you and your mother for objects of worship beside
Almighty Allah?’ He answered: ‘Praise be to You, O Allah!
How can I have asked that which is not mine to ask?’ ’’
(Sura 5:116).
- How does the Muslim view of Allah differ from
the Christian understanding of God?
The Koran’s picture of Allah is radically different from
the God of the Bible. In the Bible, God is at once both
transcendent and, to a certain extent, knowable. Muslims,
however, believe that Allah is so far above His creation
(including mankind) that He can never be known. Muslims
will never ‘‘see God as He is,’’ as St. John promises
Christians will (1 Jn 3:2).
Even in Paradise, the blessed will not be with Him: in
all of the Koran’s notorious talk of the joys of Heaven, the
presence of Allah is never mentioned. Allah will remain
radically transcendent, unapproachable, and unknowable.
Paradise is envisioned as offering only physical, sensory
pleasures.
Islam generally rejects anthropomorphic language (that is,
the use of human terms and experience to describe God and
His interactions with man) as inconsistent with Allah’s
transcendence. Although there are anthropomorphisms in
the Koran, these are unacceptable in Islamic theology:
‘‘Whatever of good ye give benefits your own souls, and ye
shall only do so seeking the ‘Face’ of Allah’’ (Sura 2:272;
the quotation marks around the word ‘‘Face’’ indicate the
Muslim translator’s discomfort with the anthropomorphism).