The material in this blog is now available at amazon.com under the title: Ideas Inspired by the Qur’an.
How do we define God? A cosmic spirit? A universal force? An organizing principle? An emergent intelligence? Or a relic of ancient fears, hopes, and superstitions – a mental prosthesis, a mere cover for potholes, soon to be paved over, on the royal road to a modern paradise of science, democracy, and capitalism?
Traditional theology lays out answers in terms of being and non-being, or essence and existence, and attempts to prove its conclusions by means of logic, rational evidence, and linguistic analysis. And so we have ongoing debates not only between materialists and deists but also never-ending (eternal?) arguments among the proponents of various theories of what God is.*
* I mentioned, on page 1, the potential for agreement on denoting absolutes such as justice even when we differ on what they connote. GOD, however, cannot be denoted, but only pointed towards, or indicated, which is why disputes about what GOD connotes– father figure or tyrant, cosmic force or inner peace, etcetera – are so virulent. There are at least three reasons why denoting or defining GOD is impossible:
1. The very form of the question ‘What is God?’ posits a false equivalence, namely God = x. Arguments about God’s existence assume a similar category error, namely that God belongs to a (necessarily greater) group of existents.
وَلَمْ يَكُنْ لَهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ
And nothing is comparable to Him. (Q112:4)
2. Everything can be defined. But God is not a thing. He is by definition Undefinable, unattainable by any of our faculties.
لاَ تُدْرِكُهُ الأَبْصَارُ وَهُوَ يُدْرِكُ الأَبْصَارَ
Vision comprehends Him not, but He encompasses [all] vision. (Q6:103)
3. It is in the nature of persons to be resistant to ‘What is’-type questions. GOD, as the Personal-Suprapersonal Absolute, is absolutely resistant to such queries.
لاَ يُسْأَلُ عَمَّا يَفْعَلُ وَهُمْ يُسْأَلُونَ
He is not queried over what He does, but they are questioned. (Q21:23)
There could be an elemental error, however, in all these discussions, however fascinating and relevant they appear to be. When we experience ourselves, albeit dimly and confusedly, we do not think, ‘Here is a human being that happens to be me.’ Rather we immediately assert, ‘Here am I.’
Our very sense of being flows from a bottomless belief that our ‘who’ precedes our ‘what’. Materialism, of course, propounds the opposite, that our ‘what’ is original or primary while our ‘who’ is derivative or secondary. The demonic fruits of that philosophy, when unleavened by spiritual, personal ideals such as justice and compassion, are evident all around us nowadays in a corporatocracy that smugly sacrifices the well-being of the many for the material gain of a few lifeless entities, the corporations (and the shareholders who submit their humanity to the inhuman demands of the balance sheet.)
Let us consider, then, how far we can go with the idea of putting ‘Who’ first.
عَنْ عَائِشَةَ ـ رضى الله عنها ـ قَالَتْ إِنِّي لأَعْلَمُ كَيْفَ كَانَ النَّبِيُّ صلى الله عليه وسلم يُلَبِّي لَبَّيْكَ اللَّهُمَّ لَبَّيْكَ، لَبَّيْكَ لاَ شَرِيكَ لَكَ لَبَّيْكَ، إِنَّ الْحَمْدَ وَالنِّعْمَةَ لَكَ
From ‘A’ishah (may AL-LAH be pleased with her), who said, “Verily I know how the Prophet (may AL-LAH bless him and give him peace) used to pronounce the invocation of the pilgrimage: ‘Here am I, O GOD; here am I. Here am I; You have no partner; here am I. Truly praise and blessings are for You.’” (Sahihul-Bukhari, Book 25, Hadith 36)
The GOD You Already Know 