like a digestive system. With sugar the fetus needs insulin, so the intelligent membrane takes the insulin from the pancreas and feeds it in the fetus’ blood. With oxygen, sugar and insulin energy can be produced to keep the fetus warm. Furthermore, this intelligent membrane acts like a sentry, prohibiting the passage of toxic substances from the mother’s blood to the fetus, a quarantine, then it passes all the mother’s immune elements to the fetus’ blood. All the immunities acquired by the mother from diseases she caught or vaccines she has taken which protect her from hundreds of diseases are passed on by the intelligent membrane to the fetus. Whose Hand is at work here? Whose science? Whose wisdom?
The intelligent membrane knows what no human on earth has knowledge of: the fetus’ exact needs in sugar, oxygen, proteins, fats, minerals, vitamins … It knows what the fetus needs and provides for these needs from the mother’s blood, like a full fledged digestive system, by Whose power?
Now the fetus may need a substance his mother does not usually eat. Who inspires the mother to crave specific foods? The mother’s cravings during pregnancy express the needs of her fetus for the nutrients in these foods, by Whose power?
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
13 – What do you know about childbirth?
Childbirth is a very complex process of hormonal instructions that cause women’s pelvis bones to open up. Who made the contractions smooth and gradual to preserve the life of the fetus?
And Who caused the womb to contract after child birth and become tight as a rock so as to close the thousands of broken vessels?
And Who caused the mother to stock an exceptional amount of blood to compensate for blood lost during birth? By Whose arrangement?
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
Honorable brother, I say, if we were to dedicate our entire lives to understanding the peculiarities of Man’s creation, they would not suffice, by God they would not!
You believe you are this tiny body But in you the Universe is embraced
14 –Do you know anything about the amniotic fluid !!?
This skull, Who fashioned it? Any shock to the child’s head from blow or fall is softened by the immovable joints called the sutures. These notched interlaced bone lines act like a shock-absorber to preserve the skull. By Whose power?
Who placed the fluid between the skull and the brain to spread the shock over the entire surface of the brain? Spaceship design was inspired by this protection system: the brain within a liquid.
Who made the amniotic fluid in the sac that enfolds the fetus, then protected it by a second membrane, and a third membrane?
Allah Great and Almighty says:
﴾In three veils of darkness﴿
The sac that contains the fetus is filled with a liquid called the amniotic fluid. This substance serves to feed the fetus and allows it freedom of movement. In winter it is warm, central heating … This fluid feeds the fetus, allows it to movement, but also disinfects it. It is a disinfectant, a lubricant just like oils and food all at once, and then it disinfects the ducts at birth time. By Whose design?
﴾And We have given you power in the earth﴿
15 – Here’s water the origin of life, what do you know about it?
Water, brother, water has a special property without which this lesson would not be taking place nor would Asia exist, nor would any living being exist on the face of the earth. This property is that at four degrees Celsius, water’s mechanism is reversed from contraction to expansion. Were it not for this property, oceans, when they freeze, would shrink and become denser and the ice would sink to the ocean floor. Eventually all the ocean would freeze, evaporation would cease and rain would stop, plants would die, animals would die and mankind would die… By Whose power, Whose science, Whose wisdom?
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
16 – how does the sun concern you?
Brother, this sun is the origin of heat and sterilization. This sun is an essential life source for mankind, this is why Allah Great and Almighty says:
﴾And among His signs are the night and day and the sun and the moon﴿
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
17 – How do you memorize information?
Who gave you the memory without which you would not retain information correctly?
Incidentally, brother, every single cell in the human body has a natural life, the shortest being 48 hours, the lifep of the small intestine cell. Every 48 hours the cells of the small intestine are entirely replaced. The longest cell life is five years except for the brain. If brain cells were to change what would we do? Well, I was a doctor, but I forgot all I know…If brain cells were to change you would loose all your experience. Who decreed that brain and heart cells do not change? Allah Glory be to Him.
Who gave you power? Who gave you memory? The memory seat in the brain is no bigger than a lentil seed, yet it gathers seventy billion pictures in a sixty year lifetime. Who gave you an identity? You have a distinctive tone of voice, your skin has a distinctive smell, you have a distinctive cell type, a unique iris, unique semen different of any other man’s.
18 – And what about the woman’s uterus?
And who provided women with a receptacle for this semen that memorizes its composition, so that if a different sperm is detected, it decides it is from adultery, and the woman risks having a cancer of the uterus. And if the husband dies, who makes this organ accept a new semen after four months? By Whose design?
Brother, the Almighty says:
﴾ Say: Behold what is in the heavens and the earth﴿
﴾And We have given you power in the earth﴿
19 – The perspiration system:
He gave you power … Who made skin perspire? It is a conditioning system, a cooler that perspires in hot environments, then the sweat evaporates and in so doing uses up the heat. You have hundreds of millions of sweat glands, a perspiration system, a perfect cooling system. By Whose design?
You breathe through your nose which has interpenetrated layers through which the air passes. In wintertime the air can be at zero Celsius, and as it passes through these layers it is heated to 38 degrees Celsius by the warm blood vessels found in there. In cold weather the nose turns red indicating that muscles in the vessels are expanding to allow an increased flow of warm blood to warm up the incoming air.
Who provided these layers with mucous to filter out the tiniest particles? Who provided the nose with hairs to capture the tiniest speck of floating dust? A glutinous trap for harmful substances, filters, nose hairs, Whose design is this? Allah’s, glory be to Him!
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
20 – Automated work:
You were given memory and more. When Man is accustomed to a process, this process becomes instinctive. When you drive your car to work every day, this complex operation is done in an automated manner, while you can be engaged in an occupying conversation with someone. Most of your daily occupations are automated, with no thinking on your part.
Sometimes the pilot turns on the plane’s automatic pilot system and goes to chat with the passengers. This scares some of the passengers. Allah Glorious and Almighty has enabled you to automate hundreds of doings so they can be carried out unconsciously.
Sometimes a burning object you are holding touches your hand, and you raise your hand in a reflex. Who designed the hand’s reaction to heat? The sense of heat does not have the time to reach the brain for a decision, the hand would burn before a direct order arrives through the spinal cord. This is known as the reflex.
21 – Sucking reflex in infants:
Children are born with a reflex without which no living human would exist on the face of the earth: the sucking reflex. A child is born, the nurse is cleaning it and her hand touches his lips: he immediately starts sucking it. Who taught him to suckle, to fasten his lips to his mother’s mammilla and draw? Is their a force on earth that taught him that? There would be no life were it not for this reflex. Who taught him the complex suckling mechanism? It is Allah Glory be to Him!
22 – The heart’s Botello’s foramen:
Who designed the opening called the Botello’s foramen so blood can circulate between ventricles, since there is no air in the uterus? Then when the child is born a clot closes this passage so the blood can stream into the lungs, Whose Hands are at work?
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
By God my brother, if you stop to think of the subtle details of your body you will discover wonder after wonder!
23 – Do you know what is in your hair?
There are about 300 thousand hairs in a man’s head, each has a vein an artery, a muscle, a sebaceous gland...
Who makes men sometimes loose their hair? But if women were to loose their hair this would be the disaster!
24 - How can a man procreate even at 90?
Who made men able to procreate at the age of ninety while women have a limited number of ova that are exhausted at menopause? Can you imagine a 90 year old woman pregnant?
Who limited women’s pregnancy to the age of 40 or 45 while men can reproduce at 90? Who so designed?
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
By God I say, my brother, there are innumerable signs in your body that bespeak the Greatness of Allah Almighty, Glory be to Him:
﴾ Read in the name of your Lord Who created. He created man from a clot﴿
25 – How does the ovule move?
The ovule travels from the ovary to the uterus using a duct called the fallopian tube. This ovule is round and has no feet. How does it proceed? How does it move? The fallopian tube has tiny moving cilia that provide locomotion to move the ovule around. Were it not for this cilia no living human would walk the face of the earth, with this tiny cilia of the fallopian tube walls, the ovule is propelled from the ovary to the uterus.
During intercourse man expels 250 to 400 million sperm cells, and the egg cell needs only one, by Whose design?
Dear brother, your body alone should teach you humility and reverence to Allah, should make you want to throw yourself in prostration to Allah!
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
26 – The balancing system:
Man walks erect because of the balancing system of the inner his ear. This system is very intricate: a set of 3 fluid-filled semi-circular canals with hair cells, when you lean the fluid remains horizontal and touches the hair cells to inform you that you are inclined. Were it not for this balance system which no vehicle on earth possesses, you would not be able to walk or lean because you would have no balance, and the surface of the feet would not suffice to keep you upright, sophisticated equipment indeed!
27 – The ear’s sound difference calculator:
Walking down the street you hear a car horn. You possess a very sophisticated system that allows you to calculate the time the sound takes to reach each ear and the lag between them, which is about 1/1620 second. This system then determines that the sound comes from the right for instance, and lets you known you should move left.
You believe you are this tiny body But in you the Universe is embraced
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth, and appointed for you therein livelihoods ﴿
1 – Do you know that there are numerous ways to make a living?
Do you know how many people earn their living owing to hot weather? Air conditioning, refreshments, ice factories, coolers…and you can go on enumerating the businesses from which people subsist due to hot weather. Hot weather is a source of subsistence. Here is an engineer in cooling systems, a hot spell arrives, and lots of air conditioners are sold. But maintenance is also needed, drilling equipment, employees…So how many people work in the cooling business? And how many people on earth are employed owing to hot weather alone?
And how many people on earth are in business because of cold weather? Heaters, heavy coats, woolen underwear…How many people on earth subsist because of the cold?
How many make their living because of long hair?
How many make their living from diseases, how many doctors, hospitals, drug industries, medical schools, universities, published books?
﴾ Livelihoods ﴿
means sources of subsistence. A bug comes and destroys a whole crop. How many are those that make a living because of agricultural insects? Agronomists, pesticides, pumps…scores of people subsist because of bugs.
The services, professions, crafts and specialties that man lives from are innumerable.
He made you skillful in a trade, and skill increases because the brain is fixed and cumulates experiences.
setting?
The human body is the object of numerous professions and services.
You need shelter for you cannot sleep out in the cold, and they say there are more than a hundred crafts related to the construction business. You need shelter, engineers, building materials, endless planning, buildings, hospitals… and the child knows nothing.
﴾ It is He Who brought you forth from the wombs of your msh3er when ye knew nothing ﴿
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth, and appointed for you therein livelihoods. Little give ye thanks! ﴿
Shouldn’t you be grateful?
Dear brother, how many people on earth live because glasses are needed for eye diseases? How many live because hearing aids are needed for hearing problems? How many live because of bone setting?
The human body is the object of numerous professions and services.
You need shelter for you cannot sleep out in the cold, and they say there are more than a hundred crafts related to the construction business. You need shelter, engineers, building materials, endless planning, buildings, hospitals… and the child knows nothing.
﴾ It is He Who brought you forth from the wombs of your msh3er when ye knew nothing ﴿
How many are those who make their living on earth by teaching? Education, schools, curriculums, books, inspectors, program developers, student exchange, universities, all this because the child knows nothing, while most animals know all they need at birth. Allah honored Man by giving him an extended childhood and a father and mother to educate him.
How many live because of heat and cold, health and sickness, ignorance?
﴾ ye knew nothing ﴿
After the army, the Ministry of education comes second in the number of people it employs.
Man is sometimes belligerent, how many live from repelling aggressions? Arms industries, like you see everyday, this is the meaning of the word ‘livelihoods’:
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth, and appointed for you therein livelihoods. Little give ye thanks! ﴿
The need to thank God for his favors:
Shouldn’t you be thankful when Allah Glorious and Almighty says:
﴾ What concern hath Allah for your punishment if ye are thankful﴿
When you are grateful, when you have faith, you have realized the purpose of your existence. Why is that so? Because the world is subdued to your usage in two senses: as an initiation and as an honoring. Your reaction to initiation should be faith, and your reaction to honoring should be gratefulness. So if you believe and give thanks then you have assumed your existence. Your duty is to believe and give thanks because God blessed you with existence, assistance, guidance and consciousness.
﴾Little give ye thanks! ﴿
This is why dear brother
You are one of God’s blessings, your existence is a blessing, He blessed you with existence, He blessed you with assistance, He blessed you with guidance and consciousness…
What would happen if all the elements on earth melted at the same temperature? Everything in the universe is either gas, liquid or solid, and there is wood and metal, water and the air that you breathe, there is the viscous matter, the soft matter and the hard matter, there is strength and rigidity.
You need to build a fence on a sidewalk of concrete, how do you blend metal and concrete? There is a metal called lead which has an unusual property: it expands as it cools. You dig into the concrete, place the metal in it and pour lead. As it cools the lead expands and fuses metal and concrete into one block.
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth, and appointed for you therein livelihoods. Little give ye thanks! ﴿
Deductions from the word ‘livelihoods’:
1 – In principle the money supply should circulate between people:
Honorable brother, the truth is that God Almighty meant for the money supply to circulate freely in the nation, so He made livelihoods. You have a piece of land hit by agricultural pests, so you need an engineer, pesticides, spraying equipment. It is as though a scheme prevents you from controlling alone the money supply. Every productive individual has expenses amounting to the third and up to half of his earnings, in other words the wealth is distributed widely among the community. These are the livelihoods.
2 – Establishing people in their trades and crafts:
Livelihood is a very precise word. Look at all those people. God Almighty enabled every one of them to master a trade.
You see a young pilot flying a giant two story plane of 600 passengers at night, can you substitute for him? Can you take his seat and fly to a distant country at night and safely land in the airport? This requires very high skills.
You see a heart surgeon opening a chest, untroubled. He takes an electrical saw, cuts through the bones, reaches the heart, cools it to stop it beating, switches the blood to a highly efficient electrical heart, opens the ventricle to get to the valve and puts in a new valve. The operation lasts seven hours, after which he gives the heart an electrical shock and it is beating once again!!
Were the heart designed not to beat again once it is stopped, heart operations would be impossible to perform. But the heart is fashioned in such a way as to slow down and stop beating when it is cooled, then the blood can be diverted to an artificial heart, and when the operation is over, an electrical shock will start it beating again. If it doesn’t, then accept our sincere condolences.
﴾And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
A doctor once told me: there is in the heart one of the strongest arteries with no apparent function but to serve as a spare in surgical operations. They cut it and use it to replace the obstructed artery. By Whose design?
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth, and appointed for you therein livelihoods ﴿
You see heart surgeons, gastroenterologist specialized in the digestive system, architects, oil engineers…Oil engineers work in the exploration of petroleum. They lower double cylinders to the ocean floor where oil fields are discovered, they fill the cylinders with special cement that sets in water to obtain pillars for giant platforms the size of cities with heliports, offices, all this in the open sea.
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
You take a plane with 400 passengers flying at 40,000 feet, comfortably seated with air conditioning, refreshments, tea and coffee, hot food and magazines, watching satellite TV, how?
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth ﴿
﴾ And (He made) horses and mules and asses that you might ride upon them and as an ornament; and He creates what you do not know﴿
Epilogue:
Discoursing on livelihoods is interminable, discoursing on empowerment too.
You are given power in the earth, and God made it possible for you to take up a trade to live from. Did Man not need to eat and drink, you would see nothing on the face of the earth.
So dear brother, we conclude this lesson with His words in the tenth Verse:
﴾ And We have given you power in the earth, and appointed for you therein livelihoods. Little give ye thanks! ﴿
In conclusion: you are the primary creation. He has empowered you on earth and showed you ways to make your living. These ways put you to the test: will you be truthful or will you lie? Will you give good counsel or will you be deceitful? Will you be clement or will you be cruel? Through your work you prove yourself.
