Countless people have lived since the beginning of the history of humanity. Allah created billions of eyes, billions of different fingerprints, billions of different skin tissues, billions of different human forms. Here are some striking features of fingerprints as revealed in the Qur’an …
1. A fingerprint is the pattern which is formed by the folds and creases at the end of the fingertips. There are respiration pores on every square centimeter found on the outer skin of the human body. Everyone of these pores reach down to the inner skin layer. Every pore is like secured to the inner layer of skin with two-lined ledges called Papila that look like nails. Therefore, if the outer skin is damaged, or even completely falls off, these papilas are still adequate for fingerprint detection. Even so, the prints on the freshly regrown skin are the same as the old. However, if the papilas found on the inner layer of skin are completely lost, then it would not be possible to detect fingerprints; and in this case fingers’ inner whorls would be completely lost.
2. Every person’s fingerprints are unique, including identical twins. In other words, people’s identities are quite literally encoded on their fingerprints. This encoding system is somewhat comparable to the barcode system used today.
3. Fingerprints take their final form on the fetus shortly before birth and it stays fixed for a lifetime. For this reason, fingerprinting is accepted as a very important and universal “identification card” by everyone, and fingerprint science is used as an unfailing identification method by many authorities. This singularly unique characteristic of the fingerprint was discovered only towards to end of the 19th Century. Before then, people considered fingerprints as little more than lines with no meaning.
4. The shapes and details on fingerprints are wholly specific to the individual. The fingerprints of all the people who are living on Earth now, and have ever lived since the beginning of history, have different fingerprints. Moreover, even identical twins with the same DNA sequences have different fingerprints.
5. The discovery of the uniqueness of the fingerprint goes back at least three centuries. Even though there are some observations about fingerprints in ancient literature, there is no information about the use of fingerprints for the purposes of identification. At first, it was anatomists such as Nehemiah Grew (1684), Marcello Malpighi (1686) and J. E. Purkinie (1823) pointed out that the patterns on people’s fingertips have some interesting qualities.
6. According to the fingerprint system used today and known as the Henry System, five general shapes are accepted for fingerprints: left circle, right circle, arch, tent-like arch and circular. These types are generally defined with the characters A, T, R, U, W.
7. A similar fingerprinting procedure was developed by Juan Vucetich (1858-1925), a Croation-born Argentinian anthropologist. Vucetich accepted four basic fingerprints; arch, inner knot (knot leaning left), outer knot (knot leaning right) and bundle. Even though some authors other than Henry Faulds and Vucetich had worked on fingerprints, these were accepted by only one or two countries. Henry Faulds and Vucetichs' system has today been accepted by many countries of the world.
8. A fingerprint identity detection system technology, known as AFS is today widely used as a legally approved method, the validity of which has proven in several police organizations over the last 25 years. Today, there is no other technology that gives more accurate results than the fingerprint. Fingerprint identification detection has been used in legal processes for over 100 years and it has international precedence and credence.
9. A. A. Moenssens noted that fingerprints are unique to every person in his book "Fingerprint Techniques" as follows: “Until now, none of the two fingerprints on different fingers were encountered to be the same.”
10. In the Qur’an, the importance and characteristics of fingerprints, discovered only in our era, is pointed out. In one verse, it is revealed that it is very easy for Allah to revive people after death and people’s fingertips are pointed out:
"On the contrary! We are able to make complete his very fingertips." (Surat al-Qiyama, 4)
