The Nautre of Allah

Fanny Cradock

Hi folks,

From a thread that arose on the Christianity forum, I wondering if you could clear up a question on a fundamental nature of Allah for me. Is Allah omnipresent? Or is there even a consensus amongst Muslims on this?

Thanks

hivizman

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Hi folks,

From a thread that arose on the Christianity forum, I wondering if you could clear up a question on a fundamental nature of Allah for me. Is Allah omnipresent? Or is there even a consensus amongst Muslims on this?

Thanks

The thread that you are referring to, which is here, raises some very fundamental theological issues. Your own point on omnipresence raises the question of what it would mean to say that God is "omnipresent". Breaking the word down, we could say that to be "omnipresent" means to be "present everywhere" (and "everywhere" implies all places at all times). Now, God cannot be "present" in the same way that we are present, because this would imply that God is "within" creation, yet God the Creator must be greater than his creation.

On the other hand, the Qur'an contains a number of famous verses about God's nearness:

(a) Surah Qaf 50:16 - "It was We who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him; for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein."
(b) Surah Al-Baqarah 2:115 - "To Allah belong the East and the West: whithersoever ye turn, there is Allah's countenance. For Allah is All-Embracing, All-Knowing."
(c) Surah Al-Mujadalah 58:7 - "Seest thou not that Allah doth know (all) that is in the heavens and on earth? There is not a secret consultation between three, but He makes the fourth among them - nor between five but He makes the sixth - nor between fewer nor more, but he is with them, wheresoever they be: in the end will He tell them the truth of their conduct, on the Day of Judgement. For Allah has full knowledge of all things."

[All quoted from Abdullah Yusuf Ali The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an]

The last quotation suggests that God's "presence" comes through His perfect knowledge - God does not need to be present in anything analogous to a physical sense because God knows what is happening everywhere and at all times.

As always, I have to disclaim any expertise, and I hope that my errors will be speedily corrected.

Fanny Cradock

hivizman wrote: »

The thread that you are referring to, which is here, raises some very fundamental theological issues. Your own point on omnipresence raises the question of what it would mean to say that God is "omnipresent". Breaking the word down, we could say that to be "omnipresent" means to be "present everywhere" (and "everywhere" implies all places at all times). Now, God cannot be "present" in the same way that we are present, because this would imply that God is "within" creation, yet God the Creator must be greater than his creation.

I agree with your definition in bold.

The lack of clarification for the term 'within' is probably causing some confusion upon my part. But I wonder why it is you think that God cannot be within creation. It seems that unless there is something specifically mentioned within Islam, there is no logical reason to deduce that God is incapable of being within his own creation. It's like claiming that a builder can't enter the house he has created. At this point I would normally mention that Jesus was God, but I guess I'm in the wrong forum for that

hivizman

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I agree with your definition in bold.

The lack of clarification for the term 'within' is probably causing some confusion upon my part.

The fact that I put "within" inside scare quotes indicates that I was uneasy about using the word. I'm not sure that we can actually use prepositions such as "within" to talk about the relationship between the Creator and His Creation in anything like the same sense as we can talk about a human builder being within his own building. There's a frequently quoted verse in the Qur'an that warns us against trying to talk about God in our own terms: Surah Al-'An'am 6:103 "No vision can grasp Him. But His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet he is acquainted with all things" (Yusuf Ali translation). I think this is more clearly expressed in Muhammad Asad's translation: "No human vision can encompass Him, whereas He encompasses all human vision: for He alone is unfathomable, all-aware."

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

But I wonder why it is you think that God cannot be within creation. It seems that unless there is something specifically mentioned within Islam, there is no logical reason to deduce that God is incapable of being within his own creation. It's like claiming that a builder can't enter the house he has created.

The builder can only enter the house he has created if the house is larger than the builder. However, "Allahu Akbar", God is greater/the greatest, and this implies that God, the Creator, is greater than His Creation. It doesn't make sense to compare God, transcending space and time, with His creation, existing within space and time, using a spatial or temporal concept of presence. This isn't just an issue for Islam - Christianity also has to deal with it. St Anselm (1033-1109), in his Monologion, argues in Chapter 20 that God exists in every place and at all times, but in Chapter 21 he argues that God exists in no place and no time. Anselm resolves the apparent contradiction by arguing that there are two senses in which we should understand the expression "existing in a place". The first of these is "being contained in a place", and the second is "being present in a place". Anselm claims that created things exist in the sense of being contained (bound by space and time), but God transcends space and time and thus cannot be contained within it. God can, however, be present in space and time. St Thomas Aquinas subsequently interpreted this "presence" at a given point of space-time by reference to God's knowledge of and ability to act on what is contained by that point of space-time. On this interpretation, God's omniscience and omnipotence imply God's omnipresence. (I'm summarising here the chapter on Omnipresence by Edward R. Wierenga in Philip L. Quinn & Charles Taliaferro (Eds.) A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997, pp. 286-290).

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

At this point I would normally mention that Jesus was God, but I guess I'm in the wrong forum for that

And I've ended up giving a Christian interpretation of omnipresence. I haven't found much on the Internet or in my library at home on an Islamic interpretation of omnipresence, except for a debate about whether various verses of the Qur'an that refer to God being "established on the throne of his almightiness" (e.g. Sura Al-'A'raf 7:54) should be interpreted literally as a statement of the location of God, or metaphorically as a statement of God's absolute authority over all of creation.

You could of course mention that a fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity is that Islam denies the Incarnation. The Incarnation is sometimes seen as an "irruption" or "bursting into" space-time of the transcendent God, but I don't think that the Islam forum is necessarily the place to debate this core Christian doctrine.

Fanny Cradock

Thanks for the reply, hivizman.