O mankind!  Be conscious of your Lord, who has created you from one soul (Adam), and out of it created its mate (Eve), and out of the two spread many men and women.  And remain conscious of God, in whose name you demand [your rights] from one another, and of these ties of kinship.  Verily, God is ever watchful over you!" (Quran 4:1)

God addresses entire humanity and asks them to be conscious of Him, to be aware of His presence.  God reminds people of a forgotten reality: their earthly origins.  All human beings have One God, their Creator, one father – Adam – and one mother, Eve.  The plight of modernity could begin to heal if human beings remember their origins.

Human beings did not appear on this earth by their own will. Rather, someone else willed that human beings inhabit earth.  Someone else willed their existence and prepared the earth and sun in perfect balance to make life possible.  If people were to recall this simple fact, they would proceed in the right direction.  The One who willed human existence has perfect knowledge of humanity and their strengths and their weaknesses. If humans recognized this, they would obey the One they owe their existence to.

Just like human beings have come into existence by the will of the One, human beings also trace back to the same parents.  If people were to realize this, racism, ethnic superiority, and exploitation would end.  Siblings would stop fighting and taking each other’s life.  Siblings would realize their common Creator and be conscious of Him, and give their "kin" their due rights.  Human beings would not divide themselves into casts and classes.  Human beings would not let race, skin color, or national origin determine superiority.

If human beings were to realize that another soul was created from the original single soul to be its mate and to spread both men and women throughout the world, they would respect women more.  Women would not have to go through centuries of oppression, and their humanity would not have been denied for centuries.  Unfortunately, when human beings tried to correct one wrong, they fell into another one.  They forgot that a soul was created for a soul, that a woman makes a man complete.  Men and women are not engaged in an eternal battle of genders; rather, they have been created to complement and complete each other.

God lays out the social fabric of human society, which lies in the family.  God could have created multiple families instead of Adam and Eve in the beginning, but He chose to create Adam and Eve, and spread humanity from their seed.  Islamic ethics considers the family to be the natural basis and cornerstone of a moral society.  A family consists of a human couple and their (legal) children where both the man and woman have each essential roles to play in keeping the family happy and intact.

In the latter portion of the verse is a reminder to be conscious of God, to do what is right and to stay away from wrongdoing in whose Name people take oaths, swear allegiances, and ask favors.

Lastly, the verse ends with a reminder that God is ever watchful over everything, big or small; nothing escapes His knowledge and sight.  The knowledge that God is watching helps one be conscious of Him.

“O Mankind!  Partake of what is lawful and good on earth, and follow not Satan’s footsteps: for, verily, he is your open foe and bids you only to do evil, to commit deeds of immorality, and to attribute unto God what you do not know.” (Quran 2:168-169)

God addresses all of humanity, the faithful and the faithless, to think about something we take for granted: food.  God produces everything on earth: seeds, fruits, vegetables, and meats for human consumption, but forbids us relatively few things that are unwholesome.  Some of the foods God has forbidden are the meat of dead animals, blood, and pork.  Every food is lawful in God’s law except what He has forbidden, that has been stolen, or taken by breaking God’s law.  The best foods for us are organic, natural, and wholesome – foods produced by God, but when people start altering the food chain, they produce new, unknown diseases like the mad cow disease.  We need to be grateful for what God provides us.

This verse also indicates that eating enough to live is a duty imposed on human beings by God.  Going to extremes in starving oneself to look beautiful, for example, is not permitted.

God also commands humanity not to follow the footsteps of Satan, meaning what Satan commands.  First, Satan is real.  Second, Islam tells us everything important for us to know about Satan, including how to protect ourselves.  What does Satan command?  Disbelief, rejecting faith in God, oppression, injustice, sins, and eating what God has forbidden.  God reminds us that Satan is an enemy, so human beings should be on guard against him.  God, in His mercy, did not stop at warning us from following Satan’s footsteps, but also warned against what Satan commands:

(a)   Satan commands evil.  Evil includes all types of sins.

(b)  Satan commands adultery, fornication, drinking alcohol, getting drunk, and killing.

(c)   The greatest command of Satan is to make us say of God what we don’t know.  Satan’s greatest way of misguiding people is to say God has a son, an equal, to liken God to an old man sitting in heaven, to think God will punish everyone or forgive everyone without any knowledge from God Himself, or to say God permits or forbids something without any basis in knowledge from what God has revealed.  As for God, He commands justice and forbids immorality and wrongdoing.  Everyone should assess what they believe in order to ensure what they are following is God's guidance rather than the promptings of Satan.