Islam - Its Meaning for Modern Man — Page 330
330 created the heavens and the earth power to create the like of them?’ Yea, and He is indeed the Supreme Creator, All-Knowing” (36:78 ⎯ 82). Attention is here drawn to the process of man’s own creation for the purpose of this life. The flesh, the bones, the muscles, the blood, the brain, and indeed all the faculties and the whole complicated and yet wonderfully co- ordinated machinery of the human body constituting a complete microcosm is all potentially contained in less than a thousandth part of a drop of fluid. The Wise Creator knows what He is doing. In accord with the manifold provisions that He has already made, the drop of fluid in due course experiences a new creation at birth and matures into an intelligent human being, capable of the highest attainments in every field of life. The center of the whole process is the soul. The body is an essential part for the purpose of life in the conditions of this world. Up to a point, the soul and the body together constitute a unit and are indissoluble; then dissolution comes and that is the end of life upon earth, but that is not the end of life itself. At death the functions of the body come to an end, and except for considerations of decency and respect for the dead, it is immaterial how the body is disposed of. The soul then enters upon a process of rebirth, during the course of which it acquires a new frame, and the result is another organism for the purposes of the new life. Thus “the bones are