Qur-an, human embryology and nutrition.

I being a complete code of life, encompasses almost all walks of life. The teachings of Islam and Qur-an provide guidance in all spheres of life, whether spiritual, intellectual, political, social or economic. The basic theme of its teachings is to guide humanity towards the righteous path. Qur-an is for the whole humanity. Man is the main subject of the book. How man is created and how development takes place during his life is what Qur-an describes in greater details. The book mentions the precise mechanisms of reproduction and clearly defines the stages involved in reproduction, without providing a single statement marred by inaccuracy. The discussion of physical development of human beings is, however, in the context of Almighty Allah’s authority of being the absolute Creator. Human beings starts their lives from the fusion of male and female gametes forming a zygote. Zygote remains in the mother’s womb for some time, gets its nourishments from there, grows in size into embryo, and then it is given birth by the mother. The different stages of embryonic development are fertilization, cleavage, gastrulation, neurulation, neural crest formation, and formation of organs or organogenesis. These stages of embryonic development are described in the Holy Qur-an. The term used for semen in the Holy Qur-an is Maa-indaafeqan (fluid ejected fastly). The other terms used in the book for various stages of embryo are “Nutfah” (zygote), Mudghatan (lump of flesh or developed gastrula), and Izaman (soft bone structure just before organogenesis). The details of the embryonic stages mentioned by the Holy Qur-an, though, are in brief but are in excellent agreement with the modern scientific knowledge. Ovaries, the reproductive organs in females, produce a great number of oocytes, which latter on convert into ova, the female reproductive cells. Sperms, the male reproductive cells, fertilize the ova. The fertilized ovum enters into the fallopian tube and gets implanted on the wall of the uterus.1 The development of the fertilized ovum into an embryo and a complete baby takes place in distinct 3 phases,2 each phase of 3 months duration and it is called a trimester. During the first trimester, all the major organs of the body are established. Development of the embryo is essentially complete. From this point, the developing human being is referred to as fetus