Ar-Room (The Romans)

22. “And of his signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variety of your languages and your colours; verily there are signs in this for the learned.”

The difference of races and languages is a way toward theology.

This holy verse is a combination of the extroversive and introversive signs. At first, it refers to the divine creation of the heavens and the earth and says:

“And of his signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth…”

The heavens, with those plenty of spheres, those many systems and galaxies; are some things that the man’s thought can not perceive their greatness, and his mind gets tired by studying them. The more man’s knowledge develops the more new points are revealed from their greatness.

Once man considered the heavenly stars the same number of them that he could see by his eyes. (The scientists had counted the stars which can be been with natural eyes about five to six thousand stars.)

But when some stronger and greater telescopes were made, the greatness and multiplicity of stars of heaven increased more, so much that today the scientists believe that our galaxy, which is one of the abundant galaxies of the heaven, contains, more than one hundred million stars; and our sun, with its glary glory, is counted as one of its mean stars.

And only Allah knows how many stars exist in all galaxies, the number of which is not known to anyone yet.

Also, the more the natural sciences, geology, botany, zoology, anatomy, physiology, psychology and its branches develop, the more new wonders are discovered about the creation of the earth, each of which is a sign out of the signs of the greatness of Allah.

Then the words of the verse tend to speak about one of the great introversive signs, when it says:

“…and the variety of your languages and your colours;…”

No doubt, without knowing individuals, the recognition of social life of human beings is impossible. If it happens that one day all the members of humankind have the same form, the same feature, and the same size, on the same day the regularity of their life will be disturbed.

Neither father, child and spouse is recognized from strangers, nor criminal from innocent, nor debtor from loaner, nor commander from the submissive, nor the boss from employee, nor host from guest, nor friend from enemy. Then, what a wonderful tumult appears!

Sometimes this case happens concerning the twins who are completely similar to each other, and there appear so many difficulties in their relations and communications with other people.

We have heard that one of the similar twins once was sick and the Mother gave the medicine to the other. Therefore, in order to organize the human societies, Allah has made the sounds and colours different.

As Fakhr-i-Razi in the explanation of the verse under discussion says: the cognition of a person by another person should be performed either by the eyes, or by the ears.

For recognition Allah has created eyes, colours, faces, and different shapes, and for the recognition by the ears He created difference in songs, tones and sounds so that no one can find two persons in the world whose features and tones of sound are the same from all points of view, i.e., the man’s face which is a small limb, and the tone of his sound, which is a simple matter, by Allah’s power, are produced in many billions of different shapes, and this is among the signs of His greatness.

Of course, there is also another probability, to which some great commentators have pointed out, that the difference of languages means the difference in languages such as Arabic, Persian, and the like; and the difference of colours refers to the difference of races that every one of them has a colour.

However, the Arabic word /’ixtilaf/ (variety) can have a vast meaning which envelops both this commentary and the previous commentary, and whichever meaning it may have, this variety in creation testifies to His greatness and Power.

In his encyclopaedia, Farid Wajdi narrates from Newton, the famous western scientist, who said:

“Do never doubt about the Creator of the world, Allah, because it is not rational that necessity and cause and effect without sense alone be the leader of existence, since necessity in any place and any time can not be considered that these various heavens and colourful creatures are issued from Him. And it is not possible that the existence, with its system, order of its parts, and the needed proportions consistent with the changes of time and place, appear, but all these affairs must certainly originate from a source which has Knowledge, Wisdom, and Will.”1

At the end of the above verse, the Holy Qur’an says:

“…verily there are signs in this for the learned.”

The reason of it is that the learned ones are aware of these secrets more than other people.