In Surat Al 'Imran, v. 190, Allah Said: {" Indeed, in the Creation of the heavens and the Earth, and the alternation of night and day, are signs for people of intellect. "}

The first thought that enters my mind after reading this verse is how recently, relative to the amount of time that humans have existed, we have come to begin exploring the celestial bodies up close. For the many millennia that we have existed, it was only within the last few hundred years that telescopes gave us a close look at the Moon of Earth and those of other planets, as well as those other planets themselves, the surrounding stars of the Milky Way, and so on. What's fascinating is that these celestial bodies all across our galaxy, and entire Universe, have existed as they are for billions of years prior to our discovery of them. Saturn, with its beautiful rings, Jupiter, with its layered colors, deep blue Neptune, and beyond the confines of the solar system - even while we were unaware of their existence, and later while we were unaware of their of their true beauty and awesome sight, they still existed, rotated, revolved, shone, and decorated the depths of space.

What strikes me about this realization is that it shows that no matter how powerful we conclude Allah to be from the Creations we see around us, the truth of it all is vastly and infinitely more awesome than we can imagine. No matter how much we think we know or have seen, there is always a world of wonder that we haven't even discovered. Then, the question enters my mind: if we existed for all this time unaware of these signs, and these signs themselves existed for billions of years before us, then, from our perspective as humans, what do these celestial bodies tell us? What I concluded to myself is that this all shows that Allah created these planets, stars, moons, and galaxies simply because He could; as a demonstration of His Power for us to discover all of those billions of years later through telescopes and spacecraft, and be able to list them as further evidence of His Lordship over us.

As I mentioned in an earlier part of this series (pt. 2, I believe), one of the best ways to apply this verse and increase your Iman is to search through pictures from the Hubble Telescope or Voyager Spacecraft to witness firsthand these hidden heavens that litter the vast Universe as signs for us to help us understand.

طارق مهنا
Tariq Mehanna
Plymouth Correctional Facility
Isolation Unit - Cell #108