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knowing Allah is the most important issue in Islam without which all acts of worship are void. Therefore in what follows we will provide the reader with the minimum but essential knowledge about Allah:

Allah is the name for God in ISLAM

God in Islam is the creator of all that exist, the one and only true deity.

Acts of worship are not permissible for anything else but Allah.

To worship the true and only One God, we need to be clear as to who Allah is.

To begin with, from a lexical point of view:

There are various interpretations as to what Allah means, and what are the roots of the word “Allah”, if any.

There already exist a vast amount of research on lexical interpretations of the word “Allah”.

Here we mention three of them:

The word Allah is made up of Al (ال)which is equivalent of the article “The” in English and the word “Elah ” (اله),the object of worship; God .so according to this interpretation “Allah” would mean:

“The God “. obviously meaning “The One and Only God”.

The word Allah is from the root, “ALEHA”. (اله) meaning “bewilderment “. According to this interpretation, “Allah” means, The One in which everyone is bewildered : bewildered as to its reality and that no mind can grasp Him even in the wildest imaginations.

“Allah”, is from the root VALEHA((وله meaning inclination as well as bewilderment According to this interpretation then “Allah” would mean The one in which the entire creation is bewildered about and towards which the entire creation is inclined. According to Quran the only avenue open to us in knowing Allah is by Allah. This would mean knowing Allah is a “” kind of given knowledge not an acquired one : اتقوا الله ویعلمکم الله

(282:2)

That particular knowledge ,which is not a conceptual one, It is an ” knowledge of acquaintance ” knowing by becoming “acquainted” with God. This is because Allah is being beyond comprehension:

(103:6)لا تدرکه الابصار و هو یدرک الابصار و هو اللطیف الخبیر.

Vision perceives Him not, but He perceives [all] vision; and He is the Subtle, the Acquainted.

Therefore one can not know Allah in the same fashion that one can know other beings.

knowing Allah is a gift from Allah.

Allah says in the Quran: (رَبِّ زِدْنی عِلْماً ( 114:2

O Allah increase knowledge for me, Quran( 114:2).

It is obvious that we should try to understand what Allah reveals about Himself in his words. In the Quran in there are many verses about Allah.

However, there is One Surah ,(chapter) ,which is entirely devoted to knowing Allah, namely Surah,112 or, Al-Tawhid Surah.

This great surah, because of containing very deep meanings, can not be translated exactly, but it can be translated approximately as follows :

” Say He (God) is Allah, The One, the needless master from whom every creature asks its needs. He has not bigoted nor has He been begotten and there is none co-equal to Him (Nothing resembles Allah)

This great surah has also been named Al-Ikhlas or purity of faith, This surah is, in fact, the answer to the question: ” WHO ALLAH IS“, the question we need to be clear in our minds so that our Ebadat, our acts of worship, can be valid, to know Allah is to identify our “object of worship “The validity of acts of worship is a function of them being done purely for “Allah”, so if one does not know who Allah is, then Whom would He/She be worshipping ?

Also being a muslim depends on worshipping ALLAH AND NONE BUT HIM, so every Muslim needs to have a correct knowledge of Allah.

Knowing Allah requires the answer to the following questions :

1) What is Allah ? There can be no answer to this question as WHATEVER CAN BE CONTAINED BY OUR MINDS, IT WOULD BE A PRODUCT OF OUR MIND, HENCE IT WOULD NOT BE THE CREATOR, IT WOULD NOT BE ALLAH, ALLAH’S REALITY IS BEYOND COMPREHENSION. WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO SAY WHAT ALLAH IS BUT WE STILL CAN BE GIVEN SOME KNOWLEDGE OF HIM BY KNOWING WHAT ALLAH IS NOT . Accordingly we can ask the following questions :

2) Is ALLAH corporeal? No, because Allah would then be limited. Also Allah can not be identified with the entire creation as some monists have misinterpreted the Islamic monotheism;

Allah being the creator of all that exists does not leave any logical validity of mistaking Quran’s Monotheism with  monism.

3) Is ALLAH spirit? No, because each spirit is different from the other one, then Allah would have to be limited. The reason for this being that there would be a limit for him distinguishing him from other spirits, hence He would then be limited.

4) Is ALLAH energy? No, as energy is a form of matter, and matter is a creature of Allah.

Furthermore anything material is limited and hence cannot be Allah.

5) Is ALLAH the Light? No, as light is a corporeal entity and Allah is neither corporeal nor spiritual.

6) What does it mean that QURAN says(35:24) :الله نور السموات والارض

“Allah is The Light of the heavens and the earth” ?

It means that Allah is the guide of the heavens and the earth, the creator of, the provider of the light of the heavens and the earth, not that Allah can be likened to Light as the Quran states'(11:42) ليس كمثله شئ :

THERE IS NOTHING LIKE ONTO HIM.

7) Does ALLAH have a body? (NO, OTHERWISE, NO MATTER HOW BIG, HE WILL BE LIMITED

8) Does Allah have attributes? There are concepts which are commonly known as “ALLAH’S ATTRIBUTES” ,

LIKE ALRHMAN, THE MERCIFUL,BUT THESE CONCEPTS DO NOT CHARACTERISE THE IDENTITY  OF ALLAH,AS ALLAH IS BEYOND COMPREHENSION .These concepts could be said that they point to certain aspects of the creation as created by Allah. THEREFORE, ALRAHMAN COULD BE SAID TO POINT TO “AN ALL ENCOMPASSING MERCY CREATED BY ALLAH “.

Hence we can correctly say that: Allah has no attributes,the concepts known as the attributes of Allah are our mind’s understanding of how ALLAH’S creation, is.

ALLAH has no attributes if THERE WERE ATTRIBUTES  FOR ALLAH,  then Allah would be composed of an essence and the attributes of that essence , which would have meant in turn that Allah would be “needy” of its parts, and Allah is The absolute needless Thing.(الله الصمد ALSAMAD)

9) WHAT ARE THEN SEFATOLLH (wrongly understood as attributes of Allah ). The SEFATS expressed in TERMS like AL ALEEM, ALSAMEEA , COULD BE INTERPRETED AS MEANING THAT ALLAH IS THE CREATOR OF HEARING, THE CREATOR OF KNOWLEDGE, for talking about  ALLAH without the Sefats’ terminologies would be very limited, all could be uttered would be statements like: هو الله., “ He is ALLAH.”

..or Allah IS Allah. when we say ALLAH is ALRHAMAN,ALRAHEEM,ALMONTAGHEM, THESE TERMS DO NOT MEAN THAT ALLAH IS HAPPY AND MERCIFUL SOMETIMES AND ANGRY AT OTHER TIMES. IF IT WERE SO, IT WOULD HAVE MEANT THAT THE REALITY OF ALLAH WOULD HAVE BEEN SUBJECT TO CHANGE AND FLUCTUATIONS, LIKE A HUMAN BEING; SOMETIMS HE /SHE IS HAPPY AND SOMETIMES NOT, THEN ALLAH WOULD BE LIKE HIS CREATURES, AND ALLAH SAYS : ليس كمثله شئ   (THERE IS NOTHING LIKE ONTO HIM) WHEN ALLAH SAYS HE IS ALRAHMAN, IT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD THAT ALLAH IS THE GIVER OF MERCY ” HE IS THE CREATOR OF MERCY‘ NOT THAT Allah, THE referent of the name “Allah”  can be  characterised by these names, or the corresponding attributes.

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What is meant by the verse (10:48)  یدالله فوق ایدیهم

“Hand of Allah (God) is superior to their hands? These kind of words of the book of Allah have metaphorical meaning, one of the meanings of “Hand in Arabic is “power”; so the mentioned verse can be interpreted as saying that the power of Allah IS SUPIRIOR TO THEIR POWER AND NOT COMPARABLE TO ANYONE ELSES POWER,(in fact IN FINAL ANALYSIS IT BECOMES CLEAR THAT THERE IS NO MIGHT OR POWER EXCEPT BY ALLAH SOBHANAHOO VA TALA).

What does it mean the Verse 5 of SURAH 20?

(5:20)الرحمن علی العرش استوی

The Moshreks, (The polytheists ) believed also in Allah, but they also held the false belief that the running of day to day of the world’s affairs has been passed to Angles or minor gods, the above-mentioned verse reject that false belief of Moshreks, it can be understood as stating that “the power of Allah is all-encompassing and Allah and only Him is the absolute ruler, and no one else has any share of ruling over the creation.

To know Allah, we should always remember the verse :

قل هو الله احد

“He is The One” meaning that it is impossible to imagine a second Allah as Allah is greater than all that can be imagined, furthermore and as a result of this absolute uniqueness of ALLAH,WHICH IS HIS ABSLOUTE ONENESS, he does not resemble to anything of his creation and it would be in fact an act of the Shirk, to liken Allah to anything of His creatures, like Light or energy ,force and so forth. Allah has revealed in the verse 1: SHORA ليس كمثله شئ

ALLAH HAS NO SIMILITUDE IN THE CREATION,” THERE IS NONE LIKE UNTO HIM )

What does the Verse : (72:38) نفخت فیه من روحی   mean?

does it mean ALLAH has a spirit? of course, not, ALLAH is not spirit nor is he composed of a body and a spirit,

the interpretation of the verse could be that

ALLAH created a pure dignified spirit and caused that spirit to be blown into Adam, peace be upon him. We attribute to ALLAH things which are very important, like we say about THE KABBA; BEYTOLLAH, HOUSE OF GOD. This obviously does not mean that ALLAH has a residence, a “HOUSE”, KABAH; it only means The House belonging to Allah.

The same idea holds as regards to the spirit: Allah created a spirit and dignified it ,then attributed it to himself and ordered that spirit to be blown into Adam. This procedure of Allah,s creation is expressed in the verse :   نفخت فیه من روحی

The guideline to Quran’s monotheism and the core message of Islam; LA ELAH ELL ALLAH, is the Alekhlas Surah, the Ayah 11 of Shora Surah :ليس كمثله شئ and the phrase :. الله اکبر “ALLAHOAKBAR”, “ALLAH IS GREATER THAN TO BE DESCRIBED “.

To conclude; if we are asked as whom do we worship? We can reply that: “we worship the referent of the name “ALLAH” bearing in mind that whatever comes to our mind can not be that referent, that referent which is ALLAH, is GREATER THAN TO BE DESCRIBED

“Akbar”, “Greater” ،MENANING:”ALLAH IS GREATER THAN TO BE DESCRIBED”.

So Allah can never be reached by our comprehension or even imaginative power.

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It is in the Quran that

(180:7) فلله الأسماء الحسنی فادعوه بها


 * So for ALLAH are the nice names then call upon him by those names, however,we shoud notice that those names do not share their meaning when used for other beings than Allah.

we should, also pay utmost attention to the fact that  Nice Names,اسماالحسنی, Asmaul Hosna, are linguistic tools to facilitate supplications o Duas or to Allah.

Asma Ul Hosna do not characterise Allah, as Allah is beyond characterisation, and description: الله اکبر: “Allah is greater”, The greater referred to here is not a physical greatness as Allah is neither spirit nor matter. The greater here means Allah is greater than to be reached by our imagination, comprehension and description: الله اکبر من ان یوصف

“Allah is greater than to be described”.

To reach to this level of knowledge of Allah : That the creator,Allah can not be reached by human mind is the limit of knowing ALLAH.