Biblical Figures in the Islamic Faith

Vicchio

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781498275583
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

"Vicchio believes that by understanding how much Muslim tradition overlaps with the biblical traditions of Judaism and Christianity, we might begin to expose a wedge of common ground on which understanding and respect might begin to be built. "Vicchio begins with a brief introduction sketching some fundamentals of Muslim history and culture, and clearing away some common misconceptions. His main goal, however, is to give us a detailed look at the treatment of biblical figures in the literature of Islam. The broad range of his research and presentation is startling. He begins with the Qur'an but continues on to the collected writing of the roughly two hundred years after Mohammed (Hadith, Sunnah, Akhbar) that came to be regarded as authoritative in the various traditions that developed in early Islam. He then traces the interest in these biblical figures on into modern treatments of the role of these figures in Muslim scholarship and how these figures are understood and used in the traditions of Islam yet today. "The result of Vicchio's scholarship and presentation will be a revelation to most Christian and Jewish readers. It has become somewhat commonplace to refer to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as the three Abrahamic faiths. This shows a beginning awareness of the beginnings of each of these three great religions, birthed in the Middle East, in a common ancestor, Abraham (Ibrahim). Abraham's faithfulness and his closeness to God make his a revered figure in each of these three great faiths, and for each Abraham is a beginning of the story of the particular relationship between God and the people of each of these religions."--from the Foreword

1

The Concept of God in Islam

God is only and Divinely like Himself.

—John Donne

It is from human reference that they derive their content. Only so are language and literature possible. Only so is it feasible to pray, to theologize, or to speak of God at all.

—Kenneth Cragg, The House of Islam

This indeed is the true story, and there is no God but Allah, and Allah is truly the All Mighty and the All Wise.

—Qur’an 3:62

Introduction

The concept of God in the Islamic faith is significantly like the concept of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Like the Old and New Testaments, the Qur’an tells us that Allah has many of the same attributes as are predicted of God in Judaism and Christianity. Chief among these are his omniscience (All Knowing), omnipotence (All Powerful), and omni-benevelence (All Good). Like God in Judaism and Christianity, Allah is unique; but, as we shall see in this chapter, there are a variety of other names for God in Islam. Indeed, Islamic tradition suggests that Allah has 99 names.

In this chapter, we take a close look at the names and attributes for God in the Islamic faith. In addition to the concept of Allah in the Qur’an, we also explore in this chapter, some views of God in subsequent Islam. As we shall see, the period of Islamic philosophy from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries was particularly fruitful in finding comments of Moslem thinkers on Allah and His attributes.

The Word Allah in Arabic

The word Allah is a compound word from the article al and the noun, ilah, God. The word ilah appears to have been the common word used when discussing divinities in the Pre-Islamic Arabia. Gradually, with the addition of the article, the word came to mean one of these divinities who has dominion over everything. The word Allah, then, came to be the name of the only God in Islam. The root of the word occurs in all Semitic languages as a designation of divinity.

The word Allah is not a proper name but a contraction of the word al-ilah, meaning simply “the god.” Like his Greek counterpart, Zeus, Allah was originally an ancient rain/sky deity who had been elevated to a supreme status of the pre-Islamic Arabs. Though Allah was a powerful god to swear by, like most high gods in other cultures in the Middle East, He was beyond the supplications of ordinary people. Only in times of great peril would He be turned to. Otherwise, it was more expedient to turn to lesser, more accessible deities who acted as Allah’s intercessors. These lesser deities were not only represented in the Ka’ba, they also had their own individual shrines throughout Arabia.

It was to these lesser deities that Arabs prayed when they needed rain, when their children were ill, or when they went into battle. It was also to these lesser deities that Arabs turns when they were to journey out into the desert, a treacherous place full of Djinn, those imperceptible beings made from smoke.

The word Allah in Arabic does not have a plural form, thus the name itself implies the unity of God in Islam. In Islam, the word Allah is always written with an alif to spell the long a sound. In vocalized Arabic, on the other hand, a small diacritical alif is added to the top of the shadah to indicate the pronunciation.

The one exception to these rules is a pre-Islamic inscription which ends with an ambiguous sign that may be an h sound, with a lengthened sound, or it may be a conjoined l and h sound. This text is the earliest known translation of the word Allah into another language. It is dated from the early seventh century, and is translated into Greek as ho theos monos, literally “the one God.”1

The word Allah is the common word for God in all Arabic speakers, whatever their religious traditions, including Arabic Christians and Jews. A number of cognates of the word Allah appear in other Semitic languages, including the Hebrew El, Eloah, and Elohim. These words in turn probably derived from the Canaanite “El,” and the Mesopotamian “Ilu.”

The Hebrew words, El and Eloah are cognates of Allah, as are the Aramaic Elaha and the Syriac Alaha. When Jesus speaks on the cross in the Aramaic version of the New Testament, the Peshitta’s Mark 15:34, he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see Alaha.”2

The word Allah is used in a number of principal sayings of the Islamic faith. Chief among these are: La ilaha illallah, “there is no God but Allah”; Allahu Akbar “God is great”; Bimi-llah, “in the name of Allah”; and In sha Allah, “If God is willing.” The word Allah is never used as a proper name in Islam, it has no gender in Arabic, and it has a numeric value of 66 in Islamic mysticism or gematria.

Concept of God in the Qur’an

The Asma al-Husna, the Excellent Names for God, are a significant part of Islamic doctrine and devotion. Many Moslem men and women, with a string of beads, run through his or her fingers the many names of Allah. Some seventy names for God appear in the Holy Book. Many of these are duplicates of each other. Some are active participles, and others are adjectives.

Like the Scholastic Period in Christianity, as well as the rabbis of the Talmud, the Qur’an speaks of Allah in anthropomorphic terms. It applies to expressions like “the Hand of Allah,” or the “Face of Allah,” as well as to adjectival name and attributes. There is no greater reluctance in any of the world’s religious traditions to concede that the gulf between humans and Divine is one that cannot be fully described.

This does not mean that Allah is not involved with humans, but the true nature and attributes of Allah are well beyond human comprehension. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Moslem philosophers used the neat expressions, bila kaif (“without implying how”) and Bila tashbih (“without representational intention”) to speak of Allah and his predicates.

The two most notable names for God in the Qur’an are those that stand in the Basmillah or invocation that stand at the head of every surah of the Qur’an but the ninth, the expression, Al Fahman al-Rahim, the “Merciful Lord of Mercy.” Others translate the phrase as “In the name of God, most Gracious and most Compassionate.” The word bismillah is made up of three elements. The bi is a preposition. It means by, through, for, and by means of. The next part of the word is the root ism, which is the root for the words Islam and Moslem. The end of the word, the third part, is Allah, God in Arabic. Thus, the word means something like “By the means of the very essence of God.” The implication is that whatever we do, each breath we take, every word we utter, is done because of and through the essence of the One.

The two terms, rahman and rahim are both from the Semitic root RHM. It is connected to the Arabic words for protection, tenderness, and compassion. The philosopher Ibn Qayyum, a fourteenth-century thinker, translates rahman as “Abounding Grace.” The term, rahim, on the other hand, Ibn Qayyum suggests, is the effect of that grace on human beings.

Another dominant phrase often used in the Qur’an to describe A...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Concept of God in Islam
• Chapter 2: Abraham, Isaac, and Islam
• Chapter 3: The Prophet Musa (Moses) in Islam
• Chapter 4: The Role of the Prophet Yunus (Jonah) in the Islamic Faith
• Chapter 5: Islam and Other Hebrew Bible Figures
• Chapter 6: The Image of the Biblical Job (Ayyub) in the Qur’an and Later Islam
• Chapter 7: The Image of Jesus in the Qur’an and Later Islam
• Chapter 8: The Images of Mary, Joseph, and John the Baptist in Islam
• Chapter 9: The Image of Satan, Heaven, and Hell in the Qur’an and Later Islam
• Chapter 10: The Anti-Christ in Islamic Thought
• Chapter 11: Some Conclusions
• Appendix: Biblical Figures in Islamic Art
• Arabic-English Glossary