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[Quran 16:78] GOD brought you out of your mothers’ bellies knowing nothing, and He gave you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brains, that you may be appreciative.
[23:78] He is the One who granted you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brains. Rarely are you appreciative.
[32:9] He shaped him and blew into him from His spirit. And He gave you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brains; rarely are you thankful.
We all use our eyes, thank You God, every day. And God willing, we try to appreciate the gift, because our lives would be very different without them. The eye is an extremely complex organ. If you go to Wikipedia, it shows about 30 different major components of the eye, including the lens, the retina, different kinds of muscles, blood vessels, a jelly-like substance inside the eyeball, and the colored iris that we see. Each of these has its own detailed article that we can spend days understanding.
The iris, like our fingerprints, is unique to each individual. And while a fingerprint has about 40 unique characteristics, an iris has over 250. For this reason, high security installations are now using iris scans for security purposes. There’s also a much more difficult to perform security scan, a retinal scan, because the rich pattern of blood vessels in each of our retinas is also unique. Praise God. All those blood vessels at the back of our eyes will sometimes cause “red eye” in flash photography.
The eye is a very complex organ made up of so many complex subcomponents. All together there’s about 2 million working parts! This was all put together billions of years ago by God, the best Creator. So you can see why specialized doctors spend their entire lives studying and trying to help those with eye problems.
Even doctors realize how limited we are. For example, science currently cannot transplant an entire eye. This is because more than 1 million nerve fibers connect each eye to the brain and currently we’re not able to reconstruct those connections. Given the complexity, praise God, we know it’s only God who can give us or restore eyesight for us.
[6:46] Say, “What if GOD took away your hearing and your eyesight, and sealed your minds; which god, other than GOD, can restore these for you?” Note how we explain the revelations, and note how they still deviate!
[10:31] Say, “Who provides for you from the heaven and the earth? Who controls all the hearing and the eyesight? Who produces the living from the dead, and the dead from the living? Who is in control of all things?” They would say, “GOD.” Say, “Why then do you not observe the commandments?”
In terms of resolution, the eye is way out ahead of the highest resolution camera. It can handle something like 576 megapixels. None of our regular cameras come close, but there’s a telescope used by astronomers that has a comparable resolution. And its cost was about $35 million! Praise be to God, He gave it to us for free! And compared to big bulky telescopes, our eyes weigh about 1 ounce, measuring about an inch across. Glory be to God.
Our eyes move over 100,000 times a day, more than three times a second. Yet, our vision isn’t blurry like when a camera pans a scene too fast. That’s God gift of design. A very large percentage of what we learn is through our eyes. One website estimated that about 80% of what we learn and analyze comes through our eyes. We’ve all heard the phrase, “seeing is believing”. And the Quran has a reference to the eyes as a cognitive filter:
[2:267] O you who believe, you shall give to charity from the good things you earn, and from what we have produced for you from the earth. Do not pick out the bad therein to give away, when you yourselves do not accept it unless your eyes are closed.
You should know that GOD is Rich, Praiseworthy.
Similarly, the combination of the hearing, eyesight and brains is very important in our day to day lives. God gave it to us to use, especially in our Submission.
Crucial Advice
[17:36] You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them.
[22:46] Did they not roam the earth, then use their minds to understand, and use their ears to hear? Indeed, the real blindness is not the blindness of the eyes, but the blindness of the hearts inside the chests.
Other verses in the Quran talk about the proofs all around us that (with God’s help) we can appreciate using our eyes.
[24:43] Do you not realize that GOD drives the clouds, then gathers them together, then piles them on each other, then you see the rain coming out of them? He sends down from the sky loads of snow to cover whomever He wills, while diverting it from whomever He wills. The brightness of the snow almost blinds the eyes. [24:44] GOD controls the night and day. This should be a lesson for those who possess eyes.
[67:3] He created seven universes in layers. You do not see any imperfection in the creation by the Most Gracious. Keep looking; do you see any flaw? [67:4] Look again and again; your eyes will come back stumped and conquered.
[6:75] We showed Abraham the marvels of the heavens and the earth, and blessed him with certainty:
Sometimes humans see mirages or things that are not there. This may be God’s will.
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