The Secret of Life

Allah (swt) blew the soul into Ādam: al-rūḥ. Our body without al-rūḥ is part of the earth; it is dirt. Our body is made up of carbon, oxygen, copper, iron, sulphur — that is our body. And when the soul leaves, our body decomposes into its origin.

Allah (swt) says: minhā khalaqnākum wa fīhā nuʿīdukum wa minhā nukhrijukum tāratan ukhrā. We created you from earth, and you will return to earth, and then We will resurrect you again from earth.

We are nothing without the soul. The essence of life is not in this materialistic body. This body that we have is dead: it is material components that are dirt, that came from the dirt, from the earth. What puts life in us is the soul, and that is the secret of life. And it remains a secret, even with all of the advancement in science and technology that we have.

They came to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and said: tell us about the soul. Allah (swt) says: wa yasʾalūnaka ʿani al-rūḥ, quli al-rūḥu min amri rabbī wa mā ūtītum min al-ʿilmi illā qalīlā. They ask you about the soul; tell them that the knowledge of the soul belongs to Allah, and you have been given very limited knowledge. The soul is a secret that only Allah knows, and our knowledge of the soul is very limited. This question was asked to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) 1400 years ago, and our knowledge about the soul did not change much since then. We don't know much about the soul.

The Soviet Union, under communism — they disbelieved in anything metaphysical. They only believed in the physical world; everything that is metaphysical, they didn't believe in it. So they thought that they could create a human being. So in their labs they looked at the composition of the human body, and they found out that it's made of copper, and sulphur, and iron, and carbon, and oxygen, and hydrogen. They brought those elements, and they mixed them together with the same ratio that exists in our body; and then they kept on sending some electrical shocks on it, thinking that that would give it life.

It is not our body that makes us alive. Our body is dirt; it belongs to this earth. What makes us alive is the secret which Allah (swt) has placed in us, and that is the soul, al-rūḥ — and that is something we don't know about. That is the difference between life and death: al-rūḥ.

That is why, when Mūsā and the magicians were competing, the magicians were throwing their sticks, and they were making those sticks look like snakes through optical illusion. But with Mūsā, his stick turned into an actual living snake, because Allah (swt) is the one who controls life. So Allah (swt) put life in that stick, and it became a snake. But with the magicians, all that they could do is fool the people through an optical illusion, because they do not have the power to put life. And when they saw what was happening with the stick of Mūsā, they knew that this is a miracle, and they immediately became Muslim — because they knew that this is something outside the capacity and the capability of the human being.

So the soul is what gives us life. And this is, as Allah (swt) says, min amri rabbī: this is knowledge that belongs to Allah; this is an issue that belongs to Allah.