Our God — Page 78
78 That is to say, this hadith means that the world has passed through several cycles and the present cycle of the human race commenced several thousand years ago; we are unsure how many similar cycles the earth has passed through. A famous Islamic scholar and Sufi, Hadrat Muhyiddin ibn-e-Arabi rta , writes that once in a vision he was shown that there had been hundreds of thousands of A dams in this world and when a cycle of one A dam came to an end that of the next started. Only God knows how many cycles this world has gone through. 1 Therefore, by correctly understanding the meaning of the hadith, there remains no room for any objection. The notion that there was no creation of God on this earth a few thousand years ago and God forbid, God was sitting idle is utterly contrary to the teachings of Islam. Likewise, the Holy Quran says: We made A dam of clay and then put life into him. Some people have inferred that God made a dummy out of clay and breathed life into it and in this way the human race commenced. But the Quranic verse implies only that there are earthly elements in A dam’s make-up, which is why he inclines easily to material things; that is why God infused an ele- ment of spirituality into the nature of human beings, so that his earthly elements do not hinder his spiritual progress. In other words, a very subtle matter, which the Holy Quran characteristi- cally stated in metaphorical language, has been taken in its mate- rial sense and thus made the target of criticism. However, even if the verse is taken in the literal sense, I maintain that this verse cannot be faulted in any way. This is because the primary purpose of the revelation of the Holy Quran is to bring about spiritual 1. See Fut uha t-e-Makkiyyah, ch. H ud u thud-duny a , vol. 3.