Firstly let me introduce the topic by saying, Muslims are scientists and pioneers of science, I the writer am a Medical Doctor and molecular biologist. We believe in science, but not as an affront to God but in cognizance of Him and appreciation of His laws that science explores.

The Verse

In the majestic Quran, which Muslims believe is the verbatim word of the one God, Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ, a deliberate example and challenge is put forth:

O people, an example is presented, so listen to it. Indeed, those you invoke besides Allah will never create a fly, even if they gathered together for that purpose. And if the fly should take from them a [tiny] thing, they could not recover it. So weak are (both) the seeker and the sought!

Quran 22:73

Why the Fly?

It is peculiar that Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ presents here the example of the fly. What’s special about the fly? Well perhaps by ‘coincidence’ the fly happens to be the most researched organism in science today, which should translate into it being the most understood organism.

Since the time of Thomas Hunt Morgan, who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933, flies have been dubbed “wonder model organisms” due to their suitability for scientific research and cumulative contribution to science.

Flies share 60% of the human genetic make-up and have 75% of disease causing genes. They have very fast reproductive cycles – 1 to 2 weeks, which makes them most suitable due to a quick turnover. They have some of the fewest chromosomes, just 4 pairs. Also a plus.

The Guardian describes:

…the fruit fly has played a key role in unravelling biological processes for the last century. “Drosophila is now the best known organism on the planet because of this work,” said Professor Andreas Prokop, of Manchester University. “Due to this knowledge, we can plan an experiment on a fruit fly and have the result in three weeks. In a mouse that could take a year. Fruit flies offer a cheap, fast pipeline to reach understanding of complex biological questions which can then be translated into medical applications.”

Six Nobel prizes – what’s the fascination with the fruit fly?

Scientists dub flies partners in the award of the most Nobel prizes, Deccan Herald writes of the fly, human’s best lab rat,

Ever wondered who shares the highest number of Nobel Prizes, along with humans? At least nine scientists share five Nobel Prizes based on their work using the common fruit flies, making them partners in Nobel-worthy findings.

So Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ in the Quran challenged humans and any partners they may find with an easy enough organism that at the time was not known for its scientific value, but will in our time ‘coincidentally’ become man’s most studied lab specimen and thus the one we should best be able to create, if that is within our capacity.

The Challenge

The challenge in the Quran reads like a deliberate dare to the scientific community. It goes,

Indeed, those you invoke besides Allah will never create a fly, even if they gathered together for that purpose…

Seemingly challenging scientists to gather together in as huge a collaboration as they may and try their best, yet that they will NEVER be able to make a fly.

The day scientists make a fly this challenge will be refuted, that day Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ promises will never come.

Repurposing, reassembly, disassembly and re-assembly and minimal genome research are not creation. Cloning Dolly for instance constitutes the taking of two pieces of the creation of Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ and tampering with and combining them.

Thus far while scientists have made life-like artificial or synthetic cells, they are only operating on a kindergarten level of created life, with <1% life-likeness as frontiers rates the synthetic lab-made life.

Comparing these two networks leads estimate SC life-likeness as a very small number (<1%?), which seems more reasonable than the 39% estimated on the basis of the behavioral Turing test.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2020.00953/full

Scientists are operating at a level where they breakdown parts of existing cells, to find out the least parts they can use to survive and then replacing the DNA of the microbes with very elementary synthetic DNA to create robotic life-like forms. They admit these cells are not alive.

The artificial cells still have a long way to go, particularly towards being self-reliant. 

As Mansy explains, the ‘translation machinery’ required for them to produce proteins from RNA blueprints was isolated from living bacteria and implanted into the artificial cells, but the ideal scenario would be to have the cells producing their own translation machinery. 

https://www.sciencealert.com/these-artificial-cells-are-not-alive-but-they-just-passed-the-turing-test

With this difficulty in creating microbes, the most basic life-forms, can scientists ever create a fly ex nihilo?

What is peculiar, is that the brand of scientists who challenge God, say that unguided evolution was able to achieve this complexity in so many forms, over 10 million species, yet today, even with AI advanced thinking and all modern tools of science, we cannot achieve a fragment of the creation of “nature” =God. Can our advanced research, AI’s and labs not in 2 weeks, cover for the 2 billion years they say nature blindly did it? Make a fly, Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ dares.

More to the Challenge… Reverse Engineer it!

Then Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ goes a step further to describe and ridicule scientific expectations and give an example of the fruitlessness of the endeavor. Notice “example” in the complete verse.

In the next lines of the verse, Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ says what means:

And if the fly should take from them a [tiny] thing, they could not recover it.

The digestive processes of the fly are very unique. The fly is in a form like a scientist. It has a proboscis which has tiny bristles on it. This equipment can be equated to probes and pipettes used commonly in labs. Like the scientist also, it focuses on the food (specimen) and pours its digestive reagents on it.

The fly digests food extra-corporeally.

First, the housefly scrubs the dry food substance with the bristles on the end of its proboscis. This frees up food particles, if they’re not already loose and crumbly. …

The fly vomits saliva and digestive material onto its meal, and after a few seconds pass for the juices to break down the food, the fly sucks everything back up.” 

https://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/housefly3.htmurce

And Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ is telling the scientist to whom this particular verse directly refers, that just like the way it is when a fly has minimally degraded food with its technological mouth pieces, this food is rendered permanently denatured and cannot be recovered in its initial form, so also no matter how long and how hard you conduct your minimal genomic research and dismantle my creation, you will not be able to reverse engineer it.

Oh that’s deep!

Quran, the Living Miracle: The Seeker is as Weak as the Sought

This is one of the reasons why Muslims view the Quran as a book for all times. It has messages that appear satisfactory for earlier ages but as time goes on, seem to adapt and refocus on current development and scientific advances. This particular verse, while it appeared self-explanatory for believers in the 7th century, is so directly suited for the current scientific collaborative era and our times of microscopic studies and attempts at creating life. The glove fits!

Allah in this verse is describing microscopic items. He says, if the fly takes something, you cannot recover it. He is describing protease enzyme level denaturing of proteins. He is pointing out that not all things broken to their constituent atoms and molecules can be rebuilt to the original form.

Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ concludes,

So weak are (both) the seeker and the sought!

While creating a fly is so minuscule to Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ, and the fly with only 4 chromosomes is such a ‘baby’ organism compared to man with 46 chromosomes, scientists are so weak, literally as weak as a fly. They can never be able to make one.

Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ did not call them impotent. He called them “weak.” You are endowed with some creative potential, but creating a fly is above your training capacity. You can clone, similar to how Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ cloned Eve from Adam, but you cannot create life, actual complex organisms ex nihilo.

It may appear to us that with the progress scientists have made with these minimalist science, reverse-engineered 500 synthetic genes-based simple artificial cells in God-made mycoplasma hosts providing the booting up, that someday scientists will be able to make all the parts themselves and then of higher complexity till a fly. But No! Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ knows that the tricks involved in making something of such complexity and booting it up to life shall never be attained by the “weak” scientists and those they call upon – idols, jinns, other demons, AI. He actually dares them to gather together and try.

How did Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ know that scientists will seek to create complex life?

How did He know that the fly would become man’s favorite lab organism to use it in particular for His example?

How did Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ know that flies break down food in such a way that it can never be recovered once ingested?

Why did He pick the strange example of the fly which operates in a sense like the reverse engineering scientist?

Well the challenge is on. Make a fly and prove Him wrong if you can.

Further Research

Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ appears to have set the bar ‘to create life’ at the fly. This may be for many reasons. It is possible that bacteria and other microscopic organisms are not living things, i.e. are not alive. That they are simple organic robots. These low level organisms perhaps are merely robotic and lack the responsive, conscious and accountable “soul” and other more complex characteristics that really define life. Scientists are also grappling with the accurate definition of life and are currently challenged by how it has been recorded that 100 million year-old, non-evolving, zombie, dormant or “dead” bacteria can spring back to “life.” And if 100 million years is a lot, they have even more recently found 850 million-year-old zombie microbes that just defy the “to be a living thing you must die” standard.

See also, “A matter of bacterial life and death,” by Gregg Bogosian et al.

Currently, life biologically is defined and re-defined as the presence of certain conditions: nutrition, growth, movement, evolution, responsiveness, reproduction, death etc. However at every turn, scientists meet an organism that defies one or more of these criteria. Like the “zombie” bacteria mentioned above. Apparently some bacteria have existed since earth’s formation and shall be till the end of time, never evolving and never dying. Then also will we call sentient robots that are built to be responsive, grow, utilize nutrients, reproduce and die, living beings?

In Islam, Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ gives certain rules for creatures. Do not torture any soul. If killing a creature, do it fast and as painlessly as possible. Obviously this rule does not apply to microbes which we cannot see and hence protect, so are they living beings in Islam?

Additionally each individual carries only his soul. But we know people live with a microbial ecosystem of billions of microbes. We are not walking soul farms, so do microbes have souls which characterizes being alive in Islam?

Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ says all animals are worshipping communities like man.

Seest thou not that it is Allah Whose praise all beings in the heavens and on earth do celebrate, and the birds (of the air) with wings outspread? Each one knows its own (mode of) prayer and praise, and Allah knows well all that they do. 

Quran 24:41

In Islam Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ says all creatures will be brought to Him to account.

And there is no creature on [or within] the earth or bird that flies with its wings except [that they are] communities like you. We have not neglected in the Register a thing. Then unto their Lord they will be gathered.

Quran 6:38

Will microbes also be gathered, when they lack the emotional soul, conscious responsiveness and intellect? This seems unlikely. It is the soul that is resurrected and gathered not flesh.

And Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ knows best.

And to conclude, the next verse then confidently states:

They have not appraised Allah with true appraisal. Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Exalted in Might.

Quran 22:74

It’s unbelievable, He knows they will try. He even brags about it before the fact. Allahu Akbar! God is the greatest! They claim unguided evolution could do this for over 10 million unique species, and yet they try with all their modern scientific tools and come back empty.

When will our scientists realize, recognize and give Allah سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَٰلَىٰ the credit He is due? We wait.

by Perry Isa Brimah, MD., MS.