Ghayb exists all around us, beyond the realm of our knowledge which continues to be based on probabilities. Man looks at the universe around him and continues to work out hypotheses and theories about its origin, nature and movement, and about time and place, their inter-relationship with each other and with what takes place in the universe. Man also tries to think about life: its source, origin, nature, continuity, the factors and forces that influence it and how it relates to material existence. He also thinks about himself: how is man different from matter and what distinguishes him from other living things? How did he come to exist on this earth; and how does he behave? What is human intellect, and what are its distinctive features? What happens to him after death? Even if we take the human body: what occurs inside it of chemical interactions at every moment and how do such interactions happen?
All these belong to the realm of ghayb. Science stops at its peripheries, unable to penetrate through them even to assign relative probabilities to different hypotheses.
We will leave aside for the moment the subjects which scientists do not care to enlist among their priorities and preoccupations, such as the nature of Godhead and the nature of God’s other creatures, such as angels and jinn, the nature of death, and the hereafter. It is sufficient for our purposes to speak only about that sort of ghayb which is closer to us. Here also we find science acknowledging its limited ability. Let us take one or two examples.
The first example concerns the atom which, according to modern science, is the basic unit in the structure of the universe. Yet it is not the smallest unit, because it consists of protons with a positive electric charge, electrons with a negative charge and neutrons with a static charge. With an atomic fusion, electrons are released, but they do not stick to a uniform behaviour in a laboratory. At one time, they move like waves of light, and at another like missiles. We cannot determine their future behaviour in advance. This is subject to the law of probability. The same differences of behaviour apply to a single atom and a group of atoms forming a small unit.
Sir James Jeans, a prominent British physicist says:
The old science had confidently proclaimed that nature could follow only one road, the road which was mapped out from the beginning of time to its end by the continuous chain of cause and effect; state A was inevitably succeeded by state B. So far the new science has only been able to say that state A may be followed by state B or C or D or by innumerable other states. It can, it is true, say that B is more likely than C, C than D, and so on; it can even specify the relative probabilities of states B, C and D. But, just because it has to speak in terms of probabilities, it cannot predict with certainty which state will follow which; this is a matter which lies on the knees of the gods — whatever gods there be.1
This, then, is what is meant by ghayb, which relates to God’s will into which human knowledge cannot penetrate. All that human knowledge and scientific experiment can reach are only peripheries. Further than that, it cannot go. Professor Jeans gives the example of radiation and how the atoms of the radium are transformed into lead and helium. Throughout this process, they are subject to laws which remain closed to human knowledge:
It is known that the atoms of radium, and of other radioactive substances, disintegrate into atoms of lead and helium with the mere passage of time, so that a mass of radium continually diminishes in amount, being replaced by lead and helium. The law which governs the rate of diminution is very remarkable.
The amount of radium decreases in precisely the same way as a population would if there were no births, and a uniform death-rate which was the same for every individual, regardless of his age. Or again, it decreases in the same way as the numbers of a battalion of soldiers who are exposed to absolutely random undirected fire. In brief, old age appears to mean nothing to the individual random atom; it does not die because it has lived its life, but rather because in some way fate knocks at the door.2
To take a concrete illustration, suppose that our room contains two thousand atoms of radium. Science cannot say how many of these will survive after a year’s time, it can only tell us the relative odds in favour of the number being 2000, 1999, 1998, and so on. Actually the most likely event is that the number will be 1999; the probabilities are in favour of one, and only one, of the 2000
atoms breaking up within the next year.
We do not know in what way this particular atom is selected out of the 2000. We may at first feel tempted to conjecture it will be the atom that gets knocked about most or gets into the hottest places, or what not, in the coming year. Yet this cannot be, for if blows or heat could disintegrate one atom, they could disintegrate the other 1999, and we should be able to expedite the disintegration of radium merely by compressing it or heating it up. Every physicist believes this to be impossible; he rather believes that every year fate knocks at the door of one radium atom in every 2000, and compels it to break up; this is the hypothesis of “spontaneous disintegration” advanced by Rutherford and Soddy in 1903.3
What example may illustrate the imperceptible operation of God’s will better than the disintegration of atoms, in which neither the atoms nor anyone on earth has any say or choice.
We observe that the scientist who has given us this example is not trying to prove the operation of God’s will. Indeed, he tries hard to counter the pressure of the conclusions to which scientific research leads. The truth of ghayb in the Islamic sense stares him and all scientists in the face.
The truism of ghayb, or the imperceptible, also imposes itself on the rules governing the emergence of life. Professor Russell Charles Artist, Professor of Biology at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Germany, says:
Many theories have been brought forward in the attempt to derive living cells from inanimate matter. Certain investigators are claiming that life has originated through the protogene, or through an aggregation of large protein molecules, which may leave the impression that at last the gap between the lifeless and the living has been spanned. Actually it must be admitted that all attempts to produce living matter experimentally from inanimate matter have failed utterly.
Furthermore, it is not by direct evidence that the one who denies the existence of God proves to a waiting world that a fortuitous aggregation of atoms and molecules is life, capable of maintaining and directing itself as do the cells described here. Not at all. He accepts this as a belief. It is his private interpretation of the facts visible to us all, that an accidental concourse brought the first cell into being. But this is to accept an even greater miracle than to believe that Intelligence called it into being! I maintain that each of these single cells (each a system so intricate and delicate that its complete functioning has so far escaped our study), and all the trillions of them on this earth, definitely present a justifiable inference — one of Mind, or Intelligence, or Thought, which we call God. Science both admits and accepts this inference.
I believe firmly that there is a God.4
We have quoted this example here only to emphasise that the secret of life and its origin belongs to the realm of what God has withheld from our knowledge. All human explanations are only hypothetical. God tells the truth when He says: “I did not call them to witness at the creation of the heavens and the earth, nor at their own creation.” (18: 51)
We take a giant stride to look at man and his life. One drop of man’s semen contains about 60 million sperms, all of which race to fertilize the female egg. No one knows which of these millions will win the race, because that is part of God’s will to which human beings have no access, not even the couple involved. The fertilized egg produces the foetus. The chromosomes in the female egg are all female, while those in the sperm have male and female characteristics. Hence, the sex of the child is determined by the male chromosomes. This is again subject to God’s will. No human being can influence it in any way, not even the child’s parents: “God knows what every female bears, and by how much the wombs may fall short [in gestation], and by how much they may increase. With Him every thing has its definite measure. He knows all that lies beyond the reach of human perception and all that anyone may witness. He is the great One, the highly exalted.” (13: 8-9) “To God alone belongs the dominion over the heavens and the earth. He creates whatever He wills: He bestows the gift of female offspring on whomever He wills, and the gift of male offspring on whomever He wills; or He gives both male and female (to whomever he wills), and causes to be barren whomever He wills: truly, He is all-knowing, infinite in His power.” (42: 49-50) “He creates you in your mothers’ wombs, one act of creation after another, in threefold depths of darkness. Thus is God, your Lord: to Him belongs all dominion; there is no deity other than Him. How, then, can you lose sight of the truth?” (39: 6)
The above are three examples showing how human knowledge in the twentieth century recognizes ghayb, acknowledging what lies beyond the reach of human perception. Those who remain influenced by the attitude of past generations continue to say that ghayb and science are contradictory. Science in this twentieth century readily admits that its conclusions are only statements of probabilities. The only certainty is that there is a world that cannot be reached by human perception.