surely We have created you of a male and a female...

surely We have created you of a male and a female, and made you nations and tribes that you may recognize each other; surely the most honorable of you with Allah is the one among you who guards himself most (against evil) (49:13). Apparently, it shows that there is no distinction among individuals inasmuch as each has been born of a couple of the same species - from a male and a female. But this interpretation is patently false.

The said exegete has missed the clear difference between this verse of the Chapter of the "The Women" and that of the Chapter 49 (The Chambers). The latter intends to show that all human beings are one inasmuch as all are human beings, and there is no difference among them in this respect because everyone is born of a human father and a human mother; therefore no one should think himself as superior to the others, as there is no distinction or superiority except through piety.

On the other hand, the verse under discussion intends to show their unity in their reality, that all human beings, in spite of their great number and their division between males and females, are the branches of the same root; and although they are now numerous, all of them have sprung from the same source, as the apparent meaning of the phrase, "and spread from these two, many men and women", shows.

This idea is lost if we take the words, "a single being", and "its mate", to mean human males and females in general who are the means of producing children. Moreover, this interpretation is not in keeping with the Chapter's main aim, as explained above.

The phrase, "and created its mate of the same (kind)": ar-Raghib has said: "Each member of a pair of opposite sexes in living creatures is called az-zawj (pair, couple, mate); so is a pair in animate and inanimate things, e.g., a pair of socks or shoes; also it is used for anything taken together with another, whether they are similar or opposite to each other use of az-zawjah (wife) (to denote female or the above-mentioned pairs) is bad language." The clause, "and created its mate of the same", apparently is meant to show that its mate was of the same species - similar in humanity to the (original) "single soul"; and that all these human beings are the offspring of the original couple - the two similar human beings.

The preposition min (from, of) therefore signifies origin.