A common objection claims the Quran makes a false biological statement in Surah At-Tariq: that semen is produced "between the backbone and the ribs," when in fact it is produced in the testicles. Once the actual words of the verse and the range of classical interpretation are examined, the objection does not hold.
The verse and the objection
So let man consider from what he was created. He was created from a gushing fluid, emerging from between the backbone (al-sulb) and the ribs (al-tara'ib).
Quran 86:5-7
The critic reads this as an anatomical claim - that the male reproductive fluid originates in the chest or lower back region - and then points out, correctly, that semen is produced in the testicles. On that reading the verse would be mistaken.
The verse does not use the word for semen
The first thing to notice is the word chosen. The verse says ma' dafiq (مَاءٍ دَافِقٍ) - "a gushing" or "forcefully emitted fluid." It does not use mani (مَنِيّ), the specific Arabic word for semen. When the Quran means semen specifically, it uses that word - as in "Was he not a drop of mani (semen) emitted?" (Quran 75:37).
So the passage is speaking in broad terms about a gushing reproductive fluid, not naming the seminal product and certainly not naming an organ. That distinction alone undercuts the claim that the verse is making a precise statement about where semen is manufactured.
What does "between the backbone and the ribs" mean?
The phrase min bayni al-sulbi wa al-tara'ib was discussed by the classical commentators, who offered several interpretations - not one fixed anatomical claim. The main ones are:
1. The man's loins and the woman's chest
A widely reported classical view takes al-sulb as the man's loins/backbone and al-tara'ib as the woman's upper chest. The child is formed from the reproductive contributions of both parents; "between" refers to the union of the two, not a single person's anatomy. This is reported from Ibn Abbas, Ikrimah, Qatadah, al-Suddi and others.
2. Both terms refer to the man
Others understood both words as describing the man: the fluid emerges from within the region bounded by his back and the front of his torso. On this reading "between the backbone and the ribs" describes a bodily region and the internal origin and passage of the fluid - it does not claim the fluid is manufactured inside the bones.
3. The combined fluid of both parents
Some commentators read the singular "gushing fluid" collectively: the reproductive fluids of the man and the woman together become the material from which the child is created. The singular then refers to the combined reproductive substance rather than to male semen alone.
4. The internal origin of the reproductive organs
A modern interpretation connects the phrase with embryology: the gonads (the future testicles and ovaries) first develop high in the posterior abdomen, near the kidneys - between the backbone and the ribs - and only later descend, keeping their original blood vessels and nerves from that region. This is offered as a possible correspondence, not as the single certain meaning of the verse, and it is not the primary classical interpretation.
What is "emerging"? The fluid, not "the man"
It is worth being precise about the grammar, because a weak version of the defense gets this wrong. The verb yakhruju ("emerging") most naturally refers back to its nearest antecedent, "a gushing fluid" (ma' dafiq) - the fluid is what emerges. The commentator Ibn Ashur likewise takes the pronoun as referring to the fluid. So the verse describes the fluid coming forth from within the body's central region; it is not asserting that a bone is the factory of that fluid.
What the verse does not say
Read plainly, the verse does not say:
- that "semen is produced inside the backbone or the ribs";
- anything about the testicles as a location; or
- that the bones are glands.
It speaks broadly of a gushing reproductive fluid and associates human creation with the region described as between the sulb and the tara'ib. The precise, testicle-locating claim exists only in the critic's paraphrase, not in the text.
The objection rests on one disputed reading
The objection works only by fixing a single, contested interpretation - "the fluid is produced in the bones of the chest" - and treating it as the verse's plain meaning. But that reading is neither required by the Arabic nor adopted by the classical commentators, who gave a range of understandings of sulb and tara'ib. Choosing the least charitable of several possible meanings, and then faulting the verse for it, is a critique of one interpretation, not of the text.
Conclusion
The most defensible summary is this: the verse uses ma' dafiq ("a gushing fluid"), not the specific word mani ("semen"); it does not claim that semen is produced inside the backbone or the ribs; and the classical scholars gave several interpretations of sulb and tara'ib - the man's loins and the woman's chest, a region of the body, or the combined fluids of both parents. The Quran's own use of mani elsewhere (75:37) confirms that ma' dafiq here is a broader expression, not a technical anatomical term. The objection collapses because it reads a precise biological error into words that never made that precise claim.
For a fuller treatment of the linguistics, the classical tafsir, and the relevant hadith, see our in-depth topic Humans Created Between the Backbone and Ribs? and the related topics below.