3

Verily your Lord is God, Who created the heavens And the earth in six Days, And is firmly established On the Throne of authority, Regulating and governing all things

1

. Islam is perfectly clear. Allah created the heavens and the earth and all that is in between them. He is the source of all creation and the reason for it. Without him willing it to be so, nothing would exis t. In this manner Allah created all things. He created the plants and the animals, and placed t hem on Earth, and He decreed upon them the laws by which the natural order of all creation functions. Things exist according to those laws and do not require divine intervention, the laws placed by Allah take into a ccount all the nat ural phenomen on and, for Muslims, provide further proof of Allah¶s greatness. Nevertheless, as the first decade of the 21

st

century is brought to a close, it s eems that crucial questions regarding the relationship between ethics, morals, faith and science are being raised with an ever increasing urgency, one of these being Charles Darwin¶s ³Theory of Evolution´, in particul ar the evolution of the human species, and its impact on society. Islam, like most religions, takes great interest in each of its follower¶s reproductive activity, setting the guidelines for the conditions of conception, birth circumstances, adolescent sexuality, marriage, life and death

2

. How then, do any of these rules conform in a fata listic, harsh, every -individual-for-himself world laid out under the rules of Darwin¶s t heory?

1

A. Yusuf Ali,

The Holy Qur¶an: Text , Translation and Commentary

(Brentwood: Amana Corp., 1983), p.483-484.

2

Durant, J.,

Darwinism and Divinity