SPIRIT OF ISLAM MARCH 2O18

34 Spirit of Islam Issue 63 March 2018 The concept of bodily decay would appear to be correct. Machines, shoes, garments and all such material things do wear out with the passage of time. There is, ostensibly, the possibility of our body wearing out too, sooner or later, just as a garment does. But science only partially supports this view of bodily decay, for the human body is very different from a garment, a machine or a piece of rock. It should be likened, rather to, a river which has been flowing for thousands and thousands of years and continues to flow in the same fashion even today. Can we really say that a river becomes old or stagnates? An American chemist, Dr. Carl Linus Pauling (b. 1901), recipient of two Noble Prizes, one of Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962, has pointed out that, theoretically man is cast to a great extent in an eternal mould, cells in the human body being just like machines which automatically remove their own defects. In spite of this, man does grow old, and does die. But let us leave death for a moment and look at life. Our bodies are constantly undergoing a process of renewal. Molecules of albumen present within our cells are continually being produced, destroyed and reproduced. Cells too (except the nerve cells) are regularly destroyed and replaced by newly formed cells. It has been estimated that the blood in a human body is fully renewed within the short span of about four months. And, within a few years, all of the atoms in a human body are totally replaced. It shows that man is more like a river than a mere structure of flesh and bones. In short, the human body is constantly undergoing a process of change. This being so, all concepts of the body becoming old and worn-out are seen to have no basis in fact. Consider that in the normal course of events, the indirect causes of death, such as injury, various types of deficiencies, the clogging of arteries and the wasting away of muscle, tissue etc., are generally dealt with, bit by bit by the body’s own processes, (sometimes with the help of medical treatment) but, in any case are eliminated in the course of time, without either singly or jointly having caused the onset of death. It is normally much later in life that death occurs. How then can these injuries, deficiencies, etc., be held responsible for the death of the body? This would appear to imply that the cause of death does not lie in the intestines, veins or heart, but somewhere else. When the time has come for the Last Reckoning, God will destroy this world and replace it by another world created on an entirely different pattern.