First of all: There are no Qur’anic verses about how the children of Adam and Eve reproduced, and imposing the interpretation of (brother-sister marriage) is an arbitrary imposition resulting from a flawed understanding of some verses, such as:
Qur’an 4:1
«“O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from a single soul and created from it its mate, and from the two of them spread many men and women.”»
Fundamentalists understand this verse as referring to two particular individuals: the single soul is Adam and its mate is Eve, and that all of humanity came from the two of them exclusively and nothing else. This is not correct, because this verse is understood through other verses, such as:
Qur’an 7:189–190
«“He is the One who created you from a single soul and made from it its mate so that he might find tranquility in her. Then, when he covered her, she carried a light burden and passed through with it. Then, when she became heavy, they called upon Allah, their Lord: ‘If You give us a righteous child, we will surely be among the grateful.’ But when He gave them a righteous child, they attributed partners to Him concerning what He had given them. Exalted is Allah above what they associate with Him.”»
And:
Qur’an 39:6
«“He created you from a single soul, then made from it its mate, and He sent down for you of livestock eight pairs. He creates you in the wombs of your mothers, creation after creation, in three layers of darkness.”»
And:
Qur’an 30:21
«“And among His signs is that He created for you mates from among yourselves so that you may find tranquility in them, and He placed between you affection and mercy.”»
And:
Qur’an 6:98
«“And He is the One who produced you from a single soul, then there is a place of settlement and a place of safekeeping.”»
The verses, in short, mean that Allah created human beings from one kind, in the form of a pair, male and female, and from them this kind reproduces through mating. The single soul is not Adam and its mate is not Eve specifically; rather, it is general, speaking about the human species as a whole: that it is of one kind, and from the same kind there is a female for the male and a male for the female, and through mating human beings reproduce.
The strongest evidence that they are speaking generally and not about two particular individuals, Adam and Eve, one of whom came from the body of the other as in the Bible (Eve coming from Adam’s rib), is the verses of Surat al-A‘raf:
Qur’an 7:189–190
«“He is the One who created you from a single soul and made from it its mate so that he might find tranquility in her. Then, when he covered her, she carried a light burden and passed through with it. Then, when she became heavy, they called upon Allah, their Lord: ‘If You give us a righteous child, we will surely be among the grateful.’ But when He gave them a righteous child, they attributed partners to Him concerning what He had given them. Exalted is Allah above what they associate with Him.”»
These verses attribute shirk to the two spouses, and it is impossible for Adam and Eve to have committed shirk. Also, the single soul in this verse is the female, not the male, because the rest of the verse says “so that he may find tranquility in her,” using the masculine form, and “when he covered her,” meaning that the male is the one who approaches the female sexually. So was Adam created from Eve’s body like this? Certainly not.
But when you understand the verse as speaking generally about the human species that there is pairing within the same kind (a male for the female and a female for the male), the verses become completely logical. Shirk can be committed by males and females and their descendants generally, and there is no problem with the single soul here, in this context, being the female, because both are a mate to the other.
What strengthens this even more is that the verse itself does not say that Allah spread from the two spouses “all men and women on Earth”; rather, it is phrased as:
«“and from the two of them He spread many men and women.” (Qur’an 4:1)»
It certainly does not mean the absolute exclusion of all men and women as coming from these two alone and nothing else. Rather, it is general: from the male and female, many men and many women arise.
Therefore, there is no problem with Adam having existed among an already existing human population and being chosen as the first representative of the morally and spiritually developed human species who was given responsibility, then a wife being chosen for him from this same human population, and the divine spirit being breathed into her, then the spirit being breathed into other individuals, after which mating occurred between his sons and daughters and these others, and humanity emerged from this.
And we would all be the children of Adam in the sense that Adam was the first to receive the divine spirit and divine responsibility, just as Ibrahim is the father of all Muslims in the sense that he was a prominent representative of monotheism in history, not that he was the sole biological father of every Muslim on Earth:
Qur’an 22:78
«“The creed of your father, Abraham. He named you Muslims before.”»
And just as Lot’s daughters are the women of his people and not necessarily his biological daughters:
Qur’an 11:78
«“These are my daughters; they are purer for you.”»
Second: “My Grandfather Is Not an Ape!"
Some claim that descent from apes would be against human dignity.
The fact that all humans share ancestry with individuals such as Pharaoh and Abu Lahab does not, in Islamic thought, impugn human dignity. If genealogical connection to morally corrupt human beings is not considered degrading, then genealogical connection to non-human animals cannot coherently be regarded as degrading either.
Historically, the Prophet Muhammad faced his most vehement opposition from close relatives, notably Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl. Were kinship with evil persons inherently dishonoring, one would be forced absurdly to conclude that the Prophet’s own dignity was compromised.
Since no Muslim entertains such a conclusion, it follows that dignity is independent of ancestry. On this basis, the assertion that humans share ancestry with fish or apes cannot reasonably be deemed more offensive than the assertion that humans share ancestry with Pharaoh or Abu Lahab.
Furthermore, while the Qur’an explicitly censures Pharaoh and Abu Lahab, it does not censure fish or apes. It is therefore inconsistent to feel discomfort at the idea of shared ancestry with animals that are not condemned, while feeling no discomfort at shared ancestry with those whom the Qur’an portrays as morally worse than animals:
“They are not except like cattle; rather, they are more astray in path.” (Surah al-Furqan, 25:44)
Also consider this: Satan is condemned in the Qur’an precisely for his arrogance in claiming that his origin was superior to that of man and for rebelling against God on that basis.
From this, should we not understand that the Qur’an condemns ancestral arrogance itself?
Third: Creation from Mud Does Not Necessarily Mean Instantaneous Creation.
They argue that these verses talking about the creation of Adam from mud mean God instantaneously created Adam from mud, which is strange because none of these verses actually says “instantaneously.” They infer it simply because the verses mention the starting material without mentioning the intermediary stages.
But that doesn’t follow. If I say, “I made the chair from wood,” nobody would understand that the wood must have instantly become a finished chair simply because I didn’t mention every intermediate step. The statement identifies the material from which something was ultimately made, not necessarily every process between the initial material and the final product.
Likewise, these verses can refer to the original material of human creation which is mud without implying that mud instantly became a human.
And the Qur’an itself specifies what kind of “mud” is being discussed.
That is ḥamaʾ masnūn (dark/altered mud) not simply dry silicate sand. Such material naturally contains water, minerals, organic matter, and microorganisms.
More importantly, Qur’an 32:7 says:
“And He began the creation of humankind from mud.”
The verb بدأ itself points to a beginning or starting point of the creation process. Then the verse continues:
“Then He made his progeny from an extract of a lowly fluid.”
And afterward:
“Then He proportioned him and breathed into him of His spirit.”
If we simply take the sequence as it stands, without resorting to metaphorical gymnastics that ثُمَّ does not usually indicate chronological order, then the verse presents a sequence:
Beginning of human creation from black mud → unproportioned humans reproducing by fluid → proportioning of one of them (Adam) → divine breath in one of them (Adam).
As we know, Adam is the first human associated with the divine breath and the command for the angels and Iblis to prostrate from other Qur’anic verses.
So this raises an obvious question: if “the humankind” began from mud, then there was a stage involving reproduction through semen, and only afterward came the divine breath and proportioning associated with Adam, what prevents the earlier stage from referring to humans biologically preceding Adam as the first spiritually distinguished human by a special divine act?
This interpretation can also provide a possible answer to the question of how the angels already knew that the future khalifa on earth would cause corruption and shed blood.
“How will You place therein one who will cause corruption in it and shed blood?”
If Adam represents a later stage in the development of an already existing human creature particularly the stage associated with proportioning and the divine breath then the angels’ knowledge becomes easier to understand: they could already have observed these earthly creatures before that divine act, including their violence, killing, and corruption.
In that reading, the angels were not necessarily predicting something they had never witnessed. They were asking why God would appoint as a khalifa a creature whose earlier representatives they had already observed engaging in bloodshed and corruption.
This does not prove that interpretation by itself, but it shows that “created from mud” does not logically entail “instantaneously appeared as a fully formed Adam.” The Qur’anic wording can instead be read as describing an initial material origin followed by stages of development and reproduction before the particular human stage associated with Adam and the divine breath.
So the claim that these verses explicitly rule out biological processes or evolution is stronger than what the verses themselves actually state.
And this interpretation becomes even stronger when we look at how the Qur’an speaks about ordinary human beings, not just Adam.
Noah says to his people:
“And Allah has caused you to grow from the earth as a growth.” (71:17)
And Ṣāliḥ says to his people:
“He brought you forth from the earth.” (11:61)
Surely, this does not mean that the people of Noah or the people of Ṣāliḥ were instantaneously created from dust or mud. They were ordinary humans who developed through biological reproduction and gradual growth.
So these expressions can naturally refer to the earthly origin/material basis of humanity, without describing every intermediate process between earth and the fully developed human being.
The same point appears even more clearly in the verse in Sūrat Yā-Sīn:
“Have you disbelieved in Him who created you from dust, then from a sperm-drop, then proportioned you as a man?”
Was this individual man instantaneously created from dust? Obviously not.
It can simply identify the original material or ultimate earthly origin. The Qur’an repeatedly uses earthly-origin language for ordinary humans whose development clearly involves intervening stages.
Fourth: Adam and Jesus, Does Special Creation Imply Divinity?
“Indeed, the likeness of Jesus before Allah is like that of Adam: He created him from dust, then said to him, ‘Be,’ and he was.”
Fundamentalists use this verse to argue against human evolution by interpreting it as saying that Adam was created directly by God without a father or mother.
They say that the force of the argument against Christians is this: if Christians consider Jesus to be God because he had no father, then Adam has an even stronger claim to divinity because he had neither a father nor a mother. But if Adam had a biological father and mother, as an evolutionary account would allow, then where exactly is the persuasive force of the argument?
But this is not the only possible interpretation of the verse.
The comparison between Jesus and Adam can instead be understood in terms of special divine creation or intervention. The point would be that both Adam and Jesus were subject to an extraordinary divine act. And special divine creation does not entail that the created being is God.
That principle is itself explicitly present elsewhere in the Qur’an. Allah says:
“He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth. How could He have a son when He has no consort, while He created everything?”
The word (badīʿ/Originator) refers to unprecedented origination, bringing something into existence without a preceding example. God therefore uniquely originated the heavens and the earth. Yet the heavens and earth are obviously not divine merely because they were produced through an unprecedented divine creative act.
The same principle can be applied to Adam.
Even if Adam had a biological father and mother, his emergence as the particular human being described by the Qur’an could still involve a unique divine intervention. The Qur’an describes God as saying:
“So when I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My spirit…”
On this interpretation, Adam’s distinctive status as the first human to receive this divine breath would itself be a special divine act. Without that divine intervention, there would be no Adam in the specific sense being described. Likewise, Jesus’s conception without a father would be another extraordinary divine act.
Both would therefore involve special divine intervention, just as God uniquely originated the heavens and earth. Yet none of these facts entails divinity.
God specially originated the heavens and earth → they are not God.
God specially intervened in Adam’s creation → Adam is not God.
God specially intervened in Jesus’s conception → Jesus is not God.
Extraordinary divine creation or intervention therefore does not entail that the created entity is divine.
And this interpretation also fits a broader pattern in the Qur’an: the Qur’an does not present every divine act of creation as instantaneous. Jesus was not simply made to appear as a fully formed baby; he developed as a fetus in his mother’s womb for months. Likewise, the Qur’an describes the creation of the heavens and earth as taking six days, rather than presenting it as an instantaneous event.
