Islam On The Creation Of The Universe From Subatomic Particles
There is a body of Qur’anic verses and Ahadith, which gave rise to the scholars understanding of space and the Universe, the verse of light and the ahadith regarding the first things Allah created. Many of these narration’s the imams relied upon, we will quote some of these verses and ahadith here.
Ibn `Umar narrated that the Prophet said: “Allah the Exalted created creation in a darkness (fi zulmatin); then He cast upon them from His Light. Whoever was touched by that Light, he is guided, and whoever was missed by it is misguided. Therefore I say that the Pen is dry (and all is) in Allah’s foreknowledge.” (Narrated by Tirmidhi, Ahmad, Tabarani, al-Hakim and Bayhaqi)
Abdullah ibn Amr narrated: I heard Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) saying: Verily Allah created the elements of man in darkness and then He “infused” into them His light. He who received this light (and then made use of it) received the right guidance and he who erred was led astray. That is why I say that the Pen has no more to write about Allah’s knowledge. (Ahmad and Tirmidhi).
Imam Nawawi said in Sharh Sahih Muslim, in his commentary on the Prophet’s du`a which begins: “O Allah, you are the light of the heavens and the earth and yours is all praise…” (Book of Salat al-musafirin #199): The scholars said that the meaning of “You are the light of the heavens and the earth” is: You are the One who illuminates them and the Creator of their light. Abu `Ubayda said: “Its meaning is that by Your light the dwellers of the heavens and the earth obtain guidance”. (“Allah guides to His light whom He wills”(24:35))
“Ibn `Arabi al-Maliki in his commentary on Tirmidhi entitled `Aridat al- ahwadhi (10:108) confirmed the latter’s grading of Hasan and comments on the hadith”: “It is clear from it that each one receives of that Light to the extent of what he has been granted out of the general and the specific… in the heart and in the limbs.”
The Prophet said: “The angels were created from light, the jinn from smokeless fire (Thermal energy), and Adam from what was described to you (i.e. in the Qur’an).”
Everything in the universe is made from atoms, those atoms are made from electrons and protons, they are made from smaller particles called quarks, we should remember regarding the next ahadith, that in the verse of Light (24:35) Allah uses light as a simile for all subatomic particles.
The prophet (saws) said “Allah hath Seventy Thousand Veils of Light and Darkness: were He to withdraw their curtain, then would the splendors of His Aspect surely consume everyone who apprehended Him with his sight.” (Imam al Ghazali Mishqat al Anwar).
Shaykh al Islam Ibn Hajr al-Haythami, the Major Imam that later Mujtahid scholars of the Shafii Madhhab followed, narrates in his Fatawa al Hadithiyyah:
Undoubtedly Abdur Razzaq mentioned with his Sanad from Jabir ibn `Abd Allah who asked: “O Messenger of Allah, may my father and mother be sacrificed for you, tell me of the first thing Allah created before all things.” He said: “O Jabir, the first thing Allah created was the light of your Prophet from His light, and that light remained (“turned”) in the midst of His Power for as long as He wished, and there was not, at that time, a Tablet or a Pen or a Paradise or a Fire or an angel or a heaven or an earth. And when Allah wished to create creation, he divided that Light into four parts and from the first made the Pen, from the second the Tablet, from the third the Throne,
فقد أخرج عبد الرزاق بسنده عن جابر بن عبد الله الأنصاري رضي الله عنهما قال: “قلت: يا رسول الله بأبي أنت وأمي أخبرني عن أوّل شيء خلقه الله قبل الأشياء؟ قال: يا جابر إن الله خلق قبل الأشياء نور نبيك محمد صلى الله عليه وسلّم من نوره فجعل ذلك النور يدور بالقدرة حيث شاء الله، ولم يكن في ذلك الوقت لوح ولا قلم ولا جنة ولا نار ولا ملك ولا سماء ولا أرض ولا شمس ولا قمر ولا إنس ولا جن، فلما أراد الله تعالى أن يخلق الخلق قسم ذلك النور أربعة أجزاء: فخلق من الجزء الأوّل القلم، ومن الثاني اللوح، ومن الثالث العرش، ثم قسم الجزء الرابع أربعة أجزاء: فخلق من الأول حملة العرش، ومن الثاني الكرسي، ومن الثالث باقي الملائكة
The term “light of the prophet” is an honorific for that light, this same light was also called the light of prophethood which each prophet was given to prove they are prophets it was the light that shined out of them in life, the light that radiated their faces which people saw, when Adam (as) was created it was given to him then it passed down among the prophets of his children until it reached the prophet muhammad (saws), many ahadith are narrated about the light people saw coming from the prophet (saws) it was an ancient light Allah used to create what is in the universe, the qualities people saw in it were because of this status that it had, it is the Highest light in all creation greater than even the light of the Angels, through it man could surpass them in knowing Allah because of it’s connection to everything created.
Imam Abd al-Razzaq narrates that Jabir (May Allah be pleased with him) said: “I said: O Messenger of Allah, may my father and mother be sacrificed for you, tell me of the first thing Allah created before all things”. He said: “O Jabir, the first thing Allah created was the light of your Prophet from His light, and that light remained (“turned”) in the midst of His Power for as long as He wished, and there was not, at that time, a Tablet or a Pen or a Paradise or a Fire or an angel or a heaven or an earth or a sun or a moon or a jinn or a man.
And when Allah wished to create creation, he divided that Light into four parts and from the first made the Pen, from the second the Tablet, from the third the Throne, and then he divided the fourth [part] into four [other] parts and from the first he created the bearer of the Throne, from the second the Chair (Kursi), from the third the rest of the angels.
Then He divided the fourth into four other parts and created from the first the heavens, and from the second the earth, and from the third the Paradise and the Fire, and then he divided the fourth into four parts and created from the first the Light in the believers visions, and from the second the light of their hearts which is knowledge of Allah, and from the third the light of their inner harmony (‘Uns) which is the Tawheed ‘There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, etc…”. (Abd al-Razzaq (d. 211) narrates it in his Musannaf according to Qastallani in al-Mawahib al-laduniyya (1:55) and Zarqani in his Sharh al-mawahib (1:56 of the Matba`a al-`amira edition in Cairo). There is no doubt as to the reliability of `Abd al-Razzaq as a narrator. Bukhari took 120 narrations from him, Muslim 400. We do not have the entire Musnad of Abd al-Razzaq in our hands, the 11 volumes presently published are not the entire work, but there are copies of the original still existent).
It is certain that what Allah meant by light are particles by simile because a number of sources indicate this like the verse of light which begins with the words “the simile for His light” then goes on to explain how Atoms and particles come into existence. In the hadith of Jabir there is something very unique that only future discoveries in physics can prove.
At the moment we don’t know what photons, the “particle” light is made of are created from, by definition it is simply energy, it is like one of the building blocks of other particles which are called elementary particles, protons and electrons are not elementary particles because they are made of smaller particles. Because E = mc^2, matter is just energy condensed, light is energy and energy creates particles.
Im certain that Allah meant particles when he used the term light in the hadith of Jabir becouse light is an elementary particle but in the Hadith Allah divides Light a number of times to create everything so the light mentioned here is no longer elementary, He then uses it to create space and the earth which are made from the many particles we know about but continues to use the term light, because it is a simile, instead of something else for physical matter such as the earth.
Particles are created from smaller particles, if we go back to beginning of the universe when this step by step process was occurring; “We don’t know what happened in the very early stages of the Big Bang because we have no experimentally tested theory that takes us back that far. However, courtesy of the LHC (Large Hadron collider) we have an experimentally tested theory that takes us back to a time (in the creation of the universe) called the electroweak epoch, and we can use this theory to answer the question (was the universe created literally from Light, photons) in the negative.”
“Electromagnetism is a low energy effective theory. It works below energies of somewhere around a teraelectron volt, but above that energy it has to be replaced by a unified theory of the electromagnetic and weak forces (these are two of the three subatomic forces in the universe) called (somewhat obviously) the electroweak theory. The discovery that proved this (not that anyone seriously doubted it) was the discovery of the Higgs Boson at the LHC in 2013”, in other words photons (light) could not have existed at the very beginning of the universe.
“The electroweak theory tells us that during the electroweak epoch (at this stage in the formation of particles from smaller particles) there were four massless vector bosons (particles). At low energies these become the (particles) Z, W+,W−, and the photon (that light is made of), but above the electroweak transition (before this period) the four bosons were indistinguishable.”
This is exactly as the hadith of Jabir states, Allah divided that light (particle) into four lights but before it was divided they were indistinguishable, as one particle.
The first particles in the universe created the later particles, from the subatomic part of our universe to the physical part last. In Islam this body of knowledge came to be called the Haqiqa Muhamadiya, the muhammadan reality, because the prophet (saws) honoured that light by calling it His (saws) light because it was the light of prophethood Allah gave to each prophet, very literally Allah created the universe from the light of prophethood it is the first light referred to in the hadith of Jabir.
Among the people of Tasawwuf like Imam Ibn Arabi, Imam Ghazali and Imam Suyuti the understanding and knowledge of the “Haqiqa Muhamadiya” is widely known, “O people of the Book! There hath come to you our Messenger, revealing to you much that ye used to hide in the Book, and passing over much. There hath come to you from Allah a light and a perspicuous Book (Qur’an 5:15).
Imam Alusi (rah) said in his tafsir, “The Prophet being a mercy to all is linked to the fact that he is the intermediary of the divine outpouring over all contingencies [i.e. all created things without exception], from the very beginnings (wasitat al-fayd al-ilahi `ala al-mumkinat `ala hasab al-qawabil), and that is why his light was the first of all things created, as stated in the report that “The first thing Allah created was the light of your Prophet, O Jabir,” and also cited is: “Allah is the Giver and I am the Distributor.” (Tafsir Ruh al-Ma`ani, Volume 017, Page No. 105)
Imam Suhrawardi (d.1193) in his works took this a step further and elaborated on the whole process of creation. Imam Suhrawardi taught that all the universe is a successive outflow from the original Light of Allah, Light of Lights (Nur al-Anwar). The fundamentals of his teaching is pure light, that unfolds from the Light of Allah in a descending order of ever-diminishing intensity in relation to Allah’s splendor, and through complex interaction, gives rise to a “horizontal” array of other lights. In other words, the universe and all levels of existence are but varying degrees of Light—the light and the darkness.
In the Niche of Lights (Mishqat al Anwar), Imam al-Ghazali (d.1111) discussed this using Qur’anic terminology of light, whereas Imam Suhrawardi, in his book “The Wisdom Of Illumination”, according to western academics who could not trace his sources, “developed a truly original light ontology”, in other words he proposed a unique structure to the subatomic nature of the universe, in reality he was one of the first people to talk about the subatomic universe.
Imam Suhrawardi wrote that out of the interaction of the vertical and horizontal movement of these lights (particles), the bodies of the lower physical world are generated from the higher lights (particles), the horizontal or vertical movement of these lights (particles) are all structurally interrelated, this is essentially the same as modern Atomic theory.
If we consider the hadith “the bull is on the soil”, and compare this to the devision of Ibn Masud which is 1) – Fish, 2) – Water, 3) – Rock, 4) – Angel, 5) – Bigger Rock, 6) – Wind, 7) – Soil, this is seven devisions while the other is four, the rock in the hadith of the bull is in on the horn of a bull not his back so the horn is the tip of something larger and hole, the next three devisions could be the simile of the bull as they make up something together, we have to remember the companions are explaining something scientifically technical in a language from 1400 years ago.
This kind of method is common in ahadith, in on hadith the explanation will be short and in another you will find a lengthier answer, it depended on who was asking the question and their capacity to understand science and a large amount of knowledge, some people didn’t have the breadth for it but still asked technical questions.
If we compare this to the Hadith of Jabir the Angels are created from the 6th division of Ibn Masud, the wind, which is just after the Soil, and that is one of deepest regions of subatomic space yet Allah says Angels are created from light so this and the hadith of Jabir are clear examples of how Allah uses light and other labels as a simile so man can better understand.
Because one particle is created from another smaller particle and all objects in the universe are created from these particles it becomes clear that all objects and beings in creation are the veils of form, of Allah’s attributes because these particles are His light (24:35).
Allah hath Seventy Thousand Veils of Light (the particles) and Darkness (the darkness of space, which is created from both dark matter and dark energy): were He to withdraw their curtain (unravel these forms they have taken), then would the splendors of His Aspect surely consume everyone who apprehended Him with his sight. If Allah was to unravel subatomic space we would see the Arsh (Throne) and in fact He did this for many prophets (as) so they could see the Arsh on earth, but if He was to Unravel the Throne as well then everything “the splendour” of His Aspect reached would be consumed by it.
Seeing the sings of Allah in creation is to understand the meaning that Allah placed behind events in life, this is the role of the heart to sum up what it senses with emotion and instinct, purifying our nafs (self) ensures what it shows us isn’t distorted. How the heart of Man connects with subatomic matter to sense requires a lengthier explanation but in short the heart, brain, man’s organs and nervous system produce a strong electromagnetic field that surrounds the entire body by 3 to 4 feet, and as physics states light is an electromagnetic field, it is because this connection exists and Imam Ibn Arabi understood it that He could tie man’s imagination which the heart shapes with the universe and after completing this picture in his works he could say “He who does not know (yarif) the ontological status (martaba) of imagination (how it is connected with the rest of the universe) has no knowledge whatsoever”.
