in its second form does not involve His creating them through transformations of this kind. Rather, He restores their bodies without taking them from a drop of fluid to a clinging clot and then to a lump of flesh, without nourishing them with menstrual blood, and without nourishing them with their mothers’ milk or the other food and drink they consume. Whoever supposes that restoration requires restoring the foods that were transformed into their bodies is mistaken.

Thus, if one person eats another, the latter merely becomes nourishment for him, like any other food; there is no need to restore that food. It is well known that nourishment enters the stomach as food and drink, then becomes chyle, resembling bread soaked in broth, then chyme, resembling a thin flour soup. It is then cooked into blood, which Allah Most High distributes throughout the body. Every part of the body receives its share, and the blood is transformed into the likeness of the part concerned: into bone, flesh, or sweat. This process of nourishment resembles their transformation at the beginning of creation: a drop of fluid, then a clinging clot, then a lump of flesh.

Just as He, glorified be He, does not need, when restoring them, to turn each of them into a drop of fluid, then a clinging clot, then a lump of flesh, so too He does not need to turn their nourishment into bread, fruit, and meat, then into chyle and chyme, then into blood, and then into bones, flesh, and veins. Rather, He restores this body in another form for a second creation unlike this creation, as He says:

“and recreate you in forms you do not know.”

In doing so, He has no need for any of the transformations that occurred in the first creation.