People often say history repeats itself. However, they do not believe what they utter casually since they do not know how history repeats itself. This can be experimented by telling them that genetic engineering was practiced in the Nemrudic civilization. They will stare at the sayer with suspicion. Then ask them how history repeats itself. If Nemrud is allowed to return, he can give the right answer.
MUHAMMAD TARIQ GHAZI
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]oday’s knowledge suggests that in at least one way modern civilization is very much like the Nemrudic civilization. It can be explained as that in social behavior, economic philosophy and civilization the people of Nimrod (Namrud) were functioning in ways that parallel modern civilization, or modern civilization is now able to imitate ways of the Nemrudic era.
Explaining Surat Al-Baqarah 2:258 from the Holy Quran, three prominent exegetes have narrated an incident of the era of Prophet Ibrahim or Abraham. Imam Tabari (Jami‘ al-Bayan 5:433-434),
Imam Muhammad al-Ansari Qurtubi (Ahkam al-Qur’an 3:284-285), and Imam Abu Hayyan Andalusi (Bahr al-Muhit 2:298) reported on the authority of Zayd Ibn Aslam that Nemrud had exercised full control over production and distribution of food grains, had ordered to buy these materials from him only and no one else was permitted to sell grains. Food grains would be supplied only to those who would recognize Nemrud as their Nourisher (rubb – رب = god). Tafasir also indicate famine. It appears that scarcity was falsely created.
There is nothing surprising about it. Even today famine is imposed on poor nations in order to achieve certain political and economic goals.
Now, seen in prevalent scientific perspective, another statement of Imam Andalusi, a Mufassir of seven centuries earlier, suggested that the Thamud had invented genetic engineering. Thamud lived thousands of years before Namrud. Inthe Tafsir of Ash-Shu‘ara (26:148) Imam Andalusi said meaning of the word haziim (ھضیم) in (وَنَخْل ٍ طَلْعُھَا ھَضِیمٌ = and palm trees with softened fruit) was that the Thamud had produced Rutab dates without stones. People did not have any idea of genetic engineering in the times of Imam Andalusi (d.1344 CE). However, today it is a household fact known to six-graders.
Modern biologists have already created several seedless fruits and grains. Seedless grapes are known to everyone. In addition, seedless watermelon, raspberries, strawberries, oranges, lemons, limes, pineapples, pears, bananas, figs, papayas, blueberries, carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, cucumbers, rice, wheat, oat, barley are being produced and sold in the market. The technique is also applied to fauna. Chicken is produced without male intervention. They are barren and cannot produce eggs. That artificial chicken with little nutritive value is a daily diet now.
Similarly the eggs that are developed without male intervention and that we have on our breakfast table are barren and can’t produce chicks. Abnormally fat, featherless chicken is another industrially produced item sold through fast-food chains. Other animals artificially produced in this way or serving as guinea pigs for GM experiments include cats, dogs, tilapia fish, camels, cow, buffalo, lambs, goats, horses, donkeys, rats, monkeys, rabbits, salamander, newts. Today this is an industry of huge proportions.
Initial experiments or theoretical studies are being conducted on humans as well. In 1976 Hollywood produced Logan’s Run, a movie based on the concept that in the 23rd century humans will be produced artificially in incubators and would have to die after attaining certain age. They looked like males and females but both sexes were barren.
Producing fruits with fertilization of ovules is called parthénocarpy in botany and horticulture. In another system called stenospermocarpy ovules are fertilized normally but as the fruit develops on the plant, the seed is biologically crushed and destroyed. People may have seen such destroyed or underdeveloped seeds in a watermelon like tiny black dots or pale white flakes. This technology also decides the size and shape of fruits or vegetables to “facilitate” mechanical picking and packing. So one finds all watermelons or oranges of one and same size, shape and weight. It is likely that in the near future “seeds” can be purchased only from the seed monopolies.
Centuries before man had attained this degree of scientific skill, exegetes had pointed out that Namrudic and Thamudic civilizations were already at home in such technological pursuits.
Genetic engineering or genetic modification (gm) carries official approval from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), a US government agency.
However, sections of American people are worried, although they are powerless to change what is glorified as scientific advancement. Ironically, general public is being assured that all this is being done for “boosting food security”. Nonetheless American farmers have been preserving seeds in time-capsules in a number of towns and villages. These time-capsules are designed to be opened one hundred years later. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation buried 90-inch long two timecapsules of eight inch diameter each in 1939 and 1964 in New York’s Flushing Meadows park, with a silly hope that both capsules would be discovered and opened simultaneously five thousand year later in 6939.
In the first capsule, among other things, they put seeds of wheat, corn, oats, tobacco, cotton, flax, rice, soy beans, alfalfa, sugar beets, carrots, and barley, all sealed in airtight glass tubes. In 2011 University of Wisconsin’s research assistant Karl Haro Von Mogel also buried seeds of selected vegetables and grains in an airtight capsule which will be opened in 2061. A major time-capsule is reportedly buried in the US state of Alaska so that in case of a collapse of civilization and science people are able to restart natural process of cultivation and free the mankind from the slavery of mankind and of technology.
These efforts are being made for fear of a famine of global proportions. If there are no kernel seeds and technology is totally destroyed in an unforeseen calamity there won’t be any food available even for subsistence. Then everything will depend on Earth’s demonstration of its natural potential.
This may be an extreme view, but whenever a civilization is enslaved by technology endangering the very existence, a natural system is activated to destroy science and technology and wipe out that civilization. This, in Islamic terms, is described as affliction (عذاب). The Deluge swept away leaders, masses, technology and civilization of the people of Noah; a seven-night-eight-day howling gale pulled off palaces and highrise buildings (صرح) of the Aad from ground and buried them and their science under scores of meters of sand, reducing their advancement to smithereens; a roaring sky destroyed the Thamud so that even their bones were turned into dust; brimstones and fire showered over Sodom and Gomorrah that were bargained for obscurity.
Narratives of extinct nations in The Qur’an draw attention to this fact that not only the civilization but human life itself is endangered if physical sciences are not kept under the guidance of spiritual sciences, and when this rule is violated, natural forces are ordered to wipe out from the face of the Earth that specific scientific advancement and those who are slave to it.
That in short is history of civilizations.
This is a chapter from Tariq Ghazi’s upcoming book
