Published on Jan 23, 2015
This new documentary film from National Geographic explains the Human Genome Project.
Studies of the genetic markers within our DNA have uncovered the true story of our ancestry. Every human being alive on the planet today is descended from a single father and mother. Our ancient parents lived about 50,000 years ago in East Africa and their arrival signalled a new chapter in the planets history. Endowed with the power of conceptual thought - they would quickly multiply and spread to dominate all corners of the planet, developing the skills and technology necessary to thrive in every environment on earth. This new documentary film follows the trail of their amazing journey.
49:13 O men! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female,
["We have created every one of you out of a father and a mother" - implying that this equality of biological origin is reflected in the equality of the human dignity common to all.]
another.[i.e. know that all belong to one human family, without any inherent superiority of one over another. This connects with the exhortation in the preceding verses to respect and safeguard each other's dignity. In other words, our evolution into "nations and tribes" is meant to foster rather than to diminish our mutual desire to understand and appreciate the essential human oneness underlying our outward differentiations; and, correspondingly, all racial, national or tribal prejudice ('as abiyyah) is condemned - implicitly in the Quran - and most explicitly by
the Prophet. Speaking of people's boasting of their national or tribal past, the Prophet said: "Behold, God has removed from you the arrogance of pagan ignorance (jahiliyyah) with its boast of ancestral glories. Man is but a God-conscious believer or an unfortunate sinner. All
people are children of Adam, and Adam was created out of dust." (Fragment of a hadith quoted by Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud, on the authority of Abu Hurayrah.)
28:15 And one day he entered the city at a time when most of its people were resting in their houses, unaware of what was going on in the streets; and there he encountered two men fighting with one another - one of his own people, and the other of his enemies. And the one who belonged to his own people cried out to him for help against him who was of his enemies
- whereupon Moses struck him down with his fist, and thus brought about his end. But then he said to himself: "This is of Satan's doing! Verily, he is an open foe, leading [man] astray!"
[These verses seem to indicate that it was the Israelite, and not the Egyptian, who had been in the wrong. Apparently, Moses had come to the assistance of the Israelite out of an instinctive sense of racial kinship without regard to the rights and wrongs of the case; but immediately afterwards he realized that he had committed a grave sin not only by killing, however inadvertently, an innocent person, but also by basing his action on a mere tribal - or, as we would describe it today, racial or national prejudice. Evidently, this is the lesson of the above Quranic segment of the story of Moses. Its moral has been stressed and explained by the Prophet on many occasions: his famous saying:
"He is not of us who proclaims the cause of tribal partisanship (asabiyyah); and he is not of us who fights in the cause of tribal partisanship; and he is not of us who dies in the cause of tribal partisanship" (Abu Dawud, on the authority of Jubayr ibn Mut'im). When he was asked to explain the meaning of "tribal partisanship", the Prophet answered, "It means helping
thine own people in an unjust cause"
http://muhammad-asad.com/Message-of-Q...
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Film & Animation
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