Islamic concept of God

God in Islam ( ar, ٱللَّٰه, Allāh, contraction of '' al- ’Ilāh'', lit. "the God") is seen as the eternal creator and sustainer of the universe,
who will eventually resurrect all humans. In Islam, God is conceived as a perfect, singular, immortal, omnipotent, and omniscient god, completely infinite in all of his attributes. Islam further emphasizes that God is most-merciful."Allah." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica

According to Islamic theology, God has no physical body or gender, although he is always referred to with masculine grammatical articles, and there is nothing else like him in any way whatsoever. Therefore, Islam rejects the doctrine of the incarnation and the notion of a personal god as anthropomorphic, because it is seen as demeaning to the transcendence of God. The Quran prescribes the fundamental transcendental criterion in the following verse: "e isthe Creator of the heavens and the earth. He has made for you from yourselves, mates, and among the cattle, mates; He multiplies you thereby. There is nothing whatever like unto Him, and He is the One that hears and sees ll things (). Therefore, Islam strictly and categorically rejects all forms of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism of the concept of God.

The Islamic concept of God emphasizes that he is absolutely pure and free from association with other beings, which means attributing the powers and qualities of God to his creation, and vice versa. In Islam, God is never portrayed in any image. The Quran specifically forbade ascribing partners to share his singular sovereignty, as he is considered to be the absolute one without a second, indivisible, and incomparable being, who is similar to nothing, and nothing is comparable to him. Thus, God is absolutely transcendent, unique and utterly other than anything in or of the world as to be beyond all forms of human thought and expression. The briefest and the most comprehensive description of God in Islam is found in Surat al-Ikhlas.

According to mainstream Muslim theologians, God is described as ' (Eternal, timeless, and infinite, which literally means: "ancient"), having no first, without beginning or end; absolute, not limited by time or place or circumstance, nor is subject to any decree so as to be determined by any precise limits or set times, but is the First and the Last. He is not a formed body, nor a substance circumscribed with limits or determined by measure; neither does he resemble bodies as they are capable of being measured or divided. Neither do substances exist in him; neither is he an accident, nor do accidents exist in him. Neither is he like to anything that exists, nor is anything like to him; nor is he determinate in quantity, nor comprehended by bounds, nor circumscribed by differences of situation, nor contained in the heavens, and transcends spatial and temporal bounds, and remains beyond the bounds of human comprehension and perceptions.

Etymology

''Allāh'' is the Arabic word referring to God in Abrahamic religions.
In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The Arabic word ''Allāh'' is thought to be derived by contraction from '' al- ʾilāh'', which means "the God", (i.e., the ''only'' God) and is related to '' El'' and '' Elah'', the Hebrew and Aramaic words for God. It is distinguished from ' ( ar, إِلَٰه), the Arabic word meaning ''deity'', which could refer to any of the gods worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia or to any other deity. Allah is God’s most unique Name, grandly referred to as ''Lafẓ al-Jalālah'' (The Word of Majesty). It occurs in the Qur’an 2,697 times in 85 of its 114 suras.

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. In earlier times, Jahm bin Safwan claimed that ''Allah'' is a name God created for himself and that names belong to the things God created.

Attributes

Oneness

Islam's most fundamental concept is a strict monotheism called ''tawhid'', affirming that God is one and Tanzih (''wāḥid''). The basic creed of Islam, the Shahada (recited under oath to enter the religion), involves ''()'', or "I testify there is no deity 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.

Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession.D. Gimaret, ''Tawhid'', Encyclopaedia of Islam The deification or worship of anyone or anything other than God (shirk) is the greatest sin in Islam. The entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of Tawhid.

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."

Uniqueness

Islam emphasises the absolute uniqueness and singularity of God in his essence, attributes, qualities, and acts. As stated in Surat al-Ikhlas: God is Ahad (the unique one of absolute oneness, who is indivisible in nature, and there can be no other like him); God is Ash-Shamad (the ultimate source of all existence, the uncaused cause who created all things out of nothing, who is eternal, absolute, immutable, perfect, complete, essential, independent, and self-sufficient; who needs nothing while all of creation is in absolute need of him; the one eternally and constantly required and sought, depended upon by all existence and to whom all matters will ultimately return); he begets not, nor is he begotten (He is Unborn and Uncreated, has no parents, wife or offspring); and comparable/equal to him, there is none.

God's absolute transcendence over his creation, as well as his unlimited individuality were asserted and emphasized with support from appropriate quotations from the Qur'an as follows:

The Qur'anic verse
19:65
, "Do you know of any that can be named with His Name?" emphasizes that as Allah is Unique, His name is shared by none other.

Such as that described in the previous three verses (). For the disbelievers in the Hereafter, there is an evil description, or in other words, the most evil attribute (i.e., the most vile), which is their ignorance and ingratitude, and their burying alive of newborn girls, despite the fact that they are needed for the purposes of marriage and not allowing women to even inherit property, and their ascribing female gender to angels and claiming that the angels are the daughters of God while so preferring sons for themselves (this is also mentioned in the verses ); whereas to God belong the highest attribute, namely, that there is no deity except him, immensely exalted beyond and above all comparison and likeness.

The Qur'anic verse
42:11
emphasizes that there is no similarity whatsoever between the creator and his creation in essence, in attributes or in actions, and therefore, God is beyond all human concepts of him. So he has no mates and nothing is like him, nor does he beget, nor is he begotten. Nothing – neither matter, nor space, nor time – can restrict or contain him. And this is why his Attributes – his hearing, seeing, knowledge, will, power, creating, and so on – are also beyond anything we can conceive.

The same sentiment is expressed in the Qur'anic verse
6:103
which states: "Vision perceives/comprehends Him not, and He perceives/comprehends (evaluates) all vision." In some interpretations, this verse also asserts that the senses and intellects cannot fully comprehend God. Likewise, the Qur'an also says:

The Hanafi jurist and theologian, al-Tahawi (d. 321/933), wrote in his treatise on theology, commonly known as ''al-'Aqida al-Tahawiyya'':

Al-Tahawi also stated that:

The six directions are: above, below, right, left, front and back. The above statement of al-Tahawi refutes the anthropomorphist's dogmas that imagine Allah has a physical body and human form, and being occupied in a place, direction or trajectory.

Creator

According to the teachings of Islam, God is the creator of the worlds and all the creatures therein. He has created everything in the worlds in accordance with a definite plan and for a particular purpose. There is no shortcoming or defect of any sort in any of his creations. The Qur'an confirms this in the following verses:

The Qur'an also says in verse
25:2
: "and He has created everything and designed it in a perfect measure (and ordained its destiny in a precise manner)." And in another verse
25:59
it is emphasized: "It is He who created the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them."

The Qur'an states that God is the '' Rabb al-'Alamin