The Insight
Ancient theories of sex determination almost universally looked to the mother: the womb's temperature, which side the child settled on, even the phase of the moon. The Quran points elsewhere. Quran 53:45-46 states: 'And He creates the pairs, male and female, from a drop when it is emitted.' The decisive factor is placed in the emitted drop, the male's contribution. Modern genetics confirmed exactly this: a mother's egg always carries an X chromosome, while the father's sperm carries either X or Y. It is the sperm, and the sperm alone, that determines whether a child is male or female. This was not known until sex chromosomes were identified in 1905. The Quran located the origin of a child's sex in the male's drop, fourteen centuries before science could prove it. There is also an interesting detail worth noting: this verse falls at number 46, and every human cell contains exactly 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent.