Wednesday 28 December 2011

Allah - An advanced look at God in Islam - 2 - What is Allah?

God is the creator of everything in this universe. Allah is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent (move your mouse over the words to see the meaning). Allah is the supreme God and is without limits and is capable of everything possible - He knows all and sees all and everything in this universe is His creation and He has power over all things. Allah was there before anything was - Allah is the first and Allah will also be the last, when there exists nothing except Him - Allah is the Alpha and the Omega. Allah is one and cannot be more than one. Nothing is equal-to or like Him. Allah cares about His creation and is just (fair); and it is Allah who sends His messengers and His communications to the masses to teach them of the supreme reality - Allah.

When you read books about objects or people, they are often attributed a gender - either male or female. Normally you wouldn't attribute a gender to inanimate objects like the sun or the moon but in language these objects have to be given a gender. e.g. 'The sun shone her warm, orange rays on the pier, glowing bright'. In Islam, the gender of Allah is male by language but He is genderless - neither male nor female - God is not a man. It is befitting that Allah be described using the masculine language constructs (like He, Him, His, Himself)
because the reality is that if God was described as a woman people would try to make sexual fantasies and stories and would attribute weakness to Him, but God is the Greatest, Almighty.

When the Koran is read, Allah often refers to himself in plural as 'We' which gives people the impression that He is more than one. "The use of the first person plural noun (We) is the sign of greatness and magnificence of the person (entity) who is speaking and this is most appropriate and befitting to Allah. Arabs say that the reason for the use of the first person plural noun is considered as proof of greatness that great people are generally not alone. The servants, attendants and other people are always around him to fulfil their needs. That's is why they always used the pronoun We and the use of this word is a metaphor for greatness." (Logic for Islamic Rules, p163, by Ayatullah Makarim Shirazi & Ayatullah Ja'far Subhani).

Allah cannot be understood fully using our limited mental capacity. We cannot fully understand or comprehend the idea that Allah sees and hears all, or that something can be everlasting, or that God is not limited by time, space or dimension. We cannot see Allah or sense Him, so we cannot depict Him in an image or a measurement. God does not take-up space and does not have a mass. God is not a form of Energy or be the by-product of energy because all energy and matter is His creation and all energy and matter is measurable.

The only type of relationship we can have with Allah is through the heart - a relationship of love, faith, dependence and understanding.Allah is not a physical thing and cannot be seen, touched or heard but due to
descriptions in the Koran and in Hadiths it has been understood by some Muslims that we will see God, and this is discussed in the article titled 'The voice and body of Allah (God)?'. We know Allah and His nature by what He tells us through His Prophets and in His holy books, especially the Koran, but the verses in this book and in the hadith books have been interpreted in different ways.

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