INTRODUCTION

Let us ask a question about something we all know very well, the "seed." What is the difference between a seed, in its shell as hard as tree bark, and tree bark itself? Questions like this are rarely asked, because tree bark and seeds are insignificant details for people in their busy daily lives. The commonly held view is that there are more important and essential things to worry about in the immediate environment.

This logic is quite widespread among people who only cast a superficial eye over their environment. For these people, knowing enough to meet their needs-regardless of the subject-is quite sufficient. According to this shallow thinking, everything going on around us is familiar and ordinary, and there is definitely a "known" and "familiar" explanation for everything. Flies fly because they have wings, the moon is just always in the sky. The earth is protected from threats that might come from space because it has an atmosphere. The oxygen balance never goes wrong. People feel, see, smell.

But one who, abandoning this narrow view and looking at whatever is going on around him as if he were coming across everything for the first time, and lifting the curtain of familiarity which restricts his view, will see a wide horizon open up before him. He will start to think, asking the questions "why", "how", "for what?" more frequently, and will observe the world around him from this perspective. Explanations which used to satisfy him will no longer be sufficient. He will begin to grasp that there is something extraordinary in everything, in what goes on in the environment, in the features living things possess. As he begins to think, familiarity will give way to wonder. In the end he will see that everything was created and planned in a superior and perfect way by a Creator possessing endless power, knowledge, and wisdom. From that moment he will be able to see the power and sovereignty of God, the Lord of all the worlds, over all the living creatures He has created.

In the creation of the heavens and earth, and the alternation of the night and day, and the ships which sail the seas to p eople's benefit, and the water which God sends down from the sky-by which He brings the earth to life when it was dead and scatters about in it creatures of every kind-and the varying direction of the winds, and the clouds subservient between heaven and earth, there are Signs for people who use their intellect." (Surat al-Baqara: 164)