God in Islam

In Islam, God (Arabic: ٱللَّٰه, romanized: Allāh, contraction of ٱلْإِلَٰه al-’Ilāh, lit. 'the god') is seen as the creator and sustainer of the universe, who lives eternally and will eventually resurrect all humans. God is conceived as a perfect, singular, immortal, omnipotent, and omniscient god, completely infinite in all of his attributes. Islam further emphasizes that God is most-merciful. The Islamic concept of God is variously described as monotheistic, panentheistic, and monistic.

According to Islamic theology, God has no physical body or gender, although he is always referred to with masculine grammatical articles, and there is nothing else like him in any way whatsoever. Therefore, Islam rejects the doctrine of the incarnation and the notion of a personal god as anthropomorphic, because it is seen as demeaning to the transcendence of God. The Quran prescribes the fundamental transcendental criterion in the following verse: "[He is] the Creator of the heavens and the earth. He has made for you from yourselves, mates, and among the cattle, mates; He multiplies you thereby. There is nothing whatever like unto Him, and He is the One that hears and sees [all things]" (42:11). Therefore, Islam strictly and categorically rejects all forms of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism of the concept of God.

The Islamic concept of God emphasizes that he is absolutely pure and free from association with other beings, which means attributing the powers and qualities of God to his creation, and vice versa. In Islam, God is never portrayed in any image. The Quran specifically forbade ascribing partners to share his singular sovereignty, as he is considered to be the absolute one without a second, indivisible, and incomparable being, who is similar to nothing, and nothing is comparable to him. Thus, God is absolutely transcendent, unique and utterly other than anything in or of the world as to be beyond all forms of human thought and expression. The briefest and the most comprehensive description of God in Islam is found in Surat al-Ikhlas.

According to mainstream Muslim theologians, God is described as Qadim ("ancient"), having no first, without beginning or end; absolute, not limited by time or place or circumstance, nor is subject to any decree so as to be determined by any precise limits or set times, but is the First and the Last. He is not a formed body, nor a substance circumscribed with limits or determined by measure; neither does he resemble bodies as they are capable of being measured or divided. Neither do substances exist in him; neither is he an accident, nor do accidents exist in him. Neither is he like to anything that exists, nor is anything like to him; nor is he determinate in quantity, nor comprehended by bounds, nor circumscribed by differences of situation, nor contained in the heavens, and transcends spatial and temporal bounds, and remains beyond the bounds of human comprehension and perceptions.