Does Allah Eat?
- philhoraia
- Dec 10, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 9, 2024
Muslims will say that Allah doesn't eat and will cite this verse:
S 6:14 Say: Is it other than Allah that I should take as a protector, the splitter of the skies and the Earth, and he feeds and is not fed? Say: I have been commanded to be the first of those who have surrendered and you are not to be of the mushrikun.
Whom am I fed by? No-one; I feed myself.
S 13:4 And on the Earth are bordering divisions and jannat of grapes and plantations and date palms, trees growing from a single root and not growing from a single root, watered with one water. And we prefer some of them to others in food. In that there are signs for people who comprehend.
We prefer some food to other food?
Allah's boss called his slave a shakhs, which is a physical being. Physical beings tend to eat.
From an article:
If it is said, “He is a corporeal person (shakhs207) or form (sūra),” it [should be] said: “The report from different routes on the night of the mi‘rāj mentioned, “I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form”… And the application of that is not to be refused. Just as “soul” (nafs) not like souls and essence (dhāt) not like essences were not denied Him. Likewise form unlike forms, for the Shari‘a [uses it in this manner].208 (Abū Ya‘alā, Kitāb al-Mu‘amad fī usūl al-dīn, ed. W. Z. Haddad [Beirut, 1974], 58. Cited in Dr. Wesley Williams, “A Body Unlike Bodies: Transcendent Anthropomorphism in Ancient Semitic Tradition and Early Islam”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 129.1 (2009), p. 43; bold emphasis ours)
207 This designation is based on a hadith from the Prophet on the authority of the Companion al-Mughira b. Shu‘ba: “No person (shakhs) is more jealous than Allah; no shakhs is more pleased to grant pardon than He; no shakhs loves praiseworthy conduct more than He.” al-Bukhari, Sahih (tawhid), 20:512; Muslim, Sahih (li‘an), 17; Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 4:248; al-Nisa’I, al-Sunan (nikah), 37,3. 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),” Ibn Manzur, Lisan al-‘arab (7:45. 4-11). See also Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 2:1517. (Bold emphasis ours) Allah As The Most Exalted Shakhs Of Them All!
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