Allah the Physical Being
- philhoraia
- Nov 3, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 13, 2024
A number of passages indicate that Allah is a physical being.
S 6:101 The originator of the skies and the Earth. How can he have a child when he has not had a girlfriend? And he created everything. And he is a knower of everything.
S 21:17 Had we wanted to take a ‘fun’ {lahu} we would have taken it from us if we were doers.
There are a number of passages in which the Quran speaks of Allah’s eyes and hands in the plural. In Arabic the plural is used of three or more.
S 11:37 And make the ship under our eyes and our inspiration and do not address me concerning those who have wronged. They are drowned.
S 52:48 And be patient for your lord’s judgment and you are in our eyes. And glorify with your lord’s praise when you rise.
S 54:14 Running in our eyes, a recompense for him who was disbelieved in.
S 36:71 Have they not seen that we have created for them of what our hands have done, cattle, then they are owners of them?
S 51:47 And the sky, we built it with strength {literally, with hands} and we are able.
The Jalalayn’s tafsir for S 21:17 says:
Had We desired to find some diversion that which provides diversion in the way of a partner or a child We would have found it with Ourselves from among the beautiful-eyed houris or angels were We to do so. But We did not do so thus We never desired it. Altafsir.com - The Tafsirs - التفاسير
Regarding lahu (Al-Tabari):
اللهو: الـمرأة.
Al-lahu: woman.
زوجة
Wife.
واللهو بلغة أهل الـيـمن: الـمرأة
And al-lahu in the language of the people of Yemen: woman.
اللهو فـي بعض لغة أهل الـيـمن: الـمرأة.
Al-lahu in some of the language of the people of Yemen: woman.
In non-Quranic ahadith we read that Allah has two right hands.
...Then Allah said to him – while His Two Hands were closed – ‘Choose which of them you wish.’ He said: ‘I chose the right My Lord and both of the Hands of my Lord are right, blessed.’... https://sunnah.com/urn/680790
Allah is called a shakhs, a physical being.
Quoting from one of Sam Shamoun’s articles we read:
As Dr. Wesley Williams, a scholar of Islamic studies, states,
Al-Bukhari and Muslim report a hadith from the Prophet on the authority of the Companion of Al-Mughira b. Shu‘ba: “No shakhs is more jealous than Allah; no shakhs is more pleased to grant pardon than He; no shakhs loves praiseworthy conduct more than He.”68 Allah is thus a shakhs. The term shakhs is usually translated as ‘corporeal person.’ It connotes “the bodily or corporeal form or figure or substance (suwad) of a man,” or “something possessing height (irtifa‘) and visibility (zuhur),”69 Ibn Manzur informs us in his Lisan al-‘Arab (7, 45, 4-11). Ibn al-Jawzi, in his Kitab Akhbar al-Sifat 53-54, admits as well that the term shakhs implies existence of a body (jism) composed of parts, for one terms something a shakhs because it possesses corporeality (shukhus) and height (irtifa).” God, we are thus informed, is a person with a physical body.
As a shakhs the God of the Sunna has a visible form (sura), and it is anthropomorphic. According to a sahih (sound) report Adam’s form is a likeness of this divine form.
68 Bukhari, Sahih, tawhid, 20:512; Muslim, Sahih, li‘an, 17; Ibn Hanbal, Musnad IV:248; Nisa’i, al-Sunan, nikah, 37, 3.
69 See also Lane, Arabic Lexicon, 2:1517. (Williams, God in Islamic Tradition: Transcendent Anthropomorphism, 4.1 The Form of God; bold emphasis ours)
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