I have often heard Muslims refer to Allah as God when addressing Westerners and in particular Christians. It has at times made me wonder if this practice muddles the understanding between Christians and Muslims since the God of the Bible and Allah are very different. By shedding light on some key differences between the descriptions of the two deities the answer is a definite yes.
Before I address the evidence for my position it is worth noting a few truths:
- it is impossible to reasonably argue that the law of non-contradiction is false without assuming it to be true in the first place
- Christianity and Islam make mutually exclusive truth claims so both worldviews cannot both be true without violating the law of non-contradiction
These truths imply the following: Christianity and Islam make mutually exclusive truth claims so both worldviews cannot both be true.
So back to the discussion about Allah and God. It is my contention that Allah and God have mutually exclusive characteristics and therefore Allah and God can not be the same entity.
According to Christian doctrine God’s nature defines, among other things, the concepts of love, perfection, truth, reason, and good. He can not lie or deceive because it goes against His nature. He can not be unreasonable because doing so would be against His nature. The same can not be said of Allah. Allah does not have a nature according to which he must act; he is Absolute will. As we shall see this leads to a series of metaphysical and moral problems.
Here are some descriptions of the Muslim god “Allah” from the book Answering Islam (pp 140-149) by Norman L. Geisler and Abdul Saleeb (I have replaced all references to “God” with “Allah”):
At the very basis of the classical Islamic view of Allah is a radical form of voluntarism and nominalism. For traditional Islam, properly speaking Allah does not have an essence, at least not a knowable one. Rather, he is Will. True enough, Allah is said to be just and loving, but he is not essentially just or loving. And he is merciful only because “He hath inscribed For Himself [the rule of] Mercy” (6:12). But it is important to remember that since Allah is Absolute Will, had he chosen to be otherwise he would not be merciful. There is no nature or essence in Allah according to which he must act.
There are two basic problems with this radical form of nominalism: a metaphysical one and a moral one.
Metaphysical problem:
The orthodox Islamic view of Allah claims, as we have seen, that Allah is an absolutely necessary being. He is self-existent, and he cannot not exist. But if Allah is by nature a necessary kind of being, then it is of his nature to exist. In short, he must have a nature or else he could not be by nature a necessary kind of being. In this same regard, orthodox Islam believes that there are other essential attributes of Allah, such as self-existence’ uncreatedness, and eternality. But if these are all essential characteristics of Allah, then Allah must have an essence, otherwise they would not be essential attributes. For this is precisely how essence is defined, namely, as the essential attributes or characteristics of a being.
Furthermore, there is a serious moral problem with Islamic voluntarism. For if Allah is Will, without any real essence, then he does not do things because they are right; rather, they are right because he does them.
Moral problem:
In short, Allah is arbitrary about what is right and wrong. He does not have to do good. For example, Allah does not have to be merciful; he could be mean if he wanted to be. He does not have to be loving to all; he could hate, if he chose to do so. Indeed, in the very next verse after it says “Allah will love you. . . . Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful” (3:31), we read that “Allah loveth not those Who reject Faith” (v. 32). Further, Allah said in 25:51, “Had it been Our Will, We could have sent A warner to every centre Of Population.” But he did not, which smacks of arbitrariness. In other words, love and mercy are not of the essence of Allah. Allah could choose not to be loving. This is why Muslim scholars have such difficulty with the question of Allah’s predestination
The problem of extreme determinism:
Since in Islam the relationship between Allah and human beings is basically that of Master and slave, Allah is the sovereign monarch and man must submit to him as an obedient slave. This overpowering picture of Allah in the Qur’an has created its own tension in Muslim theology regarding Allah’s absolute sovereignty and man’s free will. Despite protests to the contrary, orthodox Islam teaches the absolute predestination of both good and evil, that all our thoughts, words, and deeds, whether good or evil, were foreseen, foreordained, determined and decreed from all eternity, and that everything that happens takes place according to what has been written for it. This is because Allah “is the Irresistible” (6:18). Commenting on these kinds of Qur’ anic statements, Kenneth Cragg points out that “Allah” is the Qadar, or “determination,” of all things, and his taqdir, or his “subjection” of everything, covers all humankind and all history.
“Nature, whether animate or inanimate, is subject to His command and all that comes into existence-a summer flower or a murderer’s deed, a newborn child or a sinner’s disbelief-is from Him and of Him.” In fact, if “Allah so willed, there need have been no creation, there need have been no idolatry, there need have been no Hell, there need have been no escape from Hell. ” Even though Muslim scholar Fazlur Rahman admits to playing down extreme determinism, nonetheless he still admits that “there is no doubt that the Qur’an does make frequent statements to the effect that Allah leads aright whom He will and leads astray whom He will, or that Allah has ‘sealed up’ some people’s hearts to truth, etc.” There are four basic problems with this extreme form of predetermination. They are logical, moral, theological, and metaphysical. One involves a contradiction; one eliminates human responsibility; one makes Allah the author of evil; and one gives rise to pantheism.
The logical problem with Islamic determinism:
Even Muslim commentators are forced to acknowledge that Allah performs contradictory actions. One of the greatest Islamicists, Goldziher, summarizes the situation in this way: “There is probably no other point of doctrine on which equally contradictory teachings can be derived from the Qur’an as on this one.” Another scholar notes that “the Quranic doctrine of Predestination is very explicit though not very logical.” For example, Allah is “the One Who leads astray,” as well as “the One Who guides.” He is “the One Who brings damage,” as also does Satan. He is described also by terms like “the Bringer-down,” “the Compeller” or “Tyrant,” “the Haughty”-all of which, when used of men, have an evil sense.
Many Muslim scholars attempt to reconcile this by pointing out that these contradictions are not in Allah’s nature (which they believe he does not really have), but in the realm of his will. They are not in his essence but in his actions. However, this is an inadequate explanation for two reasons. For one thing, as we have seen, Allah does have a knowable nature or essence. Hence, Muslim scholars cannot avoid the contradiction that Allah has logically opposed characteristics by placing them outside his essence within the mystery of his will. Further, actions flow from nature and represent it, so there must be something in the nature that corresponds to the action. Salt water does not flow from a fresh stream.
Others attempt to downplay the harsh extremes of Islamic determinism by creating a distinction, not found in the Qur’an, between what Allah does and what he allows his creatures to do by their free choice. This would solve the problem but, as we shall see, only at the expense of rejecting the clear statements of the Qur’an as well as Islamic tradition and creeds
The moral problem with Islamic determinism:
While many Muslim scholars wish to preserve human responsibility, they can only succeed in doing so by modifying what the Qur’ an actually says. Consider the very words of the Qur’an: “Say: ‘Nothing will happen to us Except what Allah has decreed For us’” (9:51); “Whom Allah doth guide,-He is on the right path: Whom He rejects from His guidance,Such are the persons who perish. Many are the Jinns and men We have made for Hell” (7:178-79); “The Word is proved true Against the greater part of them: For they do not believe. We have put yokes Round their necks Right up to their chins, So that their heads are Forced up (and they cannot see). And We have put A bar in front of them And a bar behind them, And further, We have Covered them up; so that They cannot see.
The same is it to them Whether thou admonish them Or thou do not admonish Them: they will not believe” (36:7-10).
What is more, the Qur’an frankly admits that Allah could have saved all, but did not desire to do so! “If We had so willed, We could certainly have brought Every soul its true guidance: But the Word from Me Will come true, ‘I will Fill Hell with jinn And men all together’” (32: 13). It is extremely difficult to understand how, holding such a view, one can consistently maintain any kind of human responsibility.
The theological problem with Islamic determinism:
There is another problem with this severe view of Allah’s sovereign determination of all events: it makes Allah the author of evil. The hadith portrays Allah in a similar way. The following tradition is reported by Al-Bukhari:
Allah’s Apostle, the truthful and truly-inspired, said, “Each one of you collected in the womb of his mother for forty days. . . and then Allah sends an angel and orders him to write four things, i.e., his provision, his age, and whether he will be of the wretched or the blessed (in the Hereafter). Then the soul is breathed into him. And by Allah, a person among you (or a man) may do deeds of the people of the Fire till there is only a cubit or an armbreadth distance between him and the Fire, but then that writing (which Allah has ordered the angel to write) preceeds, and he does the deeds of the people of Paradise and enters it; and a man may do the deeds of the people of Paradise till there is only a cubit or two between him and Paradise, and then that writing preceeds and he does the deeds of the people of the Fire and enters it.”
In another hadith we read,
The Prophet said, “Adam and Moses argued with each other. Moses said to Adam, ‘O Adam! You are our father who disappointed us and turned us out of Paradise.’ Then Adam said to him, ‘O Moses! Allah favoured you with His talk (talked to you directly) and He wrote (the Torah) for you with His own Hand. Do you blame me for action which Allah had written in my fate forty years before my creation?’ So Adam confuted Moses, Adam confuted Moses,” the Prophet added, repeating the statement three times.
Indeed, one of the most respected Muslim theologians of all time, AlGhazali, frankly acknowledges that “He [Allah] willeth also the unbelief of the unbeliever and the irreligion of the wicked and, without that will, there would neither be unbelief nor irreligion. All we do we do by His will: what He willeth not does not come to pass.” And if one should ask why Allah does not will that men should believe, Al-Ghazali responds, ”’We have no right to enquire about what Allah wills or does. He is perfectly free to will and to do what He pleases.’ In creating unbelievers, in willing that they should remain in that state; . . . in willing, in short, all that is evil, Allah has wise ends in view which it is not necessary that we should know. “
The metaphysical problem with Islamic determinism:
This extreme form of determinism led some Muslim scholars to the logical conclusion that there is really only one agent in the universe – Allah. One Muslim theologian wrote, “Not only can He (Allah) do anything, He actually is the only One Who does anything. When a man writes, it is Allah who has created in his mind the will to write. Allah at the same time gives power to write, then brings about the motion of the hand and the pen and the appearance upon paper. All other things are passive, Allah alone is active. ” This kind of determinism is at the heart of much of medieval thought and is one of the major reasons the church called upon the great intellect of Thomas Aquinas to respond. Indeed, his famous Summa contra Gentiles was occasioned by the need of Christian’ missionaries dealing with Islam in Spain. History records that he stemmed the influence of this view in the form of Latin Averroism.
This radical predeterminism is expressed in Muslim creedal statements. One reads: “Allah Most High is the Creator of all actions of His creatures whether of unbelief or belief, of obedience or of rebellion: all of them are by the Will of Allah and His sentence and His conclusion and His decreeing.” Another confesses: “Allah’s one possible quality is His power to create good or evil at any time He wishes, i.e. His decree. . . .
Both good things and evil things are the result of Allah’s decree. It is the duty of every Muslim to believe this.” Further, “It is He who causes harm and good. Rather the good works of some and the evil of others are signs that Allah wishes to punish some and to reward others.” So, “if Allah wishes to draw someone close to Himself, then He will give him the grace which will make that person do good works. If He wishes to reject someone and put that person to shame, then He will create sin in him. Allah creates all things, good and evil. Allah creates people as well as their actions: He created you as well as what you do” (37:94). In effect the Muslim creed “There is no god but Allah” is recast to read “There is no one who acts but Allah.” Some Muslim mystics carried this so far that they claimed that “No creature [even] partakes in the confession of Allah’s oneness. Allah alone confesses the oneness of Allah.”
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