creation of the heavens and earth as self-evident proofs of Divine unity. And so, whether they like it or not, because of the way the heavens and earth have been created, anyone who is conscious and intelligent will be compelled to affirm the Glorious Creator. As the Qur’an says: They will certainly say, “God.”
In the First Stopping-Place we started with a particle and demonstrated the stamp of unity on beings as far as the stars and the heavens. With verses like these the Qur’an repels the ascribing of partners to God from the stars and heavens down to particles. It indicates this in the following way.
The Possessor of Absolute Power Who creates the heavens and earth with such order and balance, of course creates the solar system, which is a region of it. The solar system is self-evidently within His controlling and directing grasp.
Since that Absolutely Powerful One holds the sun and its planets within His grasp, and orders, subjugates, and directs them, certainly the earth, which is a member of the solar system and is tied to the sun, is also within His regulating and controlling grasp. Since this is so, the beings which are created and inscribed on the face of the earth and are like its aims and fruits are also within His sustaining and perfecting grasp.
And since all the creatures spread and scattered over the earth, which gild and adorn its face, are continuously renewed, coming and going, filling the earth and being emptied from it, they are all of them within the grasp of His knowledge and power; and since they are measured and ordered on the scales of justice and wisdom; and since all the species of animate beings are within the grasp of His power; certainly, all the well-ordered and faultless members of those species, which are like miniature specimens of the cosmos, balance-sheets of its species, and tiny indexes of the book of the universe, must also be within His creating, sustaining, directing, and perfecting grasp.
And since this is so, the cells, blood-corpuscles, limbs and muscles which comprise those animate creatures’ bodies are also self-evidently within the grasp of His knowledge and power.
And since every cell and corpuscle is under His command and within His grasp, and since they are in motion according to His laws, surely the particles out of which they are formed and which are like shuttles weaving the embroideries of art which clothe them, are also necessarily within the grasp of His power and the sphere of His knowledge. For they are in motion in orderly fashion faultlessly performing duties at His command, with His permission, and through His power.
And since this is so, the identifying features and distinguishing marks to be found on everyone, all the differences in faces, voices and languages, of necessity also occur through His knowledge and wisdom.