Presented by ChatGPT for Zia H Shah MD

Abstract

Qurʾān 21:22, 23:91, and 17:41–44 form a tightly related constellation of arguments for tawḥīd, the absolute unity and uniqueness of God. Their logic is not merely arithmetical—“one God rather than several”—but metaphysical and cosmological. They ask what reality would be like if ultimate sovereignty, creative agency, and irresistible will belonged to more than one independent deity. Qurʾān 21:22 answers that the heavens and the earth would be subject to fasād, disintegration or corruption; 23:91 imagines competing divine domains and the attempt of one deity to prevail over another; 17:42–43 similarly pictures rival gods seeking a “way” toward the Lord of the Throne, before 17:44 expands the argument into a universal hymn: the heavens, earth, and everything within them glorify God. Classical Muslim theologians developed these passages into the celebrated argument of mutual hindrance or mutual interference, burhān or dalīl al-tamānuʿ, while exegetes differed over whether the Qurʾānic argument should be understood as a strict demonstration, a rhetorical argument from cosmic order, or both.

Modern science neither proves nor disproves this theological conclusion. It does, however, disclose a universe characterized by striking lawful coherence: the same fundamental physics operates across immense distances and epochs; a remarkably compact mathematical framework describes phenomena from atomic spectra to cosmic evolution; and the values of several parameters are such that long-lived stars, chemistry, complex structure, and eventually life are possible. Fine-tuning arguments seek to interpret this “biophilic” structure, but their philosophical force remains contested because the relevant probability distributions are uncertain and because anthropic selection, deeper physical necessity, and multiverse hypotheses provide alternative explanatory frameworks.

Biology provides an analogous but importantly different form of unity. An influential estimate places the number of extant eukaryotic species at approximately 8.7 million, with substantial uncertainty, while molecular biology finds that known cellular organisms employ a virtually universal genetic code and share deeply conserved molecular machinery. Comparative genomics overwhelmingly supports common ancestry, although philosophers and biologists have debated the precise logical form by which universal common ancestry is inferred. Evolution by mutation, selection, drift, recombination, migration, and common descent is therefore part of the scientific evidence to be interpreted, not an alternative to divine creation that science itself has established. A theological reading may regard the unity of life’s history and molecular grammar as a sign of one Creator working through a coherent created order; a methodological naturalist may regard exactly the same data as evidence for descent with modification without making any theological inference. The distinction between those levels of explanation is indispensable.

The Qurʾānic Text and Its Classical Exegetical Horizon

Qurʾān 21:22

لَوْ كَانَ فِيهِمَآ ءَالِهَةٌ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ لَفَسَدَتَا ۚ فَسُبْحَٰنَ ٱللَّهِ رَبِّ ٱلْعَرْشِ عَمَّا يَصِفُونَ

“Had there been other gods besides Allah in the heavens or the earth, both ˹realms˺ would have surely been corrupted. So Glorified is Allah, Lord of the Throne, far above what they claim.”

The Arabic text is attested in the standard Qurʾānic text as law kāna fīhimā ālihatun illā Allāhu la-fasadatā fa-subḥāna Allāhi rabbi l-ʿarshi ʿammā yaṣifūn. The dual pronoun in fīhimā and the dual verb la-fasadatā refer to the heavens and earth: the claim is not merely that polytheism would produce theological untidiness, but that plurality at the level of ultimate divine governance would bear upon the very constitution of the cosmos.

The classical exegetical tradition recognized both a straightforward argument from observed order and a more technical metaphysical argument. Ibn Kathīr, commenting on the closely related 23:91, says that if several gods existed, each would become independent with what it created and the resulting existence would not display the ordered, interconnected structure actually observed. He explicitly identifies the theologians’ formalized version as dalīl al-tamānuʿ, the proof from mutual obstruction or counteraction.

Later exegetical treatments make the logical structure explicit. One formulation asks us to suppose two beings each possessing the unrestricted attributes of deity. If one wills some state of affairs and the other wills its contradictory, both wills cannot be realized, because contradictions cannot simultaneously obtain. If neither will prevails, both are impotent in precisely the respect in which an omnipotent deity cannot be impotent. If only one prevails, the defeated agent is not sovereign in the absolute sense. On this reasoning, plurality is incompatible with unrestricted divine power.

Yet classical theology did not speak with one voice about how precisely 21:22 works. A significant strand of commentary argued that the verse’s immediate force is not identical with the scholastic tamānuʿ syllogism. One exegetical discussion preserved on Altafsir notes that many theologians interpreted the verse through competing divine wills, but argues that its more obvious sense is the disorder arising from rival governance and contention. The issue became sophisticated enough that al-Taftāzānī judged the verse, taken in one logical construal, to be persuasive rather than a formally conclusive demonstration; later theologians disputed him vigorously. Modern scholarship on that controversy shows that Muslim thinkers themselves were alert to the danger of treating “order therefore one God” as an automatically valid deductive inference.

The expression “Lord of the Throne” gives the argument its theological center. The ʿarsh here functions as a symbol of supreme sovereignty. The logic is therefore not that God is one object among several heavenly objects but that the sovereignty presupposed by “God” cannot coherently be partitioned among several absolutely independent, unlimited sovereigns. Contemporary scholarship on Islamic tawḥīd similarly emphasizes that divine unity in kalām concerns God’s uniqueness in essence, attributes, agency, and lordship, not merely numerical singularity.

Qurʾān 23:91

مَا ٱتَّخَذَ ٱللَّهُ مِن وَلَدٍۢ وَمَا كَانَ مَعَهُۥ مِنْ إِلَٰهٍ ۚ إِذًۭا لَّذَهَبَ كُلُّ إِلَٰهٍۭ بِمَا خَلَقَ وَلَعَلَا بَعْضُهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍۢ ۚ سُبْحَٰنَ ٱللَّهِ عَمَّا يَصِفُونَ

“God has never had ˹any˺ offspring, nor is there any god besides Him. Otherwise, each god would have taken away what he created, and they would have tried to dominate one another. Glorified is Allah above what they claim!”

Here the Qurʾān intensifies the argument. It denies divine offspring and divine partners together because both compromise the unshared ultimacy of God. The hypothetical consequence of plurality is expressed twice: la-dhahaba kullu ilāhin bi-mā khalaqa—each god would have withdrawn or gone off with what it created—and la-ʿalā baʿḍuhum ʿalā baʿḍ—some would have sought ascendancy over others. Ibn Kathīr interprets the first as fragmentation of creation into independent domains and the second as competitive supremacy, before explicitly connecting the passage with the theologians’ argument from mutual resistance.

This verse therefore adds something philosophically important to 21:22. One might imagine several gods who never disagree. But 23:91 presses the question deeper: what would make them genuinely distinct ultimate agents? If each possesses an independent sphere, ultimacy has become partitioned; if one can overrule another, the latter is not ultimate; if all are constrained by an overarching order that determines what each may do, then that order is explanatorily prior to them. The Qurʾānic rhetoric pushes the concept of deity toward metaphysical absoluteness: God is not one administrator within a federation of cosmic powers. He is the source and sovereign of the whole.

This is why tamānuʿ should not be caricatured as the childish thought that “two gods would quarrel.” In mature kalām its point is modal: two agents cannot each possess unrestricted, independent efficacy with respect to the very same total reality while remaining genuinely capable of contrary determinations. Recent scholarship tracing Muʿtazilī formulations shows that the proof was developed precisely around questions of unlimited will, power, possibility, and whether a single possible object could simultaneously fall under two absolutely independent powers.

Qurʾān 17:41–44

وَلَقَدْ صَرَّفْنَا فِى هَٰذَا ٱلْقُرْءَانِ لِيَذَّكَّرُوا۟ وَمَا يَزِيدُهُمْ إِلَّا نُفُورًۭا

قُل لَّوْ كَانَ مَعَهُۥٓ ءَالِهَةٌۭ كَمَا يَقُولُونَ إِذًۭا لَّٱبْتَغَوْا۟ إِلَىٰ ذِى ٱلْعَرْشِ سَبِيلًۭا

سُبْحَٰنَهُۥ وَتَعَـٰلَىٰ عَمَّا يَقُولُونَ عُلُوًّۭا كَبِيرًۭا

تُسَبِّحُ لَهُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتُ ٱلسَّبْعُ وَٱلْأَرْضُ وَمَن فِيهِنَّ ۚ وَإِن مِّن شَىْءٍ إِلَّا يُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِهِۦ وَلَـٰكِن لَّا تَفْقَهُونَ تَسْبِيحَهُمْ ۗ إِنَّهُۥ كَانَ حَلِيمًا غَفُورًۭا

“We have set things out in various ways in this Qur’an so that they may take heed, but it only increases their aversion. Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ “Had there been other gods besides Him—as they claim—then they would have certainly sought a way to ˹challenge˺ the Lord of the Throne.” Glory be to Him! He is exalted far above what they say—exalted beyond measure! The seven heavens and the earth and all that is in them glorify Him. There is nothing that does not celebrate His praise, but you do not understand their glorification. He is truly Forbearing, Forgiving.”

The Arabic text of 17:41–44 is preserved in the standard text above. Verse 41 is epistemologically important: the Qurʾān says that it has ṣarrafnā—varied, turned about, or repeatedly presented—its arguments so that hearers might remember. Al-Ṭabarī understands the expression as the repeated presentation of signs, arguments, warnings, examples, and lessons; al-Qurṭubī similarly takes it to include multiple modes of discourse, promise and threat, command and prohibition, narratives and examples. The implication is significant for a scientific-philosophical commentary: Qurʾānic reasoning about God does not rest upon a single isolated syllogism. It returns to unity through many registers—cosmic order, contingency, creation, life, moral accountability, revelation, and the universal praise of creatures.

Verse 42 admits two historically represented readings. On one, rival gods would seek a way against or toward the sovereign of the Throne, fitting the logic of rivalry found explicitly in 23:91. On another, preserved by al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, and al-Qurṭubī, the supposed subordinate deities would themselves seek proximity to God, thereby demonstrating their own dependence and disproving their deity. The user’s supplied translation selects the first trajectory—“challenge”—which creates a particularly direct intertextual relationship with 21:22 and 23:91. But the second reading actually deepens the same principle: whether imagined rivals resist God or imagined intermediaries approach Him, neither can be an absolutely independent deity.

Verse 44 then transforms metaphysical argument into cosmic liturgy. Al-Ṭabarī reads “there is nothing that does not glorify Him” broadly and preserves early reports extending glorification to creatures beyond human speech. Al-Qurṭubī records a genuine exegetical dispute: some understood the glorification as tasbīḥ al-dalāla, the way a created thing, simply by what it is, bears witness to its Creator; others insisted upon a real glorification appropriate to each creature precisely because the verse says humans do not comprehend it. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī favored an evidential or ontological reading for non-rational creatures: their states and properties testify to divine unity and transcendence, whereas rational creatures can additionally glorify verbally.

That exegetical diversity prevents a simplistic identification of 17:44 with modern physics. At most, modern science can dramatically enlarge our perception of the intelligible structures through which creation might be said, in al-Rāzī’s sense, to “signify.” The verse itself is a theological declaration about the relation of every creature to God, not a prediction of quantum mechanics, relativity, molecular genetics, or cosmic background radiation.

The Argument from Mutual Interference and the Philosophical Unity of Nature

The strongest philosophical form of burhān al-tamānuʿ begins not from the empirical observation that the universe happens to look orderly, but from an analysis of what unrestricted divinity entails. Suppose there are two absolutely ultimate agents, A and B, each possessing unrestricted power over the whole domain of contingent reality. Consider a possible state p such that A wills p and B wills not-p. Both cannot obtain. If A’s determination obtains and B’s does not, B is not unrestricted; if B’s obtains and A’s does not, A is not unrestricted; if neither obtains because each blocks the other, neither has unrestricted efficacy. The apparent plurality therefore collapses either into hierarchy or impotence. This is the conceptual core of tamānuʿ as reconstructed in kalām scholarship.

There are, however, serious philosophical qualifications. A defender of polytheism could stipulate that two perfect deities necessarily will exactly the same things. This avoids actual conflict, although it raises the further question of what individuates the two and why their wills must coincide. Alternatively, one could assign each deity a non-overlapping domain. But then neither possesses unrestricted sovereignty over the whole. A third option is to posit a higher law of rationality or goodness that necessarily coordinates both. Yet this makes the common normative order explanatorily prior to their independent volitions. None of these considerations by itself supplies a universally compelling proof of Islamic monotheism; rather, each clarifies why classical theism builds unity into the very concept of an absolutely sovereign God.

This point illuminates the relationship between the Qurʾānic argument and the unity of natural law. Physics has repeatedly advanced by discovering that phenomena once regarded as unrelated are manifestations of a deeper common structure: terrestrial and celestial motion under Newtonian gravitation, electricity and magnetism under Maxwellian electrodynamics, space and time within relativity, and electromagnetic and weak interactions within electroweak theory. Philosophers of science accordingly speak of unification as a major scientific ideal, although there is no consensus that all sciences must reduce to one theory.

The intelligibility involved is mathematically remarkable. Eugene Wigner’s famous discussion of the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics focused on the surprising capacity of abstract mathematical structures to describe physical regularities far beyond the contexts in which those structures were invented. Einstein likewise treated the comprehensibility of the world as philosophically striking rather than something whose ultimate explanation physics itself supplies. Neither observation entails theism. Mathematics may work because human concepts are selectively developed to capture stable patterns, because only mathematically tractable regularities become successful physics, or because reality has deep structural features to which mathematics is naturally fitted. Nevertheless, within a theology of creation, the rational intelligibility of nature can be interpreted as consonant with the unity of a rational Creator.

This is where Qurʾān 21:22 can be read with philosophical subtlety. Its theological claim need not be reduced to “we observe regular laws, therefore one God.” That inference would be too quick. Rather, the verse places cosmic coherence within a wider metaphysics of unified sovereignty. Modern physics then supplies an extraordinary empirical picture of what such coherence looks like: one interconnected cosmos governed, so far as observation reveals, by invariant regularities accessible to rational inquiry. The empirical unity is scientifically describable; its ultimate metaphysical significance remains open to philosophical interpretation.

The Qurʾānic expression fasād is equally important. Physical order does not mean changelessness. Stars explode, species go extinct, galaxies collide, black holes merge, and thermodynamic entropy increases. None of this counts as a violation of law; indeed, such transformations are described by the same physical framework that describes stable systems. Thus “corruption” in 21:22 should not be confused with local destruction, biological death, or entropy. The classical theological point concerns incoherence of ultimate governance, not the absence of dynamical change. This distinction is indispensable if the verse is to be placed in genuine dialogue with modern cosmology rather than attached superficially to scientific terminology.

Cosmology, Fine-Tuning, and the Biophilic Universe

Modern cosmology reveals a universe in which a relatively economical set of equations and parameters describes a vast range of observations. The final Planck analysis found that the six-parameter spatially flat ΛCDM model gives an excellent fit to cosmic microwave background data and related cosmological observations, while also stressing that major ingredients—especially dark matter and dark energy—remain fundamentally unexplained. This conjunction of remarkable descriptive unity and unresolved foundations makes cosmology especially fertile terrain for philosophical reflection.

“Fine-tuning” has a precise minimal meaning before it acquires any theological meaning: some outcome depends sensitively on parameters occupying a restricted portion of the space of values that a model permits. In cosmology and fundamental physics, discussions concern quantities such as the vacuum-energy density, primordial fluctuation amplitude, particle masses, gauge couplings, and ratios determining nuclear and stellar physics. The existence of fine-tuning in this technical or model-relative sense does not itself establish a designer; the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s current survey explicitly distinguishes the physical phenomenon from rival explanations including brute fact, deeper physical necessity, design, and multiverse selection.

The cosmological constant is the most striking example. Quantum-field-theoretic reasoning produces an acute mismatch between naïve vacuum-energy expectations and the much smaller value inferred cosmologically, though the familiar numerical statement of “120 orders of magnitude” depends on the assumed cutoff and should not be treated as a unique experimentally measured fine-tuning number. Long before the observed acceleration of the universe was established, Steven Weinberg used anthropic reasoning to derive an upper bound on a positive cosmological constant from the requirement that gravitationally bound structures be able to form. That history is philosophically important because anthropic reasoning was not invented merely as an ad hoc response to theology; it has functioned as a substantive method within cosmological argument.

Other proposed examples concern stellar nucleosynthesis, nuclear stability, gravitational structure, and the balance of interactions permitting chemistry and long-lived energy sources. Barnes’s extensive review assembles many such cases but also emphasizes conceptual questions about what counts as the relevant space of possible physics and what measure should be placed upon it. Fred Adams’s later Physics Reports review complicates simplistic fine-tuning rhetoric further: viable astrophysical structures can exist across substantial regions of parameter space, and alternative energy-generating systems may be possible in universes rather different from ours. Harnik, Kribs, and Perez famously constructed a model universe without weak interactions that could nevertheless undergo nucleosynthesis, structure formation, long-lived stellar evolution, and heavy-element dispersal after other parameters were adjusted.

This does not make fine-tuning disappear. It shows instead that fine-tuning is multidimensional and that varying one constant while holding every other quantity fixed can exaggerate fragility. A rigorous argument must ask which parameters are independent, what variations are physically coherent, whether compensating changes are permitted, what counts as “life,” and what probability measure—if any—can legitimately be assigned over possible values. Those are partly physical and partly philosophical questions.

The anthropic principle supplies one major response. Any observer necessarily finds itself in conditions compatible with observers. This selection effect is incontestable at a basic level, but its explanatory strength depends on the background cosmology. If there exists a sufficiently large ensemble of domains realizing different constants, life-permitting domains need not be intrinsically probable for it to be unsurprising that observers inhabit one. The difficulty is that eternal-inflation multiverses face a serious measure problem: if infinitely many events of every allowed type occur, relative probabilities depend upon how the infinities are regulated, and no unique prescription has achieved general acceptance. Philosophers of cosmology additionally note that variation of constants across domains requires physical assumptions beyond eternal inflation itself and that probabilistic predictions remain problematic without a defensible measure.

The multiverse should therefore neither be dismissed as mere fantasy nor presented as an empirically established refutation of design. Some multiverse models arise naturally from serious work in inflationary cosmology and high-energy theory, and specific realizations can have indirect empirical consequences. At the same time, George Ellis and others have emphasized that sufficiently remote or causally disconnected domains create difficult questions about testability and explanatory underdetermination. The philosophical debate remains open.

For a Qurʾānic theology, then, the most defensible claim is modest but significant. The life-permitting character of our universe can be read as an āyah, a sign, because Islamic theology already understands the contingent intelligibility and fecundity of creation as expressive of divine wisdom. But an āyah in this theological sense is not equivalent to a laboratory demonstration. Fine-tuning may increase the rational attractiveness of theism for someone working within a broader metaphysical framework; it cannot by itself experimentally identify Allah, derive tawḥīd, or rule out all naturalistic cosmologies.

The same caution protects the depth of 21:22 and 23:91. Their principal argument is not that a certain numerical constant lies in an improbably narrow interval and therefore God exists. It is that the cosmos is one dependent, ordered domain whose ultimate sovereignty cannot coherently be divided among multiple independent absolutes. Fine-tuning, if philosophically significant, is supplementary evidence of contingency and life-permitting order rather than the foundation on which the verses stand.

Evolution, Common Ancestry, and the Unity of the Genetic Code

The biological parallel is profound precisely when it is stated scientifically rather than polemically. A widely cited 2011 analysis estimated approximately 8.7 million ± 1.3 million eukaryotic species globally, about 2.2 million of them marine, while concluding that the majority remained undescribed. Thus “nine million species” is a useful approximate shorthand for one influential estimate of living eukaryotic diversity; it should not be presented as a precise count of all extant biological species, especially because microbial species delimitation raises additional conceptual and empirical difficulties.

Across this diversity lies a remarkable molecular commonality. The standard genetic code—the mapping by which nucleotide triplets specify amino acids—is virtually universal among known life forms. Deviations occur, particularly in mitochondria and some reduced prokaryotic genomes, but they are comparatively limited and are generally understood as secondary modifications of a common code. Even more significant than the code alone is the shared translation apparatus and the presence of deeply conserved genes and molecular systems across the major domains of cellular life.

In mainstream evolutionary biology, these similarities are evidence for common ancestry, not evidence against evolution. Douglas Theobald’s 2010 Nature study compared universal-common-ancestry models with separate-ancestry models using conserved protein sequences and found overwhelming support for universal common ancestry within the model framework employed. The methodology was subsequently criticized: Yonezawa and Hasegawa argued that the test did not decisively eliminate separate origins under every possible model, while Koonin and Wolf contended that the statistical test partly redescribed the very sequence similarity from which homology had already been inferred. Crucially, however, Koonin and Wolf still concluded that comparative-genomic evidence for common ancestry is overwhelming. The dispute therefore concerned how universal ancestry can be formally demonstrated, not whether modern biology has substantial evidence for deep genealogical unity.

This distinction matters for theology. It would be scientifically inaccurate to say that the genetic code shows that evolution is “blind” and therefore false. Biological evolution is not defined by a metaphysical doctrine of blindness. It is a scientific theory describing heritable variation, differential reproduction, common descent, mutation, genetic drift, recombination, selection, gene flow, and related processes. Whether such processes are ultimately unguided, providentially sustained, front-loaded, intentionally ordained, or embedded within a teleological cosmic order is not something population genetics can decide by its own methods.

Likewise, calling the code “one code from one Creator” is a theological interpretation, not a competing biological mechanism. The nearly universal code has scientific explanations framed in evolutionary history. Koonin and Novozhilov discuss several nonexclusive possibilities, including the freezing of an early code once reassignment became highly deleterious, evolutionary optimization, historical expansion of the amino-acid repertoire, and the role of horizontal gene transfer in favoring a common coding system. A doctrine of creation need not deny any of these mechanisms. It may instead interpret the existence of a lawful history capable of generating shared molecular organization as itself belonging to divine providence.

Indeed, common ancestry can strengthen rather than weaken the theological motif of unity. If millions of eukaryotic species, together with bacteria and archaea, belong to one immense genealogical history, then the diversity of terrestrial life is not a collection of disconnected acts with unrelated biological grammars. It is a branching history displaying both unity and fecundity: conservation and innovation, inheritance and novelty, continuity and divergence. Scientifically, this is the tree—or more accurately in early microbial evolution, partly networked history—of life. Theologically, one may contemplate it as the outworking of a single creative will through an intelligible creation.

The Qurʾān itself does not teach molecular common descent, and no responsible exegesis should claim that codons or DNA are secretly encoded in 17:44. The stronger and more enduring connection is conceptual. “There is nothing that does not celebrate His praise” universalizes creaturely dependence. Classical exegetes could understand that praise either literally in a mode inaccessible to us or evidentially, as the creature’s very constitution signifying its Maker. On the latter reading especially, molecular biology offers an unprecedented view of what the inner connectedness of living things actually looks like.

One may therefore formulate the user’s thesis carefully: the shared molecular grammar and common ancestry of life can, within an Islamic metaphysics of creation, be received as signs consonant with the unity of the Creator. That statement is both theologically substantive and scientifically disciplined. The stronger statement—“the genetic code empirically proves monotheism”—would exceed what molecular evidence can establish. The opposite statement—“because evolution operates through natural mechanisms, divine providence is scientifically excluded”—would equally exceed the competence of evolutionary biology.

From Cosmic Law to Universal Tasbīḥ

Taken together, the passages move through three intellectual stages. Qurʾān 21:22 begins with counterfactual metaphysics: if ultimate divinity were plural, the heavens and earth would suffer fasād. Qurʾān 23:91 expands the counterfactual into a picture of divided creation and rival sovereignty. Qurʾān 17:41–43 returns to the same challenge while emphasizing the Qurʾān’s plurality of modes of argument. Then 17:44 changes key entirely. The cosmos is no longer merely evidence in an argument; it becomes a participant in worship.

That transition is philosophically rich. The scientific attitude ordinarily treats nature as an object: something measured, modeled, decomposed, and explained. Qurʾān 17:44 presents the same reality relationally. A star is not less a star because its plasma obeys equations of magnetohydrodynamics; a living cell is not less biochemically explicable because theology calls it a creature; a galaxy does not cease to follow general relativity because a believer perceives it as glorifying God. The two descriptions answer different kinds of question. One asks how physical systems behave; the other asks what their existence signifies within an ultimate metaphysics.

Al-Qurṭubī’s preserved distinction between literal glorification and tasbīḥ al-dalāla is especially fruitful here. Under the latter interpretation, every created thing “praises” not by uttering Arabic words but by being what it is: finite, structured, dependent, and intelligible. Al-Rāzī similarly interprets the state of non-rational beings as signifying divine unity and transcendence. One need not choose this interpretation exclusively to recognize its affinity with natural theology. The more deeply science discloses the internal articulation of nature, the richer the field of such “signification” becomes.

Yet the final words of 17:44 prevent natural theology from becoming triumphalist: “but you do not understand their glorification. He is truly Forbearing, Forgiving.” Human knowledge encounters a boundary. Classical exegesis itself records disagreement about what the universal glorification means. Modern science likewise possesses immensely successful models while remaining incomplete at fundamental levels. The Standard Model does not incorporate gravity; the nature of dark matter and dark energy remains unsettled; the interpretation of quantum theory remains contested; the origin of the genetic code and the transition from prebiotic chemistry to the first evolving systems remain active research questions. Theological humility and scientific fallibilism are therefore not enemies.

This also gives new force to 17:41: arguments can be “set out in various ways” without compelling assent. Evidence is always encountered by a knower with prior commitments, standards of explanation, and metaphysical assumptions. A theist may see mathematical intelligibility, fine-tuning, and biological unity as cumulative signs of one rational source. A naturalist may regard the same facts as features awaiting or receiving physical and evolutionary explanation. The facts constrain interpretation, but they do not mechanically dictate a complete metaphysics.

What the Qurʾānic passages contribute is a particular synthetic vision: multiplicity within unity. The universe contains innumerable objects but is one cosmos; the laws manifest countless phenomena but exhibit deep regularity; terrestrial life branches into millions of species yet is genetically interrelated; creatures differ without becoming independent sources of being. In Islamic theology this pattern does not prove tawḥīd in the sense of an experimental theorem. It is nevertheless deeply consonant with tawḥīd: the One is not another item within the many but the Creator upon whom the many depend.

Thematic Epilogue

The three Qurʾānic passages begin by denying a divided heaven and end by declaring a praising cosmos. Between those poles lies an entire philosophy of creation.

“Had there been other gods,” the Qurʾān says, reality would bear the marks of divided ultimacy: corruption, partition, rivalry, attempted ascendancy. Classical Muslim theologians transformed that intuition into burhān al-tamānuʿ, asking whether more than one being could possess unrestricted sovereignty over the same contingent reality. Their answers differed in formal detail, and major theologians debated whether the Qurʾānic formulation itself constitutes demonstrative proof or persuasive argument. The tradition was intellectually richer than a simple appeal to visible order.

Modern physics does not adjudicate that theological dispute. What it reveals is nonetheless extraordinary: phenomena across the observable universe yield to shared mathematical description, and a small number of theories and parameters organize a staggering range of events. Cosmology further confronts us with the fact that the universe’s actual parameters permit galaxies, long-lived stars, heavy elements, chemistry, planets, and life. Fine-tuning arguments seek metaphysical meaning in that fact; anthropic selection, multiverse models, deeper laws, and brute contingency remain serious alternatives. None currently converts metaphysics into experimental demonstration.

Biology tells a parallel story at another scale. The approximately 8.7-million estimate for eukaryotic species gestures toward life’s immense diversity, while comparative genomics and the virtually universal genetic code reveal profound continuity beneath it. Evolution explains this unity historically through common descent. Theology need not compete with that explanation. For a believer, a creation capable of unfolding through one genealogical fabric, one largely shared molecular vocabulary, and lawful processes of inheritance and transformation may itself become an object of contemplation. The unity of biological history can be read as consonant with the unity of creative authorship without being mistaken for an empirical proof of that authorship.

The result is neither a “God of the gaps” nor a science of revelation. It is a layered account of intelligibility. Physics asks for equations; cosmology reconstructs cosmic history; biology reconstructs descent; philosophy asks what kind of reality can possess such order and why it is intelligible at all; theology asks how the whole stands in relation to its ultimate source. Confusion begins when one level is made to impersonate another. Fruitful dialogue begins when each is permitted its proper mode of explanation.

Seen this way, Qurʾān 17:44 provides the culminating image. The heavens and earth do not merely contain evidence for God. They “glorify” Him. The classical exegetical tradition allows that this glorification may be a reality whose mode escapes human comprehension, or a testimony inscribed in the very condition of created things. Either way, the verse turns cosmology into doxology without abolishing cosmology.

The physicist may write a field equation. The cosmologist may infer parameters from the microwave background. The biologist may align genomes and reconstruct common descent. None of these procedures contains the premise “therefore God is one.” Yet for the Qurʾānic imagination, the ordered success of those inquiries may itself become part of what it means for creation to be an āyah: a reality that is more than opaque matter, because its coherence points beyond itself for the believer who reads it within tawḥīd.

The deepest resonance of 21:22, 23:91, and 17:41–44 therefore lies not in retrofitting scripture to contemporary discoveries but in a more durable claim. Reality is not ultimately a battlefield of independent absolutes. Its plurality is gathered into an intelligible order; its diversity does not fracture its dependence; its creatures do not possess rival ultimacies. From the shared laws that bind stars and atoms, to the common molecular inheritance that binds terrestrial organisms, the natural world presents itself scientifically as one connected history. Islamic theology receives that connectedness as creation.

And the Qurʾān’s final movement goes further still. What science describes as lawfulness, structure, relation, and history, revelation gathers under the language of tasbīḥ. The many do not merely coexist beneath the One; in their existence, dependence, order, and creaturely ways, they praise the One. “There is nothing that does not celebrate His praise, but you do not understand their glorification.” That final qualification preserves both wonder and humility: the universe is intelligible enough to be studied, yet never exhausted by our study; unified enough to invite metaphysical reflection, yet never reducible to a single human argument; filled with signs, yet never coerced into being a scientific proof of faith. In that tension between intelligibility and transcendence lies the enduring power of these verses.

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