The Beginning of the Earth and Humankind in Islam

Mohamed AlSaabri
College Writing A ESL
Essay #1
11 April 2014
The Beginning of the Earth and Humankind in Islam
Everything including your life, your car, your company, and even your country, had a beginning and its cause or source can be traced to a certain entity. How about the mankind and the earth? These too! How did they begin and who created them? Different religions offer different answers to this question. In Islam, the Holy Quran explains this matter in detail. The Holy Quran is the source of “Sharia”, Islamic religious law, Prophetic decrees, and the blessings God bestowed upon mankind. Interestingly, most of the present-day scientific discoveries about the universe were revealed in the Holy Quran more than 1,400 years ago. This is best exemplified by the Quranic proclamation that, “Have not those who disbelieved known that the heavens and the earth were one connected entity, then we separated them?” (Quran 21:30). Dr. Alfred Kroner, one of the world's renowned geologists, said: “Somebody who did not know something about nuclear physics fourteen hundred years ago could not, I think, be in a position to find out from his own mind, for instance, that the earth and the heavens had the same origin". This statement, as well as others, prove that the Holy Quran account of creation is true and in conformity with modern discoveries. This paper seeks to explore the beginning of humankind and the earth according to Islam. The Quranic creation narrative, formation of the Firmaments and Aradean, and the conflict between man, God and Iblees will be discussed and their relationship to contemporary empirical propositions about the origin of the universe demonstrated.
One of the stories in the Holy Quran posits that Allah, “the God”, decreed the fate of all creatures fifty thousand years before the creation of Firmaments and Aradean (not Earth). At the time, there was nothing except Allah, and his Throne was over the Waters. Right after the Big bang, Allah created Firmaments and Aradean in six periods. Commentators suggest each period was either a thousand years or an Earthly-day long. Analysts conjecture that the creation of Aradean was completed in two periods. While the end of the fourth period saw the creation of plenty of matter on the top most part of Aradean, the end of the sixth period witnessed the ordering and perfection of the seven distinct and thermally decoupled Firmaments. Later on, galaxies, the stars, the sun, and the earth were created:”Its splendor doth He bring out (with sunlight) and the earth, after that, hath He extended. He drew out there-from its water and its pasture.â&eur...