The convincing logic of the Quran

The convincing logic of the Quran

When the Prophet of Islam(s) expounded the topic of Qiyamah (resurrection) to the pagan Arabs, a Bedouin named Ubayy bin Khalaf picked up a decayed bone and set out for Madinah to visit the Prophet(s). In the hope of refuting the arguments of the Prophet and the logic of the Quran on which they were based, he raised up the bone, as if it were a valuable and convincing piece of evidence, and crumbled it to dust, scattering the pieces in the air. Then he addressed the Prophet Muhammad(s) these crude, unadorned words inspired by his rebelliousness and ignorance: "Who will restore to life the scattered particles of this rotten bone?"

He believed that he would thus be able to refute the arguments of the Prophet(s) and to destroy the belief of others in resurrection of the dead. His ignorant mode of thought prevented him from having any correct notion of the creation of being, so that he imagined that the scattered particles of a decayed bone could not possibly be brought back to life. He adamantly maintained that the reassembling of the countless particles of the body was unacceptable to man's reason.
We know that Ubayy bin Khalaf was cursed by the Prophet(s) for putting the intestines of a camel on the back of the Prophet(s). He was killed in the battle of Badr and his body parts were mutilated but he was not thrown in the well. (Sahih Bukhari Hadith 5.193)
The Noble Quran replied with this persuading argument based on convincing logic:

"(O Messenger) say: "Who first brought them to life will restore them to life. He has knowledge of all His creation. .. Is the Creator Who brought into being the heavens and the earth, incapable of creating the like thereof? Certainly He is the Creator and All-Knowing."

(Quran, 36:79-81)

The Quran invites man to contemplate the whole vast structure of creation together with the innumerable phenomena and minutiae it contains, using his wisdom and the intelligence which are his means for recognising the principles underlying the universe. Thus cloning enables man to realise that the restoration of life to man through resurrection is not more difficult than the initial creation out of a mass of different materials that were compounded together.
Man may well ask himself how the breath of life may be infused anew into the particles of his body once they have been scattered in the recesses of the earth, and how lifeless matter may be brought back to life although its constituent elements have been dispersed. But the dispersal does not result in their permanent alienation from each other, and the human intellect can well understand that the infinite and eternal creative power of God has no difficulty whatsoever in compounding afresh those scattered elements so that they begin pulsating with life anew.
The Noble Quran reminds man of Allah's unlimited power to restore all the minute qualities and precise details of man's limbs with the following words:

"Does man imagine that We are not capable of reassembling his decayed bones? We are able even to restore his fingers to their previous state."

(Quran, 75:3-4)

In this verse Allah selects to mention out of all the marvel's of man's composition the lines in his fingers as an example of His power. In the whole world, two people cannot be found with exactly identical fingerprints. This unique quality of fingerprints, first indicated in the Quran remained unknown until their discovery by British scientists in 1884.
In February 1997 it was publicised that a Scottish scientist cloned a lamb. The western scientists speculated the possibility of cloning a human being. Some Muslim scholars think that it is impossible to clone a human being. Because the human being is different from all of God's creations in that the human being has a soul. The argument is since science cannot clone a soul, a human being cannot be cloned. Looking at the past history of science, it is possible to clone a human being in our life-time. A clone is like a photocopy of the original or an identical twin who is much younger in age. If an identical twin has a soul, then a human clone will also have a soul. A clone cannot be grown in a laboratory but in a surrogate mother's womb. The surrogate mother provides all the nutrients for the cloned cell to grow to become an embryo, a foetus and then after delivery a human child, just like the lamb Dolly. The only difference between a normal child and a cloned child is in the genes. The normal child has 23 chromosomes from the mother and 23 chromosomes from the father or 23 pairs in every cell of the body except the germ cells or gametes (sperm or ova). The clone child will have 23 pairs of chromosomes of one parent.
Muslims should welcome the technology of cloning of humans. Because this scientific accomplishment is in itself an indication of the reality of resurrection; it provides a method which joined together with reflection, may permit us to understand Qiyamah (resurrection) and prove it scientifically.