from the father and the mother through the reproductive process in living creatures. Chromosomes have only recently been identified as the material basis for the transmission of hereditary characteristics: when the ovum is fertilised by the male cell, every individual inherits from both parents. Nor does the influence of heredity stop there; its effects, carried within the genes, stretch back through the centuries, linking a person to forefathers and ancestors.

Modern science has shown that hidden mysteries lie within those genes—mysteries that Allah reveals whenever He wills. Among them are the attributes, features, and markings that determine a person’s appearance and form, and his predisposition to many physical, psychological, and moral traits. This new scientific discovery has brought to light a prophetic miracle contained in the noble ḥadīth: “Perhaps a lineage has asserted itself,” reported by al-Bukhārī (305) and Muslim (1500).

4 – Dr. Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Barr said:
“This is a brief note on the law of heredity by which congenital traits are passed from the two parents to their child.
“In short, hereditary traits are either ‘dominant’ or ‘recessive.’ If a trait is dominant, its presence in only one of the parents is enough for it to appear in half of the offspring.
“If it is recessive, the trait will not manifest in the progeny unless it exists in both parents—without necessarily being visible in them. In that case it will appear in one quarter of the children, while another quarter will be completely free of the trait.
“Because hereditary characteristics are carried on what are called chromosomes, and because those chromosomes occur in pairs in the somatic cells of both father and mother, they undergo meiotic division—in the ovary to produce the ovum, and in the testis to produce the sperm cell.”