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Al-Isra 17:99

The verse builds an argument: the one who makes the larger makes the smaller a fortiori.

۞ أَوَلَمْ يَرَوْا۟ أَنَّ ٱللَّهَ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ قَادِرٌ عَلَىٰٓ أَن يَخْلُقَ مِثْلَهُمْ وَجَعَلَ لَهُمْ أَجَلًا لَّا رَيْبَ فِيهِ فَأَبَى ٱلظَّـٰلِمُونَ إِلَّا كُفُورًا

Do they not consider that God, Who created the heavens and the earth, is Able to create the likes of them? He has assigned for them a term, in which there is no doubt. But the wrongdoers persist in denying the truth

Al-Isra 17:99 · Translation: talal-itani

Image

Between the creation of the heavens and the earth (al-samāwāt wa-l-arḍ) and the re-creation of the human being (mithlahum) the bridge is the attribute "qādir" (the all-able). "Mithlahum" (their like) — not the same person re-embodied, but a being of the same kind brought into existence anew.

Observation

The size gap between the observable universe (about 10²⁶ metres in diameter, ~2 trillion galaxies) and the human body (about 10⁻⁵ metres at the cell scale) exceeds 30 orders of magnitude. For an order that arranges the larger, rebuilding the smaller is logically a light task. The verse moves first on this logic; physics does not re-prove it. The scale comparison only opens a window onto the verse's "greater → lesser" reasoning.

Exegesis

Al-Rāzī reads the verse as "faḥwā al-kalām" (a fortiori reasoning): for the one who creates the heavens, returning a body is a **light** task — an argument that forms the spine of many resurrection verses. Al-Bayḍāwī notes that the same argument runs at the same level as 36:81 and 46:33.

Sources

Tafsīr: al-Rāzī · Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb; al-Bayḍāwī · Anwār al-Tanzīl. Science: scale comparison (cosmology and biology).

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