Allah (God)
Is God dead?
"Creation of God, the pattern on which He has made mankind; there is no change in the work of God. That is the standard religion, but most among mankind do not understand."
Holy Qur'an (30:30)
They claim that ‘God’ is dead. They should have said that ‘gods’ are dead. The confusion arises when false ‘gods’ are identified as GOD.
An atheist astronaut once gleefully joked that he went high above in the space but could not see the god. So, here is the confusion: the poor soul did not know that God is not a ‘body’ to be seen or found in a ‘place’. His joke just confirmed the belief of those who have emphasized from the very beginning that God could not have been seen.
Belief in a God is as much natural as any natural instinct can be. This eternal truth has been explained in the verse of the Holy Qur'an mentioned above.
An atheist asked Imam Jafar al Sadiq (a.s.) how could he convince him about the existence of God. Coming to know that the man had gone several times on sea voyages, the Imam asked him, "Have you ever been caught in a fierce storm in the middle of nowhere, your rudder gone, your sails torn away, trying desperately to keep your boat afloat." The answer was ‘Yes’. Then the Imam asked, "And sometimes, perhaps, even that leaking boat went down leaving you exhausted and helpless on the mercy of raging waves?" The answer was again ‘Yes’. Then the Imam asked: "Was not there, in all that black despair, a faint glimmer of hope in your heart that some unnamed and unknown power could still save you." When he agreed, Imam said: "That power is God."
That atheist was intelligent. He knew the truth when he saw it. Today's atheist give that place to ‘Nature’. The only snag is that poor ‘Nature’ is senseless and lifeless. How a senseless and lifeless idea (because nature is no more than an abstract idea) could create an universe of such magnitude with such a systematic perfection, uniting millions and millions of galaxies in a well-knit system? How could nature give life and sense to creatures when itself has none?
Unity of God
"Say: He is Allah, the One and Only; Allah, the External, Absolute; He be getteth not, nor is He begotten, and there is none like unto Him." Holy Qur'an (112)
This short surah of the Holy Qur'an is the most significant of all writings dealing with the oneness of God. As Allamah Abd’llah Yusuf ‘Ali has commented in his tradition of the Holy Book, the nature of God has been indicated here in a few words, such as we can understand. He writes: Here we are specially taught to avoid the pitfalls into which man and nations have fallen at various times in trying to understand God.
"The first thing we have to note is that His nature is so sublime, so far beyond our limited conceptions, that the best way in which we can realize Him is to feel that He is a personality. ‘He’, and not a mere abstract conception of philosophy. Secondly, He is the One and Only God, the only one to Whom worship is due, all other things or beings that we can think of are His creatures and in no way comparable to Him. Thirdly, He is Eternal, without beginning or end; Absolute, not limited by time or place or circumstances, the reality before which falls other things or places are mere shadows or reflections.
Fourthly, we must not think of Him as having a son or a father, for that would be to import qualities into our conception of Him. Fifthly, He is not like any other person or thing that we know or can imagine; His qualities and nature are unique."
In fact this short surah is a declaration of war against all ideas of paganism and anthropomorphism. Men from the beginning have had a tendency to imagine God in their own image. Some thought of Him as having body like animals or human-beings. Others thought that He was incarnated in the forces of nature like rain, lightening, mountain and river. Still others thought that He was a father and had a child or children. But this surah warns us against this tendency to conceive God after our own pattern.
Can ‘Nature’ replace God?
‘Nature designed this’; ‘Nature adapted that.’ These are the phrases frequently seen nowadays in the text-books and articles.
What is this ‘Nature’, anyway? It is nothing but an abstract idea formed in the human brain after careful study of the behavior of the things. It may be found (if it is ‘found’ at all) within the things; it has no independent existence. And, in any case, there is no record of any conference of the ‘natures’ of various things, held to decide how to co-ordinate their functions. Flowers never conferred with the bees to seek the bees’ co-operation in their pollination, offering them, in exchange, their nectar. But we know that bees could not live a single day without flowers; and thousands of flowers would long have been extinct but for the bees.
More puzzling are those phenomena which can not be explained by ‘nature’s planning.’ When Moses fled from Pharaoh, the Red Sea parted, allowing him and his followers to cross to the promised land. Scientists nowadays try to explain it by natural causes; an earthquake must have made the water shift at that time. All right. But why did that supposed earthquake occur at a time when Moses and his followers desperately wanted to cross the Sea, and why it remained parted till Pharaoh entered into it? And why the movement of water was reversed at that very moment when the enemy of God with his people was in the midst of the Sea? Was it all a coincidence?
And was it a coincidence which prompted a spider to weave its cobweb at the mouth of the cave in which the Holy Prophet Mohammad (s.a.w.) was hiding from the pagans of Mecca who wanted to murder him? And more than that, was it also a coincidence which brought a pair of pigeons to build their nest at the mouth of that very cave at thick of night and lay the eggs before mornings? It was that cobweb and nest with eggs which led the blood-thirsty enemies to believe that Prophet Mohammad (s.a.w) could not be in that cave, otherwise the cobweb would have been destroyed and the nest and the eggs broken!
Can that speed and timing of the pigeons and spider be explained by ‘natural causes’?
Love and Fear of Allah
"All praise is only for God, the Lord of the Universe, the Beneficent, the Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment."
Holy Qur'an (1:2-4)
These are the very first verses of the Qur'an. They present in clear terms the concept of God in Islam: God is Merciful and Just. According to Islam, the Divine Justice is not separate from His Mercy.
The Divine Justice cannot be compared with the justice meted out by the judges in the courts. These judges are only the executors of the law, given to them by others, with little or no authority to condone the culprits. They are bound by the law. They are helpless against the strict implications of law when it demands punishment. They cannot dispense mercy even if the culprit is repenting, even if the circumstances demand mercy. Petitions for mercy are addressed to the head of state, who is the supreme promulgator of law.
But God is not a mere judge. He is the law-giver and the supreme Authority. Hence an offender can be sure of His merciful pardon is his repentance be genuine. Islam puts the Mercy of God before His Justice. The very first verse of the Quran is "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful". Islam believes that "His Mercy is before His wrath."
Thus the Muslim have a finely balanced faith, which is inclined neither to this side nor to that. It does not teach us that God is a high-handed avenger who does not forgive a single sin or mistake; but it does not present God in the shape of a feeble person who will not punish even the tyrannies and brutalities of head-hunters. The essence of Islamic faith is in the above mentioned verses, where the Mercy of God has been mentioned side by side with His Justice.
Here we find a real divine religion which encourages man to go nearer to Allah, attracted by His Mercy and Grace; and warns him against trespassing the limits of moral and religious laws, by reminding him that God is Just, the Master of the Day of Judgment.
Thus, the two most important instincts of man, i.e., love and fear, are simultaneously utilized to make a perfect being, a whole being, not wanting in any respect.
