The Creator

The name Allah (God) in Islam is the personal name of God. The most concise definition of God in Islam is given in four verses of Surah Al-Ikhlaas in the Holy Qur’an:
{{Say, “He is Allah, [Who is] One,
Allah, the Eternal Refuge,
He neither begets nor is born,
Nor is there to Him any equivalent.”}}

(Holy Qur’an 112: 1-4)

To Muslims, this four-line definition of Almighty God serves as the touchstone of the study of God. Any candidate to divinity must be subjected to this ‘acid test’ and since the attributes of The Creator given in this chapter are unique, false gods and pretenders to divinity can be easily dismissed using these verses.

1. The first criterion is “Say, He is Allah, one and only“.Can there be more than one god? This verse tells us that The Creator is the only one who has total and absolute power, unique in His names and attributes.
2. The second criterion is, ‘Allah is absolute and eternal’.The word that is translated as “The Eternal, Absolute” from Arabic is something that can be attributed only to The Creator as all the other existent beings temporal or conditional? It also means that Allah is not dependant on any person or thing, but all persons and things are dependant on Him.
3. The third criterion is ‘He begets not, nor is He begotten’.This means God was not born, nor does He give birth and share his divinity with others. Nor does He have a family or relationship with another being.
4. The fourth test – which is the most stringent – is, “There is none like unto Him“.The moment you can imagine or compare ‘God’ to anything, then he (the candidate to divinity) is not God. It is not possible to conjure up a mental picture of the One True God because of the simple fact, as creation, we only know creation.

The Muslims prefer calling the Supreme Creator, ‘Allah’, instead of the English word ‘God’. The Arabic word, ‘Allah’, is pure and unique, unlike the English word ‘God’, which can be played around with. For example, If you add ‘s’ to the word God, it becomes ‘Gods’, that is the plural of God. Allah is one and singular, there is no plural of Allah. If you add the word ‘father’ to ‘God’ it becomes ‘God-father’. God-father means someone who is a guardian. There is no word like ‘Allah-father’. If you add the word ‘mother’ to ‘God’, it becomes ‘God-mother’. There is nothing like ‘Allah-mother’ in Islam. Allah is a unique word, which does not conjure up any mental picture nor can it be played around with. Therefore, the Muslims prefer using the Arabic word ‘Allah’ for the Almighty.

Yasser Gabr & Houda Karkour, Islamic Propagation Office in Rabwah, Riyadh