SEMEN IS A COMPOUND
2-Verily, We created the human from a drop of a liquid mixture in order to try him. Thus We made him a hearer and a seer.
76- The Human, 2
Analyses in detail of organs and substances in the human body could be made thanks to the invention and development of microscope. These analyses showed that the semen was composed of spermatozoa in their nutrient plasma, secretions from the prostate, seminal vesicles and various other glands, epithelial cells and minor constituents. Citric acid, prostaglandin, flavins, ascorbic acid, ergo thioneine, fructose, phosphorylcoline, colesterol, phosholipids, fibrinolysin, zinc, acid phosphatase, hyolurinasase and sperms are among the various constituents of the semen.
Our body is one of the best, the most beautiful and the most complicated of works. Thanks to it we are able to see and hear, to perpetuate our lineage; thanks to the skills of this body we can design and build machines, computers, bridges, airplanes and do paintings, carve statues and compose music. Our body is the product of one of the initial stages of the creation that entailed the creation of all the constituents of the semen. This was to be followed by the physiochemical processes involved in the union of the male and female gametes to form the zygote, the fertilized ovum before cleavage.
The explanation of only the sperm cord or the prostate gland would take hundreds of pages. Our Creator refers in His book to a ‘liquid mixture’. Our analysis of this mixture and its constituents pay to contribute to our every increasing wonder in the presence of the miraculous creation of our body.
Our odyssey that began with the creation of this liquid compound led us to acquire such skills as seeing and, hearing, processes of extreme complexity.
To think that it is only to a few drops of a liquid that we owe the acquisition of so may skills! No man in his senses can attribute this to a concurrence of coincidences. The Creator Who is Omniscient, Omnipotent, Who is Exalted and beyond all praise is the author of these things as stated in the Quran.
CREATION FROM A DROP
36- Does man think that he will be left uncontrolled?
37- Was he not a drop of semen emitted?
75- The Resurrection, 36-37
The Quran says that God Who created man watches over him. In Verse 37 it is stated that he is created from ‘a drop of semen’. Here again we are in the presence of a scientific fact inaccessible at the time of the Prophet. In this verse, the Arabic words meni (semen) and nutfe (drop) are differentiated. Nutfe means what is left of a liquid in a bucket whose contents have been emptied. Thus the expression refers to a portion and not to all the semen. The semen contains in a single ejaculation along with its constituents, sperms varying between 100 million to 200 million. One out of million of sperms fertilize the egg. In other words, the zygote, product of the union of two gametes is but the result of a small part of the semen. The sperm or the spermatozoon, the male gamete, typically consisting of a head containing the nucleus, a middle piece containing a mitochondrion and a comparatively long tail whose structure is similar to that of a flagellum. Hundreds of millions of sperms leaving the male’s organ head for the ovum wagging their tails. The distance they cover in the woman’s organ of reproduction involves a considerable long journey, if measured in microns the length of a sperm (a micron is equal to one millionth of a meter). To cover such a distance means to swim long distances, kilometers in fact. Many of the sperms die on the way and only a few succeed to reach the target. Of the multitude of sperms surrounding the egg, only one is allowed to penetrate, barring the way to all others. Half of the genetic data of this sperm is contained in a head of 5microns. The other genetic code is waiting in the mother’s womb. All these are the result of many concurring details. God displays his artistry in every instance.
CREATION FROM A QUINTESSENCE
8-Then made his offspring from the quintessence of the nature of a fluid despised.
32-The Prostration,8
In a previous chapter (Ch 48), our attention was drawn to the fact that man was created from a quintessence of clay. The Arabic meaning of the word, “Quintessence”, is “sulala.” Just like man is created from a “quintessence” of the earth, he is also created from a “quintessence” of the semen. While the word “drop” signifies just a small amount of semen, the word “quintessence” draws attention to the essence of semen.
As a matter of fact, sperm constitutes only a part of the semen of which they form the basic element out of the sperms that compete with each other in trying to reach their target.
Each of us is the winner sperm’s product. Every human being coming to the world has behind him hundreds of millions in this swimming race. We, who are reading these lines, have come out victorious; since we are far ahead of those we have left behind. Each of us has carried the day. And we are the quintessence!
57- It is We Who created you, then why do you not affirm the truth?
58- Do you then see the semen that you emit?
59 – Is it you who create it or are We the creator?
56-The Inevitable, 57-59
HANGING ON THE WALL OF UTERUS
13-Then we placed him as a drop in a firmly established lodging
14- Then we developed the drop into a hanging
23-The Believers, 13-14
Alak is the Arabic word referring to something that hanging on a place. Embryology did not exist as a science at the time of the Prophet. Neither was there a special terminology. The Quran described best the stages using the words current at the time. The zygote then hangs to the wall of the uterus. The Quran brings clarification to something unknown at the time. To render the word alak with the signification ‘embryo’, may not exactly reflect its original meaning, and would moreover fail to convey the spirit of it. Otherwise the rendering would not be exact. To translate it as ‘a clot of blood’ deviates from the literal meaning of the word. This rendering has often been adopted, giving it the attribute of a secondary meaning of the word. The reason had been the failure of exegetists to conceive the true meaning of the word.
THE QURAN THAT SHED LIGHT ON THINGS HIDDEN IN THE DARK CORNERS OF HISTORY
The works contemporaneous with the Quran and the works that preceded it are replete with misconceptions, crisscrossed with mythical legends and ungrounded speculations. In 1641, Harvey’s statement according to which the origin of every living thing was an egg and that the embryo underwent transformations, passing through stages of development was one of the major contributions to the advancement of science. In the 17th century, when man had already had microscope at his disposal, the respective roles of the egg and of the sperm were the topics of discussion. Bannet (1720-1793) speculated that aphid eggs consisted of an infinite number of smaller eggs, one inside the other, and generalized this performation theory, which maintains that a child arises from an adult in miniature contain within the egg, to all other animals. This hypothesis had found many adherents in the 18th century.
Prof. Dr. Maurice Bucaille found the conformity of the Quran with scientific facts. Men, some thousand years prior to the 18th century, had been acquainted with the Quran. What was said in it about the reproduction of the human organism was rendered in a clear expression that was to take man centuries to find out. Keith Moore, anatomy professor in the Toronto University of Canada, says that the information contained in the Quran about embryology cannot be accounted for by the data available in the 7th century. He goes further and says that even a century back this was hardly known. Only today are we in a position to answer what the verses of the Quran meant thank to the development of modern embryology.
In history the only book that exactly describes the development of the human being within the womb is the Quran. Let us once again tackle the subject of hanging to the uterus wall. Only after the invention of the microscope was man able to bring to light this fact as a result of developments marked in the fields of physiology, anatomy and embryology.
PROOFS FROM THE STAGES OF THE EMBRYO
6-These are the signs of God which we rehearse to you in truth. Then in which word other than God and His signs do they believe.
45-Kneeling,6
The sperm that encounters its other half in the ovary, continues its way from the fallopian tube toward the uterus. The embryo, in its journey, does not cling on the fallopian tube. The embryo proceeds on and when it reaches the uterus hangs on a spot where blood vessels are dense. The stage of “alak” refered in the Quran has started.
How come that this powerless cell deviod of all intelligence evetually finds for itself a place in uterus, the ideal place for it? How come that the embryo that arrives at the uterus hangs on its wall and able to recieve all the nurishment necessary for its development like a leech? (One of the meanings of the word “alak” is “leech”) All these things are carefully planned by God’s ingenious artistry. Those who are blind to this fact and refuse to see in this God’s doing, interpreting it as pure coincidence on the embryo’s genius, will be in a ridiculous situation.
The process of hanging on the uterus wall of the embryo is the result of a complicated system. To penetrate the acid layer on the uterine wall, the embryo secretes an enzyme (hyalurodinase) which catalyzes the uterine tissue and allows the penetration of the embryo that settles in it like a plant. Henceforth, it will supply its need for food and oxygen from this very point. The hyalurodinase secreted by the embryo catalizes the breakdown of the hyaluronic acid.
The embryo’s discovery of the place where it is going to hang is a proof of the training it must have received part of the great design. The embryonic cells have so many activities to perform that a scientist that studies them can easily come to the conclusion that they are entities of high intelligence. Laurie Iten, biologist from the Purdue University, says that the cells communicate with one another and that they have a language of their own.
1. Read in the name of your Lord who created
2. He created man from the hanging
96-The Hanging,1-2
