Recently, a Muslim claimed that evolution is in harmony with Islam and the Qur'an. I responded then that the Qur'an also knows of Adam as the first man and all others being descendents of him. To that statement [which I am now no longer completely sure of, but that was my impression at the time] I got the following verse from the Qur'an as response (in excerpt):

Kindly inform me as to where (in which passage/Verse of the Qur'an) did you read that 'Adam' was the first human being ? Because the Qur'an clearly negates this idea in numerous Ayas, for example:

[7.11] 'And certainly We created you , THEN We fashioned you, THEN We said to the angels: Make obeisance to Adam. So they did obeisance except Iblis; he was not of those who did obeisance.'

The above verse is in the plural and addressed to the whole of Mankind, not to a single person. It says that Allah created all of us (wa laqad khalaqnakum) [And certainly We created you] Then He gave all of us shapes (thumma suwarnakum) [THEN We fashioned you] and after all of Mankind was created and fashioned, it is after all this, that Allah asks the Angels to bow down before 'Adam' [thumma qulna lil malaikat isjudu li adamaa) [THEN We said to the angels: Make obeisance to Adam.]

The above aya clearly states that Adam is not the first human, but all Mankind was created and then Adam was made for prostration of the angels. ....

I don't know if that is a general Muslim understanding, but the above verse certainly prompts to ask questions.

1. Where does it state that Adam is NOT the first human? Was all mankind fashioned at the same time? Or was this fashioning before the command to prostrate in the same sequence of how these people would eventually live on earth, so that Adam still might be the first man?

2. Where were all the other members of mankind when Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden? Were they already on earth or did they remain in heaven?

3. If Adam was not the first human, who then was the first human?

4. In any case, where does God keep all the fully created and then fashioned human beings? Does he have a divine refrigerator? This might sound irreverent, but I hope you understand the question is a real one.

5. Muslims like to make a lot of noise about the miracle of the scientific exactness in regard to the stages of embryonic development as described in the Qur'an. The above is obviously a verse about the pre-embryonic stage all human beings experience before they are conceived. Do you think that God shrinks down again the fully fashioned human beings, divides out their chromosoms into two cells, one sperm and one egg before he then lets them unite again in the womb of the future mother and then makes them grow up into what he had fashioned millions of years ago? Is that what this means? If not, what does it mean? How does it fit into any kind of scientific understanding of the development of a human being?

6. And a comment about the original topic: If you think that this above verse supports evolution, then Adam had a father and a mother, right? But I don't think you can square that with the Qur'an which expressedly states that Adam was created without a father, just like Jesus. And actually your above scenario is as much anti-evolutionary as you can imagine. Not only was Adam created directly from God, everyone is created directly by God without any development from one generation to the next as taught in the theory of the evolution.

7. In the quote of "[7.11] 'And certainly We created you, THEN We fashioned you,..." this Muslim stressed the word "THEN", i.e. there are distinguisable stages, one after another. Therefore we are talking here about two distinguishable pre-embryonic stages. Could anyone explain how we looked like when we were created but not yet fashioned?

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