The Qur’an and the Origin of Life on Earth
By Dr Bashir Ahmad
Wildwood, MO

It is wonderful to realize that all Qur’anic declarations based as they are on divine revelation are superbly supported and authenticated by scientific evidence.
About 4 billion years ago, earth’s atmosphere remained oxygen-free and was devoid of its protective ozone layer in the stratosphere.
J.B.S Haldane, the great British biochemist, was the first to appreciate that the earth’s anoxle atmosphere was a requirement for the evolution of life from non-living inorganic matters. (Ref. Dickerson,R.E. (September 1978), Chemical evolution and the origin of life. Scientific America, page 70).
According to Haldane, water, carbon dioxide and ammonia molecules, subjected to uninterrupted bombardment of intense cosmic energy, were largely instrumental in the creation of the prebiotic organisms. (Ref. Dickerson R.E. (Sept. 1948) Scientific America, p 71.)
Stanley Miller in 1953 produced amino acids, the basic material life is made up of, by performing the following experiment.
He filled a sealed apparatus with a few liters of water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen gases, representing the atmosphere which scientists thought had existed in the past billions of years. A spark discharge device simulated lightening, while a heated coil kept the water bubbling.
Within a few days a reddish precipitate began to stain the glass, which on analysis, was found to be rich in amino acids. (Ref. Miller S.L. (1953) Production of some organic compounds under possible primitive earth conditions. Journal of the American Chemical Society: 77: 2351-2361)
The Holy Qur’an has shed light on the creation of life on earth in the following verses.
“And the Jinn we created before that (the creation of man) from blasts of fire, (maris-samum) Qur’an 15/28 And also,
“And the Jinn He created from the flame of fire” Qur’an 55/16. Samum which means a blazing fire or a blast that has no smoke. (Ref. Lane, E.W. (1948) Arabic - English lexicon William & Norgate, Cambridge).
These verses very aptly apply to the minute organisms drawing their energy for their existence, directly from the blazes of lightening – Samum - and cosmic radiation.
Dickerson agrees with the Qur’anic view when he observes that the most ancient organisms - “----------- would have lived on the energy of lightening and ultraviolet radiation” Ref. Dickerson R.E. (Sept. 1978) Chemical evolution and the origin of life. Scientific American. Page 80.
Most ancient bacteria, ‘Prokaryote’ has a well defined cell membrane, but no distinct nucleus. The Eukaryotes, on the other hand, possess well-defined and well-developed nucleus occupying the center of each cell.
Woese published the findings of his pioneer research in Scientific America (June 1981) claiming that archaebacteria could be rightly considered as the earliest form of organism. (Ref. Woese C.R. (June 1981) Archae bacteria . Scientific American, p. 114.)
According to the Hutchinson Dictionary of Science: ‘--------------The archeabacteria are related to the earliest life forms, which appeared about 4 billion years ago, when there was little oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere’ (Ref. The Hutchinson Dictionary of Science (1993) Helicon Publishing Ltd. Oxford, p. 37.
The majority of the commentators of the Qur’an, appear not knowing the geological environment that existed on the earth four billion years ago. The commentators of the Qur’an also could not comprehend that blasts of fire could sustain life! They also could not dissociate their mind from the Arabian folklore, where Jinn came to devote all manner of demons in the most popular sense of this world.
The commentators of the Qur’an were also puzzled by the fact that ‘Jinn’ has been used in the Qur’an in diverse connotations, for example, the opponents of prophets are described as satans from among men and Jinn, meaning rebellious ones from among low and high. (Qur’an 6/113; 6/129-130; 6/131)
Solomon’s host comprised gentiles (Jinn) natives (men) and saintly people(birds) formed into companies. (Qur’an 27/18)
Foreign experts, (Jinn) who were subject to Solomon’s authority, worked for him and fashioned whatsoever he desired: Palaces, statues, basins as large reservoirs; huge cauldrons (Qur’an 34/13-14)
A powerful chieftain is called Jinn (Qur’an 27/40)
Jinn mentioned in the Qur’an 46/30 and 72/2, where a party of men who happened to listen on one occasion to the Holy Prophet reciting the Qur’an one night during his return journey from Taif to Mecca and another party who came and talked to him and reported their impressions to their people when they returned home.
It is astounding that the Qur’an has clearly and very acutely described the earliest creation of life - very primitive cells, 1400 years ago when there was no concept of geology, which only now is being discovered with the most advanced scientific monitors and gadgets.
Recently Timothy Kusky, a St Louis University geologist, has found in a mountain in China, a rock half the size of a basketball, which on carbon dating was found to be 2.5 billion years old, fingers jutting out of the rock. Inside these tubes are faint rings that enclose tiny white crystals, which under a microscope look like thin sausages.
Kusky says he has a carbon signature to prove that what he sees was once alive: fossilized microbes that fed within the super heated, sulfurous tubes of a sea floor chimney – sulfide - spewing vents. These are sea floor rocks found high in a Chinese mountain range north east of Beijing. The sea floor fossils support what many scientists believe: that life began at the bottom of the oceans near these super-heated vents.
How the rocks got from an ocean floor to a Chinese mountainside is a million year long story. Hot magma splits the ocean plate at a mid ocean ridge. (It also provides the heat, 1400 degrees, that drives sulfurous water to build black smoke chimneys, 20,000 feet below sea level, eventually, the spreading heavy ocean crust encounters a continent and dives under it. Some of the sea floor rocks can be scraped off and later lifted to the surface during a period of mountain building, said Stephen Mojzsis, a geologist at the University of Colorado. Whilstexploring the seabed in ALVIN, an advanced deep diving submarine, owned and used by the Oceanographic Institution of Woods Hole, Mass, first found black smoke chimneys in 1977, scientists were surprised to find clams, fish and tube worms thriving in the 1400 degree pitch dark water ,the animals fed on bacteria that in turn ate sulfur dioxide percolating from sea floor vents. It is the ecosystem not dependent on sunlight. (Ref. Scientific American Frontier series documentary on Deep Sea Exploration aired on PBS)
In my following article I shall present the Qur’anic version of the Creation of Homo Sapiens, InshAllah.



Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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