S30
DNA and the information in life
20:50 gives Moses' (pbuh) answer to Pharaoh — "Our Lord is He who gave each thing its form and then guided [it]" — and 87:2–3 and 54:49 say the same in other words: God created, proportioned, "destined and [then] guided", and made all things "with predestination".
قَالَ رَبُّنَا ٱلَّذِىٓ أَعْطَىٰ كُلَّ شَىْءٍ خَلْقَهُۥ ثُمَّ هَدَىٰ٥٠
Transliteration: qāla rabbunā alladhī aʿṭā kulla shayin khalqahu thumma hadā
He said, "Our Lord is He who gave each thing its form and then guided [it]."
ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ فَسَوَّىٰ٢ وَٱلَّذِى قَدَّرَ فَهَدَىٰ٣
Transliteration: alladhī khalaqa fasawwā · wa-alladhī qaddara fahadā
Who created and proportioned And who destined and [then] guided
إِنَّا كُلَّ شَىْءٍ خَلَقْنَٰهُ بِقَدَرٍ٤٩
Transliteration: innā kulla shayin khalaqnāhu biqadarin
Indeed, all things We created with predestination.
Translation: Saheeh International
Meccan, in Sura Ṭā Hā: Moses (pbuh) answering Pharaoh's question, "who is your Lord?" (the question is in the verse before, not quoted here).
"Who created and proportioned. And who destined and [then] guided" (87:2–3), Meccan, in Sura al-Aʿlā, describing "your Lord, the Most High" of its first verse.
"Indeed, all things We created with predestination" (54:49), Meccan, near the end of Sura al-Qamar.
Key words
Khalqahu (20:50, "its form"): its created nature. Hadā ("guided"). Qaddara (87:3, "destined"): measured out, determined. Bi-qadar (54:49, "with predestination"): with measure, by decree; the same root as 25:2, "determined it with [precise] determination".
Whom they address
20:50 is a reply to a ruler who claimed divinity. 87 and 54 address the listeners in Mecca. None of them speaks of cells or molecules.
Classical tafsir
Ibn Kathir on 20:50. He gives several early readings of "gave each thing its form":
- Ibn ʿAbbas (via ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭalḥa): "He is saying that He created a mate for everything."
- Ibn ʿAbbas (via al-Ḍaḥḥāk): "He made the man a man, and the donkey a donkey and the sheep a sheep."
- Mujahid: "He gave everything its form"; and "He fashioned the creation of every moving creature."
- Saʿīd ibn Jubayr: "He gave each of His creatures what is suitable for its creation", and "He also gave creature a suitable spouse, and He influenced everything towards that mate."
Al-Jalālayn on 20:50. God gave everything "its peculiar nature", and guided each animal "to its source of food drink and procreation and in other ways." Tanwīr al-Miqbās: "He gave unto everything its nature", and "then He inspired them how to eat, drink and copulate."
Ibn Kathir on 87:2–3. "He created that which has been created, and He fashioned every creation in the best of forms." On "destined and guided", he cites Mujahid: "He guided man to distress and happiness, and he guided the cattle to their pastures", links the verse to 20:50, and explains: "meaning, He decreed a set measure and guided the creation to it." He cites the hadith in Sahih Muslim from ʿAbdullah ibn ʿAmr (ra): "Verily, Allah ordained the measure of all creation fifty thousand years before He created the heavens and the earth" (Muslim; the number was not given on the page read). Al-Jalālayn on 87:3: God "determined what He wants and guided to what He had determined of good or evil". Tanwīr: "He measured felicity and wretchedness for His created beings".
Ibn Kathir on 54:49. He reads it as a verse on divine decree (qadar), cited "to refute the Qadariyyah sect, who started their sect during the latter time of the Companions" (the Qadariyya denied God's prior decree). He cites a report that "The idolators of the Quraysh came to the Messenger of Allah" disputing about decree, and the saying "Every thing is predetermined, even laziness and intelligence" (from ʿAbdullah ibn ʿUmar, collected by Muslim; the page gives no number). Tanwīr: "This verse was revealed about those who argued about destiny."
Where they differ. On "form" in 20:50: a mate for each thing (Ibn ʿAbbas via ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭalḥa; Saʿīd ibn Jubayr) or each kind made what it is (Ibn ʿAbbas via al-Ḍaḥḥāk; Mujahid). On "guided": guidance to food, drink and mating (al-Jalālayn; Tanwīr), to pasture for animals and to happiness or misery for humans (Mujahid), or to a measure decreed in advance (Ibn Kathir). 54:49 is read mainly as a verse about God's decree, not about nature's proportions.
How it works
- 3,055,000,000
- letters (base pairs) in one complete human sequence
- ≈ 20,000
- protein-coding genes
Reading one letter a second, you would need about 97 years to finish it.
The letters are illustrative, not a real sequence.
Text version
DNA carries inherited instructions in four chemical "letters". One complete human sequence has 3.055 billion letters (Nurk et al. 2022). There are about 20,000 protein-coding genes (19,599 counted in 2004). Reading one letter a second, the text would take about 97 years.
Each point is tied to "gave each thing its form" and "destined" (a measure set in advance).
- A written set of instructions. Established DNA carries an organism's inherited instructions in four chemical "letters". "One complete set of genomic instructions is about 3 billion base pairs" (NHGRI, Human Genome Project FAQ).
- The full text, finally read. Established In 2022 the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium published a "complete 3.055 billion-base pair sequence" of one human genome (T2T-CHM13). It filled "the remaining 8% of the genome", adding "nearly 200 million base pairs" (Nurk et al., Science).
- Fewer genes than expected. Established In 2004 the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium counted "19,599 protein-coding genes", with a headline estimate of "20,000-25,000" — far fewer than had been predicted (News-Medical, reporting the Nature paper). Much of the rest of the genome helps control when and where genes are used.
Points of awe
Reflection
Pharaoh asked a question meant to humiliate: "Who is your Lord?" Moses (pbuh) did not answer with a name or a title. He pointed at the world: the One "who gave each thing its form and then guided [it]."
The commentators heard two steps in that sentence. First, form: a man made a man, a sheep a sheep, each creature given "what is suitable for its creation". Then guidance: each creature finding its food, its drink, its mate, and the herd its pasture. Al-Aʿlā repeats the pattern: created, proportioned, measured, guided.
A modern reader cannot hear "form, then guidance" without thinking of the instructions every living cell carries. It is striking that each creature carries, inside itself, something like a text that shapes what it becomes and how it behaves. For a believer this fits the verse's picture of a world measured and guided. But the verse does not mention DNA, and the commentators did not read it so. The link is ours, and it should be offered as a reflection, not as the verse's meaning.
What the verse offers everyone is the question Moses (pbuh) put to Pharaoh: when you see form and guidance running through every living thing, what do you think lies behind it?
Questions readers ask next
Is "guided" a reference to DNA?
No classical commentator read it that way. They read it as guidance to food, drink and mates (al-Jalālayn), to pasture and to happiness or misery (Mujahid), or to a measure set in advance (Ibn Kathir). The DNA link is a modern reflection.
What does "each thing its form" mean?
In Ibn ʿAbbas's words (via al-Ḍaḥḥāk), each kind made what it is: "He made the man a man, and the donkey a donkey and the sheep a sheep." In another report from him, it means God created "a mate for everything."
What does "with predestination" in 54:49 mean?
Ibn Kathir reads it as God's decree, against those who denied it, citing "Every thing is predetermined, even laziness and intelligence" (Muslim).
Does DNA prove God?
That is debated. Meyer argues it points to design; critics argue natural processes can produce biological information; some Muslim scholars, such as Shoaib Ahmed Malik, hold that faith does not depend on the answer.
Sources
- Saheeh International — 20:50, 87:2–3, 54:49, 25:2.
- Ibn Kathir (abridged English), al-Jalālayn and Tanwīr al-Miqbās, on 20:50, https://surahquran.com/tafsir-english-aya-50-sora-20.html; on 87:3, https://surahquran.com/tafsir-english-aya-3-sora-87.html; on 54:49, https://surahquran.com/tafsir-english-aya-49-sora-54.html.
- National Human Genome Research Institute, Human Genome Project FAQ (Smithsonian exhibition), https://www.genome.gov/Pages/Education/Smithsonian_Exhibition/Human_Genome_Project_FAQ.pdf.
- Nurk, Koren, Rhie et al., "The complete sequence of a human genome", Science 376(6588):44–53 (2022), abstract, https://profiles.wustl.edu/en/publications/the-complete-sequence-of-a-human-genome/.
- News-Medical, "Researchers trim count of human genes to 20,000–25,000" (21 October 2004), on the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium's paper in Nature, https://www.news-medical.net/news/2004/10/21/5738.aspx.
- Wikipedia, "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District.
- Wikiwand (Wikipedia), "Signature in the Cell", https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Signature_in_the_Cell.
- Shoaib Ahmed Malik, Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm (Routledge, 2021), OAPEN record and abstract, https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/48443.
- Hypertextbook, "Length of a Human DNA Molecule"
- National Human Genome Research Institute (genome.gov) fact sheets
- Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell (pro-design); Francis Collins, The Language of God (theistic evolution)
- Shoaib Ahmed Malik, Islam and Evolution (Routledge, 2021)
- Al-Rāzī and Ibn Kathīr on 20:50 and 87:2–3