God in Islam
In Islam, God is the absolute one, the all-powerful and all-knowing ruler of the universe, and the creator of everything in existence. Islam emphasizes that God is strictly singular ; unique ; inherently One ; and also all-merciful and omnipotent. According to Islam, God is neither a material nor a spiritual being. According to Islamic teachings, beyond the Throne and according to the Quran, "No vision can grasp him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things."
In Islam there is only one God and there are 99 names of that one God, each of which evokes a distinct attribute of God. All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive God. Among the 99 names of God, the most familiar and frequent are "the All Merciful" and "the Especially Merciful". Creation and ordering of the universe is seen as an act of prime mercy for which all creatures praise God's attributes and bear witness to God's unity.
Etymology
Allah is the Arabic word referring to God in Abrahamic religions.In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh, which means "the god", and is related to El and Elah, the Hebrew and Aramaic words for God. It is distinguished from ilāh, the Arabic word meaning deity, which could refer to any of the gods worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia or to any other deity.
Other names
God is described and referred to in the Quran and hadith by 99 names that reflect his attributes. The Quran refers to the attributes of God as "most beautiful names". According to Gerhard Böwering,Some Muslims may use different names as much as Allah, for instance "God" in English. Whether or not Allah can be considered as the personal name of God became disputed in contemporary scholarship.
Phrases and expressions
There are numerous conventional phrases and expressions invoking God.Attributes
Oneness
Islam's most fundamental concept is a strict monotheism called tawhid, affirming that God is one and incomparable. The basic creed of Islam, the Shahada, involves لا إله إلا الله , or, "I testify there is no god other than God."Muslims reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism. Jesus is instead believed to be a prophet.
According to Vincent J. Cornell, the Quran also provides a monist image of God by describing the reality as a unified whole, with God being a single concept that would describe or ascribe all existing things: "He is the First and the Last, the Evident and the Immanent: and He has full knowledge of all things."
Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession. The deification or worship of anyone or anything other than God is the greatest sin in Islam. The entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of Tawhid.
Creator
God is the creator of the universe and all the creatures in it.Mercy
The most commonly used names in the primary sources are Al-Rahman, meaning "Most Compassionate" and Al-Rahim, meaning "Most Merciful". The former compasses the whole creation, therefore applying to God's mercy in that it gives every necessary condition to make life possible. The latter applies to God's mercy in that it gives favor for good deeds. Thus Al-Rahman includes both the believers and the unbelievers, but Al-Rahim only the believers. God is said to love forgiving, with a hadith stating God would replace a sinless people with one who sinned but still asked repentance. Also, the words Rahman and Rahim comes from the root ر ح م ; which means uterus, thus it is a comparison between God's mercy to the mercy of a mother with her child.His mercy takes many forms as he says in the Quran "and My Mercy embraces all things." This is shown in Sahih Muslim narrated from Abu Hurairah, who said the Prophet said:
God's mercy, according to Islamic theology, is what gets a person into paradise. According to a hadith in Sahih Al Bukhari "No one’s deeds will ever admit him to Paradise." They said, "Not even you, O Messenger of Allah?" He said, "No, not even me unless Allah showers me with His Mercy. So try to be near to perfection. And no one should wish for death; he is either doing good so he will do more of that, or he is doing wrong so he may repent."
Omniscience
God is fully aware of everything that can be known. This includes private thoughts and feelings. The Quran asserts that one can not hide anything from God:Relationship with creation
Muslims believe that God is the only true reality and sole source of all creation. Everything including its creatures are just a derivative reality created out of love and mercy by God's command, "..."Be," and it is." and that the purpose of existence is to worship or to know God. It is believed that God created everything for a divine purpose; the universe governed by fixed laws that ensure the harmonious working of all things. Everything within the universe, including inanimated objects, praises God, and is in this sense understood as a muslim. An exception are humans, who are endowed with free-will and must live voluntarily in accordance with these laws to live to find peace and reproduce God's benevolence in their own society to live in accordance with the nature of all things, known as surrender to God in the Islamic sense.As in the other Abrahamic religions, God is believed to communicate with his creation via revelations given to prophets to remind people of God. The Quran in particular is believed by Muslims to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to Muhammad. Hadith are the records of Muhammad's sayings and example, and Hadith Qudsi is a sub-category of hadith, which Muslims regard as the words of God repeated by Muhammad. According to Ali ibn Mohammed al-Jurjani, the Hadith Qudsi differ from the Quran in that the former are "expressed in Muhammad's words", whereas the latter are the "direct words of God". There are no intermediaries, such as clergy, to contact God who states in the Quran, "It was We Who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than jugular vein." People may enter a particular relationship with God any time and in different circumstances through the divine names or attributes. Thus God is also a personal God who responds whenever a person in need or distress calls Him. Muhammad al-Bukhari, in his Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī, narrates a ḥadīth qudsī that God says, "I am as My servant thinks I am." When Sufis claim union with God, it is not that they become one in essence, rather the will of the Sufi is fully congruent to God.
The Quran rejects dualism of Persian Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, which regarded good and evil, light and darkness as two distinct and independed powers. The Quran affirms both powers to be equally God's creation. Satan is not an independent power, but subordinated to God.
Concepts in Islamic theology
Isma'ilism - Shia
According to Isma'ilism, God is absolutely transcendent and unknowable; beyond matter, energy, space, time, change, imaginings, intellect, positive as well as negative qualities. All attributes of God named in rituals, scriptures or prayers refers not to qualities God possesses, but to qualities emanated from God, thus these are the attributes God gave as the source of all qualities, but God does not consist on one of these qualities. One philosophical definition of the world Allah is " The Being Who concentrates in Himself all the attributes of perfection " or " the Person Who is the Essential Being, and Who encompasses all the attributes of perfection". Since God is beyond all wordings, Isma'ilism also denies the concept of God as the first cause.Muʿtazila
The Muʿtazilites reject the anthropomorphic attributes of God because an eternal being "must be unique". Accordingly, attributes would make God comparable. The descriptions of God in the Quran are considered to be allegories. Nevertheless, the Muʿtazilites thought God contains oneness and justice. Other characteristics like knowledge are not attributed to God; rather they describe his essence. Otherwise eternal attributes of God would give rise to multiplicity entities existing eternal besides God.Maturidi and Ash'ari
and Maturidi are in agreement that God's attributes are eternal but neither hold to be metaphorically nor literally. References to anthropomorphic attributes can probably not be understood correctly by humans. Although God's existence is considered to be possibly known by reason, human mind can not fully understand God's attributes. For example, when humans in paradise see God, they do not see God in the way humans are able to see on Earth. Ashʿari asserts, since God is the creator of everything that exists and creation does not affect nor alter God, the Throne of God is not a dwelling place for God. Accordingly, expressions such as God is above his Throne means, God exist unattached of any placeSufism
Since God in Islam is transcendental and sovereign but also immanent and omnipresent, the Sufi view holds that in reality, only God exists. Thus everything in creation is reflecting an attribute of God's names. Yet these forms are not God themselves. The Sufi Saint Ibn Arabi stated: There is nothing but God. This statement was mistakenly equalized to Pantheism by critics; however, Ibn Arabi always made a clear distinction between the creation and the creator. Since God is the Absolute Reality,the created worlds and their inhabitants are merely illusions. They just exist because of God's command Kun, but everything that would be, was already known by God.