Presented by Claude

Abstract

The Qur’an twice draws the reader’s attention to color as a sign (āyah) of God: in Sūrat al-Rūm (30:22) it pairs the creation of the heavens and the earth with “the diversity of your languages and your colors,” and in Sūrat Fāṭir (35:27–28) it inventories the varied hues of fruits, mountain strata, human beings, and animals before declaring that “only those of His servants who have knowledge truly stand in awe of God.” This article reads those verses through the lens of contemporary vision science. After presenting the Arabic text and eight independent English translations of each passage, it traces the journey of a photon from cornea to consciousness: refraction by the cornea and lens, transduction by rod and cone photoreceptors with their three classes of cone opsins (S, M, and L, peaking near 420, 530, and 560 nm), the G-protein cascade initiated by the photoisomerization of 11-cis-retinal in rhodopsin, the convergence of signals through bipolar and ganglion cells, the optic chiasm and lateral geniculate nucleus, and the cortical hierarchy from V1 through V4 that culminates in the conscious experience of color. It surveys the trichromatic theory of Young and Helmholtz, the opponent-process theory of Hering, their twentieth-century reconciliation, color constancy and Edwin Land’s retinex theory, the lesion syndrome of cerebral achromatopsia first localized by Semir Zeki, the congenital dichromacies (protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia) and rod monochromacy, the philosophical problem of qualia, and Oliver Sacks’s ethnographic encounter with the achromatopes of Pingelap. The article argues that the modern neuroscientific picture — in which color is not “out there” but is constructed by the eye–brain system from invisible electromagnetic frequencies — deepens rather than dissolves the Qur’anic ascription of colors to divine artistry. A thematic epilogue, drawing on writings from Dr. Zia H. Shah MD at thequran.love, integrates these threads as a contemporary expression of the classical Islamic view of nature as a book of signs.

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1. Introduction: Two Verses, One Spectrum

Among the more than three hundred occurrences of the word āyah (sign, verse, token) in the Qur’an, several invoke the natural world in such a way that the reader is asked to look — and, by looking, to know. Two of the most economical of these invitations concern color. Qur’an 30:22 places the variegation of human complexions and tongues alongside the creation of the heavens and the earth as a single category of evidence. Qur’an 35:27–28 widens the lens to fruits and mountain strata and the whole biotic kingdom and then, in a striking pivot, ties the appropriate human response — the trembling awe called khashyah — to knowledge.

In the seventh century, when these verses were first recited in Mecca and Medina, color was a phenomenon of the world. Mountains were red or white or black; pomegranates were ruby; human faces ranged from the pale of the Caucasus to the ebony of the Sudan. In the twenty-first century, we know that color is also — and primarily — a phenomenon of the brain. The wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that bathe a fruit have no chromatic quality of their own; “redness” and “blueness” are constructed inside the skull by a cascade of biochemical and electrical events that culminate in a subjective experience whose ultimate origin remains, as David Chalmers famously put it, the hard problem of consciousness. This article asks what the Qur’an’s color verses come to mean once that translation between the world and the experiencing subject is understood. It will argue, with the science writers, neurologists, and Qur’anic commentators surveyed below, that the modern picture does not weaken the verses’ force; it amplifies it.

2. The Qur’anic Text

2.1 Sūrat al-Rūm 30:22 — Arabic

وَمِنْ آيَاتِهِ خَلْقُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافُ أَلْسِنَتِكُمْ وَأَلْوَانِكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَاتٍ لِّلْعَالِمِينَ Islam Awakened

Eight English translations:

1. Sahih International: “And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge.” Quranic Arabic CorpusQuran O
2. Abdullah Yusuf Ali: “And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variations in your languages and your colours: verily in that are Signs for those who know.” My Islam
3. Marmaduke Pickthall: “And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colours. Lo! herein indeed are portents for men of knowledge.” My Islam
4. Muhammad Asad: “And among His wonders is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the diversity of your tongues and colours: for in this, behold, there are messages indeed for all who are possessed of [innate] knowledge!” Islam Awakened
5. Muhammad Habib Shakir: “And one of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and colors; most surely there are signs in this for the learned.”
6. A. J. Arberry: “And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and earth and the variety of your tongues and hues. Surely in that are signs for all living beings.” Islam Awakened
7. Muhsin Khan (Hilali–Khan): “And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colours. Verily, in that are indeed signs for men of sound knowledge.” My Islam
8. Maulana Muhammad Ali (Lahore Ahmadiyya): “And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and colours. Surely there are signs in this for the learned.”

2.2 Sūrat Fāṭir 35:27–28 — Arabic

أَلَمْ تَرَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ أَنزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَخْرَجْنَا بِهِ ثَمَرَاتٍ مُّخْتَلِفًا أَلْوَانُهَا ۚ وَمِنَ الْجِبَالِ جُدَدٌ بِيضٌ وَحُمْرٌ مُّخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهَا وَغَرَابِيبُ سُودٌ ۝ وَمِنَ النَّاسِ وَالدَّوَابِّ وَالْأَنْعَامِ مُخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهُ كَذَٰلِكَ ۗ إِنَّمَا يَخْشَى اللَّهَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الْعُلَمَاءُ ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَزِيزٌ غَفُورٌ

Eight English translations:

1. Sahih International: “Do you not see that Allah sends down rain from the sky, and We produce thereby fruits of varying colors? And in the mountains are tracts, white and red of varying shades and [some] extremely black. And among people and moving creatures and grazing livestock are various colors similarly. Only those fear Allah, from among His servants, who have knowledge. Indeed, Allah is Exalted in Might and Forgiving.” Quranic Arabic CorpusQuran
2. Yusuf Ali: “Seest thou not that Allah sends down rain from the sky? With it We then bring out produce of various colours. And in the mountains are tracts white and red, of various shades of colour, and black intense in hue. And so amongst men and crawling creatures and cattle, are they of various colours. Those truly fear Allah, among His Servants, who have knowledge: for Allah is Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving.” Noble QuranMy Islam
3. Pickthall: “Hast thou not seen that Allah causeth water to fall from the sky, and We produce therewith fruit of divers hues; and among the hills are streaks white and red, of divers hues, and (others) raven-black; And of men and beasts and cattle, in like manner, divers hues? The erudite among His bondmen fear Allah alone. Lo! Allah is Mighty, Forgiving.” My IslamQuranV
4. Muhammad Asad: “ART THOU NOT aware that God sends down water from the skies, whereby We bring forth fruits of many hues — just as in the mountains there are streaks of white and red of various shades, as well as (others) raven-black, and (as) there are in men, and in crawling beasts, and in cattle, too, many hues? Of all His servants, only such as are endowed with [innate] knowledge stand [truly] in awe of God: [for they alone comprehend that,] verily, God is almighty, much-forgiving.” Islam AwakenedQuranV
5. Shakir: “Do you not see that Allah sends down water from the cloud, then We bring forth therewith fruits of various colors; and in the mountains are streaks, white and red, of various hues and (others) intensely black. And of men and beasts and cattle are likewise of various hues. Only those of His servants who are possessed of knowledge fear Allah alone; surely Allah is Mighty, Forgiving.” Islam Awakened
6. Arberry: “Hast thou not seen how that God sends down out of heaven water, and therewith We bring forth fruits of diverse hues? And in the mountains are streaks white and red, of diverse hues, and pitchy black; men too, and beasts and cattle — diverse are their hues. Even so only those of His servants fear God who have knowledge; surely God is All-mighty, All-forgiving.” Quran O
7. Hilali–Khan / Mohsin Khan: “See you not that Allah sends down water (rain) from the sky, and We produce therewith fruits of varying colours, and among the mountains are streaks white and red, of varying colours and (others) very black. And likewise of men and AdDawab (moving living creatures, beasts), and cattle are of various colours. It is only those who have knowledge among His slaves that fear Allah. Verily, Allah is All-Mighty, Oft-Forgiving.” Noble Quran
8. Abul A’la Maududi: “Do you not see that Allah sent down water from the sky with which We brought forth fruits of diverse hues? In the mountains there are white and red, of diverse hues, and pitchy black; and human beings too, and beasts, and cattle — diverse are their hues. From among His servants, it is only those who know that fear Allah. Verily Allah is Most Mighty, Most Forgiving.” Islamic Studies + 2

The verses are tightly architectured. In 30:22 the diversity — ikhtilāf — of tongues and complexions stands as evidence equal in stature to the entire cosmos. In 35:27–28 a single recital sweeps from rain-fed fruits, to red and white and “raven-black” mountain strata, to human and animal hues, and then to the human knower as the proper terminus of the sequence. To unfold what these verses claim, we now follow the photon.

3. The Optical Apparatus

The human eye is a biological camera of remarkable precision. Incoming light is first refracted by the cornea, the transparent dome that provides roughly two-thirds of the eye’s optical power, before passing through the aqueous humor, the pupil (whose diameter is dynamically regulated by the iris), and the crystalline lens, which fine-tunes focus through ciliary-muscle-driven accommodation. Light then crosses the vitreous humor and lands on the retina, a sheet of neural tissue developmentally derived from the embryonic forebrain and often described as a piece of brain extruded into the eye.

The retina is layered in a counterintuitive way: light must traverse the ganglion-cell and bipolar-cell layers before reaching the photoreceptor outer segments that line its back wall, where the retinal pigment epithelium absorbs stray photons and recycles photopigment. At the fovea, a small pit at the center of the macula, the inner layers are pulled aside to expose the photoreceptors directly, yielding the highest spatial acuity. Curcio and colleagues’ classic anatomical census of eight whole-mounted human retinas reported an average of 92 million rod photoreceptors (range 77.9–107.3 million) and 4.6 million cones (range 4.08–5.29 million) per retina (Curcio et al., 1990, Journal of Comparative Neurology 292:497–523). The popular textbook numbers of “120 million rods and 6 million cones,” widely repeated since Osterberg’s 1935 study, are therefore upper-end approximations rather than averages. Frontiers

4. Rods, Cones, and the Three Opsins

Rods are the dim-light specialists. A single rod can reliably signal the absorption of a single photon, and the rod population mediates scotopic vision: monochromatic, motion-sensitive, and most acute in the parafoveal periphery. Their photopigment, rhodopsin, has peak sensitivity near 498 nm. nih

Cones mediate photopic (daylight) and color vision. Humans normally possess three classes of cones, distinguished by their opsin photopigments and named by the part of the visible spectrum each preferentially absorbs: Wikipedia

• S-cones (short-wavelength) peak near 420 nm (violet-blue). Their distribution is markedly non-uniform: per Curcio et al. (1991, Journal of Comparative Neurology 312:610–624), the primary anti-blue-opsin immunolabeling study, S-cones comprise approximately 8–12% of the total cone population across the whole retina but are nearly absent from the central fovea. The frequently quoted “~2%” figure is correct only for the foveal region. My Islam
• M-cones (medium-wavelength) peak near 530 nm (green).
• L-cones (long-wavelength) peak near 560 nm (yellow-green, conventionally called “red”).

The ratio of L to M cones varies dramatically between individuals — values from roughly 1:1 to nearly 4:1 have been documented (Hofer et al., 2005, Journal of Neuroscience) — yet color experience is remarkably stable across this variation, an early hint that color is computed downstream of the receptors. S-cones are slower, noisier, and functionally distinct from L and M cones (Angueyra et al., 2018, eLife). The three cone opsins are encoded by the genes OPN1SW (chromosome 7), OPN1MW, and OPN1LW (both on the long arm of the X chromosome) — a genomic arrangement that, as we shall see, explains why congenital red-green color blindness is overwhelmingly a male affliction. Kenhub + 3

5. Phototransduction: From Photon to Electrical Signal

Each cone and rod outer segment contains stacks of disks densely packed with opsin proteins, each opsin covalently bound to a small molecule of vitamin-A derivative, 11-cis-retinal. When a photon of the appropriate wavelength is absorbed, 11-cis-retinal isomerizes to all-trans-retinal with a quantum yield of roughly 0.65 — an exceptional efficiency (Kim et al., 2001). This conformational change converts rhodopsin to its activated form, metarhodopsin II, which acts as a guanine-nucleotide-exchange factor for the heterotrimeric G protein transducin. Activated transducin (Gαt·GTP) releases its inhibitory subunit on phosphodiesterase 6 (PDE6), which then rapidly hydrolyzes cytoplasmic cGMP. Falling cGMP closes cyclic-nucleotide-gated cation channels in the outer-segment plasma membrane, hyperpolarizing the photoreceptor and reducing its tonic release of the neurotransmitter glutamate. Wikipedia + 3

The amplification along this cascade is extraordinary: a single absorbed photon can ultimately suppress the entry of roughly a million sodium ions. The classical psychophysical study of absolute visual threshold by Hecht, Shlaer & Pirenne (1942, Journal of General Physiology 25(6):819–840) concluded that “at the threshold of vision … the absorption of 5–14 photons in a retinal area containing ~500 rods is sufficient to evoke a visual sensation” at the 60% detection criterion, with individual variation across observers. After signaling, all-trans-retinal is hydrolyzed from opsin, reduced to all-trans-retinol, and transported to the retinal pigment epithelium, where the enzyme RPE65 reisomerizes it back to 11-cis-retinol, completing the visual cycle (Palczewski, 2006). ScienceDirect + 2

The remarkable point — already a sign for “those who know” — is that the entire foundation of human color experience is a single chemical event: the rotation of a tiny molecule of retinal around one of its double bonds.

6. Two Theories of Color, One Reconciliation

How three classes of cones generate the millions of distinguishable hues of human experience was the subject of a century-long debate.

6.1 The Trichromatic Theory (Young–Helmholtz)

Thomas Young proposed in 1802, and Hermann von Helmholtz elaborated in the 1850s, that color vision rests on three classes of receptors whose differential excitation the brain interprets as hue. Direct microspectrophotometric confirmation of three distinct cone opsins (Bowmaker & Dartnall, 1980) and, later, the cloning of their genes (Nathans, Thomas & Hogness, 1986, Science) vindicated this picture. The trichromatic theory cleanly explains why metameric matches between physically different spectra are possible — any color can be matched by an appropriate mixture of three primaries — and why color-matching functions are three-dimensional. Psychexamreview

6.2 The Opponent-Process Theory (Hering)

Ewald Hering objected in the 1870s that pure trichromacy could not account for phenomenological facts: we never perceive “reddish-green” or “yellowish-blue”; afterimages display predictable color complements; and certain hues (red, green, yellow, blue) feel psychologically primary while others feel composite. He proposed three opponent channels — red versus green, blue versus yellow, and black versus white — that mutually inhibit one another. University of MinnesotaHealthline

6.3 Reconciliation

The two theories, long considered rivals, were reconciled when Hurvich and Jameson (1957) provided rigorous psychophysical evidence for opponency by the hue-cancellation method, and physiologists discovered chromatically opponent cells in the retina and the lateral geniculate nucleus (De Valois, 1965; Daw, 1968). The current understanding is that trichromacy is correct at the receptor level, while opponency is correct at every level beyond it: midget bipolar and ganglion cells in the retina, and their targets in the parvocellular LGN, subtract L from M to construct a red–green channel; konio/small bistratified circuits subtract S from (L+M) to construct a blue–yellow channel; and a separate magnocellular pathway carries the achromatic luminance signal (Dacey, 2000, Annual Review of Neuroscience). The two theories are not in competition; they describe successive stages of the same processing chain. PsychexamreviewStudy.com

7. Bipolar Cells, Ganglion Cells, and the Optic Nerve

The retina is not a passive transducer; it is a small, sophisticated piece of brain. Photoreceptor signals pass to bipolar cells, which segregate into ON and OFF varieties depending on whether they depolarize to light increments or decrements. Lateral inhibition mediated by horizontal cells sharpens spatial contrast, and amacrine cells introduce temporal modulation. The bipolar cells in turn excite retinal ganglion cells, whose axons compose the optic nerve.

There are at least three principal classes of ganglion cells relevant to vision:

• Midget (P) ganglion cells, roughly 70–80% of the total, have small receptive fields, carry red–green opponent signals, and project to the parvocellular layers of the LGN. NYUNYU
• Parasol (M) ganglion cells, about 10%, have large fields, carry achromatic motion and contrast signals, and project to the magnocellular layers. NYUNYU
• Small bistratified (and other) ganglion cells carry the blue–yellow opponent signal to the koniocellular layers (Dacey, 2000).

There are also intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) containing the pigment melanopsin, whose peak sensitivity lies around 480 nm; these mediate non-image-forming functions such as circadian entrainment and the pupillary light reflex (Berson, Dunn & Takao, 2002, Science). PubMed

8. The Visual Pathway: Chiasm, LGN, and Striate Cortex

The optic nerves of the two eyes meet at the optic chiasm, where fibers from the nasal hemiretina of each eye decussate, so that each cerebral hemisphere comes to represent the contralateral visual field. The crossed and uncrossed fibers continue as the optic tracts to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus, a six-layered structure in which two ventral magnocellular layers, four dorsal parvocellular layers, and several interleaved koniocellular sublayers preserve the segregation of motion, form, and color streams (Hendry & Reid, 2000). ScienceDirect + 5

From the LGN, the optic radiations — Meyer’s loop sweeping through the temporal lobe and the central bundle through the parietal lobe — converge on the primary visual cortex (V1), also known as the striate cortex, in the calcarine sulcus of the occipital lobe. V1 is the first cortical stage at which information from the two eyes converges and at which receptive fields become orientation- and direction-selective (Hubel & Wiesel, 1962). Cytochrome-oxidase-rich “blobs” in layers 2 and 3 of V1 receive koniocellular input and are densely populated with color-sensitive double-opponent cells (Livingstone & Hubel, 1984). ScienceDirect + 2

9. V4 and the Construction of Color

From V1, color-relevant signals project through V2 to area V4 in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex. Semir Zeki’s pioneering single-unit recordings in the 1970s and 1980s established V4 as the macaque “color area” (Zeki, 1973, 1983), and human imaging studies have localized analogous color-responsive regions in the lingual and fusiform gyri, often subdivided into a posterior V4 and a more anterior V4α / V8 (Bartels & Zeki, 2000; Wade et al., 2002). ScienceDirectScienceDirect

Critically, V4 is not where wavelength is encoded — that work is done much earlier — but where wavelength is converted into perceived color. Lesions of V4 in humans produce the syndrome of cerebral achromatopsia: patients report a world drained of hue, “as if everything were covered in grey snow” or rendered in tones of sepia, even though acuity, motion perception, and stereopsis remain intact (Zeki, 1990, Brain 113:1721–1777; Bouvier & Engel, 2006, Cerebral Cortex). The dissociation is sharp enough to confirm that color, qua experience, is a cortical construction. Journal of Neuroscience + 2

10. Color Constancy and Edwin Land’s Retinex Theory

A red apple looks red at noon, at dusk, under a tungsten bulb, and under fluorescent light, even though the spectrum of light reflected from the apple changes dramatically across these conditions. This phenomenon — color constancy — is one of the deepest puzzles of vision science and one of its most beautiful achievements. Santhalakshminarayana

Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, demonstrated in a series of classic experiments using multicolored “Mondrian” displays that the perceived color of a patch depends not on the wavelengths reflected from it in isolation but on the ratios of wavelengths across the entire visual scene (Land & McCann, 1971, Journal of the Optical Society of America). His retinex theory (a portmanteau of retina and cortex) proposed that the visual system separately computes the “lightness” of long-, medium-, and short-wavelength channels across the image and uses comparisons among them to discount the illuminant. Subsequent physiological work has identified double-opponent cells in V1 and color-constant responses in V4 as plausible neural substrates (Conway, 2009; Kentridge, Heywood & Cowey, 2004). Color, in other words, is an inference the brain makes about the surface properties of objects in the world — an inference that is usually so reliable that we mistake it for a property of the world itself. WikipediaWikipedia

11. When the System Fails: Congenital Color Blindness and Achromatopsia

The genetic architecture of human color vision makes some failures common and others rare. Because the OPN1MW and OPN1LW genes lie close together on the X chromosome and recombine frequently, males — with only one X — inherit red-green deficiencies far more often than females. Birch (2012, Journal of the Optical Society of America A 29(3):313–320), drawing together large random population surveys, concluded that “the prevalence of deficiency in European Caucasians is about 8% in men and about 0.4% in women.” nih + 2

The classical categories are:

• Protanopia (~1% of men): complete absence of functional L-cones. nihnih
• Deuteranopia (~1% of men): complete absence of functional M-cones. nih
• Tritanopia (~1 in 10,000): absence of functional S-cones; encoded autosomally and therefore equally distributed between the sexes. nih
• Anomalous trichromacy (protanomaly, deuteranomaly, tritanomaly): all three cone types present, but one with a shifted spectral sensitivity. Deuteranomaly is the most common single condition, at roughly 5% of men. nih
• Monochromacy / rod monochromacy / complete achromatopsia: an autosomal recessive condition in which all cones are nonfunctional, leaving only rod-mediated vision. Affected individuals see the world in shades of gray, suffer extreme photophobia, have visual acuity in the 20/200 range, and frequently exhibit pendular nystagmus. The condition affects roughly 1 in 30,000 worldwide. Specialty Vision + 4

This rare condition was made famous by the neurologist Oliver Sacks’s 1996 book The Island of the Colorblind, which reported on the Micronesian atoll of Pingelap. There, Typhoon Lengkieki (1775) “left only about 20 survivors,” one of whom — the ruling chief Doahkaesa Mwanenihsed — is identified by Sundin et al. (2000, Nature Genetics 25:289–293) as the probable carrier of the responsible CNGB3 mutation. Through founder effect and subsequent inbreeding, today some 10% of Pingelapese exhibit complete achromatopsia and roughly 30% are carriers. Sacks’s interviews with Pingelapese achromatopes reveal a world organized by texture, brightness, contour, and pattern rather than hue — a world in which fishing by moonlight is preferred to fishing under the equatorial sun, and in which compensatory enhancements of form perception render the achromatopic gaze, in his words, not deprived but differently endowed. Wikipedia + 2

Cerebral achromatopsia, by contrast, is acquired rather than congenital: posterior cerebral artery strokes, traumatic injury, or focal neoplasms damage the ventral occipitotemporal cortex bilaterally and abolish color experience while leaving the photoreceptors intact (Meadows, 1974; Zeki, 1990; Bouvier & Engel, 2006). Patients describe a world that looks “dirty” or “washed out” and often, distressingly, report that food has become unappetizing because flesh and fruit appear gray. Journal of Neuroscience

12. The Qualia Problem: Where Is the Red?

If color is constructed by the brain from wavelengths that have no chromatic quality of their own, where and what is the experience of red?

The wavelength of light reflected by a ripe pomegranate is approximately 650 nm. That number, in itself, is colorless: it is a frequency of oscillation of the electromagnetic field, just as 440 Hz is a frequency of oscillation of air. When 650 nm light enters the eye, it preferentially excites L-cones; downstream circuitry computes (L − M) and sends the result, via the parvocellular LGN and V1 and V2 and V4, into the conscious experience of a person whose interior life now lights up with a feeling that bears no obvious relation to the wavelength that triggered it. Thomas Nagel (1974) called this the puzzle of “what it is like.” David Chalmers (1995) called it the hard problem of consciousness: even if we map every neuron involved, “the question of why and how subjective experiences arise from physical brain processes” remains.

Frank Jackson’s “Mary’s Room” thought experiment dramatizes the point: a neuroscientist who knows everything physical about color vision but has lived her entire life in a black-and-white room nonetheless seems to learn something new when she first sees a ripe tomato. That extra knowledge — the quale of redness — is the central datum of phenomenal consciousness, and it is the most difficult fact in the world to fit into the materialist ontology. Thequran

Two implications matter for a theological reading of the color verses. First, color is in a precise and demonstrable sense not in the world. The pomegranate is not red; only the experience of seeing the pomegranate is red. Second, that experience is brought into being by an exquisitely tuned biological apparatus whose every component — opsin, transducin, midget ganglion, calcarine cortex, V4 — is itself a sign of staggering design economy.

13. Theological Commentary

13.1 Ikhtilāf al-alwān: Difference as Sign

Classical Qur’anic commentators read 30:22 as evidence that the unity of humanity coexists with — indeed is enriched by — its diversity. Ibn Kathīr observes that all peoples descend from a single pair and yet “speak Arabic, … the Tatars have their own language, as do the Georgians, … Indians, Persians, Slavs, Khazars, Armenians, Kurds and others”; the colors of human complexion vary correspondingly, and these variations are signs of divine power. Maulana Maududi, in Tafhīm al-Qur’ān, notes that although the human genome is essentially uniform, “even the colors of the two sons of the same parents are not exactly the same” — a phenomenological fact whose mechanism (allelic variation in melanin biosynthesis) was unknown in classical times and yet whose evidentiary force the Qur’an grasps directly. My Islam + 2

The Qur’anic move is rhetorically remarkable. In 30:22, the creation of the heavens and the earth — the largest possible object of contemplation — is placed on the same evidentiary footing as the difference of your tongues and colors, an observation accessible to anyone in any town. The vast and the immediate are presented as equal āyāt.

13.2 Sūrat Fāṭir 35:27–28: From Geology to Botany to Anthropology to Knowledge

The structure of 35:27–28 is a tour of creation by way of color. It begins with rain — the necessary precondition for fruits “of varying colors” — and proceeds to the mountains, whose strata appear in white, red, and a black so intense the verse uses the word gharābīb, conventionally translated “raven-black” or “pitchy black.” This is not a poetic flourish but, modern geology confirms, a remarkably accurate description: mountain strata are colored by hematite (red), kaolinite (white), and basalt or manganese-rich rock (black). The verse then sweeps through animals and human beings as bearing “various colors similarly,” and only then arrives at its hinge: innamā yakhshā Llāha min ʿibādihi al-ʿulamāʾ — “Only those of His servants who have knowledge truly stand in awe of Him.”

The juxtaposition is no accident. Classical commentators including al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and Ibn Masʿūd insisted that the ʿulamāʾ of this verse are not technical scholars of grammar and law but those who know God — and that this knowledge is fed by, not opposed to, the contemplation of creation. “Knowledge,” al-Baṣrī said, “is not by the abundance of narration; rather, knowledge is by the abundance of God-fearing.” Maududi captures the logic precisely: “The more a person is aware and conscious of Allah’s powers, His knowledge, His wisdom, … the more he will fear His disobedience.” The science of color vision in 2026 — the cascade from cornea to V4, the constructive miracle of color constancy, the sober reality of qualia — is a paradigm case of this kind of knowledge-driven awe. WordPressIslamic Studies

13.3 Black, White, and the Spectrum Between

The Indo-Pakistani commentator Mufti Muhammad Shafiʿ in Maʿārif al-Qur’ān makes a striking philological observation about 35:27. Of the colors listed for the mountains, white is mentioned first and black last, with “of varying colors” sandwiched between them — a “hint that, in reality, the colors in this world are no more than two — white and black. The rest of the colors in the spectrum emerge by compounding different degrees of white and black.” Read against modern color science, this is uncannily prescient: under the opponent-process model, every chromatic experience is the resultant of three opponent channels superimposed on the achromatic black–white axis, and under Land’s retinex theory, color is everywhere computed from comparisons of lightness across three wavelength bands. Whether or not Shafiʿ intended a scientific analogy, the verse and its tafsīr can be read as anticipating the achromatic substrate over which color is painted. Islamic StudiesIslamic Studies

13.4 Color, Race, and the Theology of Diversity

Both verses have served as the locus classicus for the Qur’anic critique of racism. In Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt 49:13 the Qur’an states that humans were divided into nations and tribes “that you may know one another.” Read in conjunction with 30:22, the message is that biological diversity — including the diversity of skin pigmentation, eye color, and hair color produced by polymorphisms at loci such as MC1R, SLC24A5, OCA2, and HERC2 — is to be taken as a sign of God’s creative artistry rather than as a basis for hierarchy. As the Prophetic farewell sermon stated, “No Arab has any superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab; … nor a white over a black, nor a black over a white, except by piety.” The neuroscientific point that color is constructed in the brain — that “skin color” is, at the level of perception, a series of computations the brain performs on photons of various wavelengths reflected from melanin in human skin — sharpens the theological point: the prejudices we erect on color are erected on something the eye-brain system has made, not on something the world contains. QuranReflect

14. Reflections from the Hard Problem

If color is made by us, in what sense is it given by God? The answer the Qur’anic verses imply, and which contemporary philosophy of mind oddly converges with, is that the apparatus of making is itself given. We did not choose to be trichromats. We did not engineer our opsins or wire our V4. The receptive fields that turn 650 nm into the experience of crimson, and the cortical machinery that holds that experience steady across changing light, were inherited from a deep evolutionary past whose conditions — three classes of cones, three opsin genes, color-opponent retinal circuitry — are, from the Qur’anic point of view, the precise design that makes the signs (āyāt) of varied hues legible to us as signs.

This is the deeper sense in which 30:22 and 35:27–28 take on new resonance after Zeki and Land and Chalmers. The verses do not merely point at colorful things; they point at the colored experience — and at the apparatus that brings that experience into being. The hard problem of consciousness, far from undermining the verses, restates them in a contemporary idiom. As Dr. Zia Shah writes on his Quran-and-science blog, “One can map the brain activity of a person seeing ‘red’ with perfect precision, but that map contains no ‘redness’” (“The Enigma of the Self,” thequran.love, 2026). Thequran

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15. Thematic Epilogue: Reading the Hues as Verses

For Dr. Zia H. Shah, MD, the Chief Editor of The Muslim Times and author of the science-and-Qur’an blog at thequran.love, the relationship between scripture and science is captured in the dual sense of the Arabic word āyah. The verses of the Qur’an are āyāt; so too are the natural phenomena to which the verses repeatedly point. Shah’s blog returns to this theme constantly: in his commentary on Sūrat al-Rūm, in his “Beauty in Nature as a Path to God,” in his essays on Surah Fāṭir, in his pieces on consciousness, optics, and the limits of human perception. To quote a line of his that captures the program: “Every verse of the Quran is a sign; every natural phenomenon is a verse in the cosmic book of creation” (Shah, “The Botanical Diversity as a Lead to God the Creator,” thequran.love, April 9, 2026). ThequranThequran

A theological reading of color vision in light of 30:22 and 35:27–28 thus has, in Shah’s framing, three movements.

First, diversity is intentional. Commenting on 30:22, Shah writes that “the rich diversity of human physiognomies, complexions, and tongues is not a mere biological accident; it is a sign of a Creator” (“Beauty in Nature as a Path to God,” thequran.love, 2025). The genome that gives us MC1R variants and the cortex that turns reflected wavelengths into the experience of skin color are, on this view, joint instruments of a single creative intention. “Behind the variety in creation,” he adds, “is a single Creator” (“Scientific and Theological Commentary on Natural Signs in Sūrat al-Rūm,” thequran.love, April 23, 2025). thequran + 2

Second, knowledge is the soil of awe. In his commentary on Sūrat Fāṭir, Shah picks out the same hinge that classical commentators dwelt on. Quoting 35:28 — “Of the servants of Allah, it is those who possess knowledge that stand in true awe of Him” — he notes that this verse “comes right after mentioning the marvels of rain, plants, and color diversity in nature,” with the implication that “studying these marvels leads to a heartfelt awe of God” (“Beauty in Nature as a Path to God,” thequran.love, 2025). Khashyah, in this reading, is not the fear of an ignorant person before a capricious deity but the trembling of a knower before a comprehensible artistry — the trembling, perhaps, that a vision scientist feels before the elegance of phototransduction, or that a neurologist feels before the integrity of V4. Shah elsewhere notes that “the natural world is imbued with meanings that point beyond itself” and that, in the formulation of his Sūrat al-Rūm commentary, “by reflecting on creation we come to know the Creator.” thequran + 4

Third, perception is itself a sign. The Qur’an, Shah points out, repeatedly thanks God for the gift of sight and the gift of hearts; in 6:103 it observes that “vision perceives Him not, but He perceives all vision.” Drawing the contemporary scientific implication, Shah comments on the staggering narrowness of human perception: “In essence, 99.9965% of all light waves are invisible to us” (“Commentary of the Most Profound Verse of the Surah Anaam,” thequran.love, March 14, 2025). The blind spot where the optic nerve exits each eye is, as he notes, filled in seamlessly by the brain so that “we never notice it” — a small but vivid demonstration that “we don’t passively receive reality; our brains actively interpret signals.” The neuroscientific fact that the brain manufactures color from a three-dimensional sample of wavelengths sharpens the verse’s force: our sight is so narrow that even within its narrow band it is largely a construction, and yet, narrow and constructed as it is, it suffices to discern the hand of the Constructor. Thequran + 5

Shah is sensitive, too, to the Islamic intellectual tradition that first turned this insight into a science. His essay on the Islamic Golden Age dwells on Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), who “founded the science of optical physics” and “famously corrected the Greek idea that ‘we see by rays from the eyes,’” demonstrating instead that “vision occurs when light rays enter the eye from external sources” and that images form on the retina (“Quranic Inspiration and the Rise of Astronomy and Mathematics,” thequran.love, March 11, 2025). For Shah, the eleventh-century Kitāb al-Manāẓir and the twenty-first-century neuroscience of V4 are both children of the same Qur’anic injunction to read the signs. Thequran + 2

The mountains of Fāṭir — white, red, raven-black — are mountains because of mineralogy; they are colored because of cones, opsins, and the V4 complex; and they are signs because the whole apparatus, world and observer alike, is one connected gift. The pomegranates of paradise and the muted greys of Pingelap are not opposed; they are two readings of the same text. The Qur’an’s verdict on which reading is closer to the truth is given in the same clause that closes 35:28: innamā yakhshā Llāha min ʿibādihi al-ʿulamāʾ. Only those of His servants who know fear God in the manner that fits His artistry.

To see a red apple, then, is to participate — knowingly or unknowingly — in an event whose physical, biological, and neural conditions are exactly as the Qur’an portrays them: as signs for those who know. The neuroscience of color does not displace the theology of color; it inhabits it. As Shah writes in his survey of beauty in creation, “All things of beauty reflect al-Jamīl (The Most Beautiful One)” (“Beauty in Nature as a Path to God,” thequran.love, 2025). And every red apple, every black mountain, every variegated human face, every functioning V4, is a small reflection of that surplus of beauty — a small but legible āyah for the one who has eyes to read. thequranThequran

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