Adam - creation or evolution

Adam, as identified by the Quran, is the first of the humankind, who was descended upon the Earth, accompanied with his wife, after he was created in full form by Allah in the heavens.

Indeed, this theory is difficult to explain in purely materialistic terms, but that is really not a problem! The thing is that we don't have to explain everything in material terms because we believe in a God that cannot be explained in material terms, nor is it imperative for all His diverse creations to adhere to the cause-and-effect axiom.

All that is fine until there are some apologetic Muslims who try to sync the idea presented in the Quran with the idea of evolution. This refers to Prof Ghamidi and his likes, who propound the Quranic verses to be alluding toward evolution in place of creation. This idea needs to be seriously addressed because it muddles the ideas presented by the Quran, rather it completely overturns the facts presented by the Book.

In one of his appearances, the Professor presented the line of thought that goes like this: fossil records have been found to a large extent; evolution is a theory that explains this fossil record; religious people talk of Allah sending four angels to collect dust from four continents, and make out of it a figure like children make, and then He blew a soul into it and it became a human; that the Quran says, referring to As-Saaffat, 37; 11, that the teen-il-lazib mentioned therein is the one found along the coasts of the seas; that the process which now takes place in a mother's womb; that the Quran, according to him, says that the exact same process was started in the teen-e-lazib on the Earth. To all this the professor keeps adding more absurdities, like he says what happens in a mother's womb in nine months took thousands of years in the mud to occur; and compares the word salsaal with the shell of an egg.

It is amazing how the huge followership of the Professor bears with such incomplete and superfluous knowledge and even more amazing is the fact that false narrative can be so popular. With all due respect, it is our duty to keep correcting all that we find being wronged in the clear and true pathway of Islam.

To begin with, the idea of the origin of life billions of years ago, propounded by the evolutionists, does not entail the emergence of a mother's womb, rather it just talks of the possible creation of the simplest components required in the formation of proteins that later would make DNA and RNA. This too has been regularly challenged by scientific communities in the West, let alone the possibility of billions upon billions of useful and wasteful mutations required for the diversity of life, found on the planet today, to evolve. Rather, it must be clear that the evolutionists' 'primordial soup' wherein supposedly components of the earth reacted in the right conditions to make just those molecules that are contained in a living cell. How those molecules organise into a nucleus, cell wall, cytoplasm, etc is a debate that evolutionists have no answer to. Thereafter, from the humble beginning of a unicellular existence, evolutionists argue, in millions and millions of years evolved multicellular life-forms, and then simple water-born animals, that much later evolved into animals with specified organ-systems. To say that all this is the same as the Quran's saying about Adam, "…inna khalaqna-hum min teen-il-lazib" (37; 11), is misquoting.

The Quran is explicit upon the fact that Adam was created in the heavens. In As-Saad, (38; 67-72) it says, "Say, O Prophet, it is a grandiose news. You turn away from it. [Say that] I had no knowledge of the chiefs of the high, when they were disputing. It is revealed unto me only that I may be a plain warner. When thy Lord said unto the angels: Lo! I am about to create a mortal out of mire (teen). And when I have fashioned him and breathed into him of My Spirit, then fall down before him in prostration." Nowhere in the Quran is any mention of angels bringing this mire from Earth. Surely the Professor has caught it from popular myth that have no relation to the Quran or Hadith.

At another place, As-Sajdah (32;7-9), Allah says, "He, who made all things good that He created, and began the creation of man from clay (teen). Then He made his seed from a draught of despised fluid. Then He fashioned him and breathed into him of His Spirit; and appointed for you hearing and sight and hearts. Small thanks give ye!." Clearly here the sequence of events corresponds with the previous mentions, wherein Adam was initially created of teen, and later after Adam and his wife had been created, they were bestowed with the organ systems for bearing children, that they would require in their life on Earth. Therein too, when the zygote would have been achieved, it is Allah who would fashion the embryo and put life in it every time. But the Professor wants to prove that here the Quran is alluding towards the earthly evolution.

In Aal-e-Imran (3;59), Allah says, "The example of Jesus before Allah is as the example of Adam; He created him from dust (turab), then said to him: 'be', and he was." This means that Allah created Adam right from sticky, petrified clay, without millions of evolutions step between the clay and the human body, and He did the same thing again with Jesus, with a simple kun fayakun.

Muslim apologists need to understand that the Muslim faith is based upon the belief on a miraculous, supernatural God, who is absolutely capable of the most incredible miracles, in an otherwise law-abiding, regularly-behaving universe. The truth is that every new species, every new creation, complete with its eco-system and means of sustenance, is created anew by Allah Himself, because He is the "Originator of the heavens and the earth…" 2;117.

The fact is that no new species has been created of another species. Mutations do account for two kinds of changes: one, they are the cause of disease and malformation; two, they account for unnatural crosses between individuals of same species capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding; and as of hybrids between very close sub-species, these come out to be sterile and suffer from unsustainable growth.

In any case, evolution does not account for the creation of a new species - let alone the creation of the most sophisticated species of all, that has an absolutely unmatched faculties of memory, comprehension, language and socialisation, wide apart from anything any other species possesses, but bestowed unto Adam on the very first day of his creation.