Re: Concept of God in Islam

By now the lack of academic quality and research in the contents of IRF is quite evident and I went into the article ‘Concept of God in Islam’ under the Islam section of comparative religion expecting one more article of no academic merit and here too Dr Naik did not disappoint. It can be said that this by far is the article ranks lowest in quality.

He spends more words trying to ridicule Hinduism than trying to present the Islamic Concept of God and defending them. The article begins by stating that Islam has the most concise definition of god and quoting a verse  

 "Say: He is Allah,

The One and Only.

"Allah, the Eternal, Absolute.

"He begets not, nor is He begotten.

And there is none like unto Him."

                        [Al-Qur’an 112:1-4]

He makes no attempt to justify the Islamic definition of God or to explain how it is the most concise definition and merely states that “The word ‘Assamad’ is difficult to translate. It means ‘absolute existence’, which can be attributed only to Allah (swt), all other existence being temporal or conditional (What about Existence itself? Existence, the Phenomena, is Absolute. It is Eternal). It also means that Allah (swt) is not dependent on any person or thing, but all persons and things are dependent on Him.”. He does not provide any further explanation.

He moves on to Surah Ikhlas which he calls the touchstone of theology and states

“Surah Ikhlas (Chapter 112) of the Glorious Qur’an, is the touchstone of theology. ‘Theo’ in Greek means God and ‘logy’ means study. Thus Theology means study of God and to Muslims this four line definition of Almighty God serves as the touchstone of the study of God. Any candidate to divinity must be subjected to this ‘acid test’. Since the attributes of Allah given in this chapter are unique, false gods and pretenders to divinity can be easily dismissed using these verses.”

Again he makes no attempt to explain why this should be accepted as the touchstone of theology. God is like this Because Quran says so, and since Quran is from God, it must be true. (Circular Logic)

He then moves on to try the ‘acid test’ on Bhagwan Rajneesh (Osho) to see if he passes the criteria. He must have been high on drugs to pull up antics like these and putting them up on his official website
Does he believe his readers to be foolish enough to fall for this? Osho is not a god in Hindu scriptures; he is merely a new age spirituality guru. Subjecting Osho to his ‘Acid test’ because he used the title ‘Bhagwan’ is similar to subjecting Akbar to the ‘acid test’ of divinity as muslims say ‘Allahu akbar’ which means Allah is Akbar.

It is clear that this is more an attempt to tarnish Hinduism than to explain Islam. God-men in Hinduism are not much different from charlatans like Dr Naik himself who make a living by duping the gullible masses except that worshiping Dr Naik is forbidden by Islam. That hasn’t stopped conmen like him from building a multi-million dollar industry in the name of faith through lies and deception anyhow. Evidently Hinduism is no more vulnerable to fraudsters than Islam.

           

Dr Naik then says:

“Many are tempted to make anthropomorphic comparisons of God. Take for instance, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the famous body builder and Hollywood actor, who won the title of ‘Mr. Universe’, the strongest man in the world. Let us suppose that someone says that Almighty God is a thousand times stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger. The moment you can compare any entity to God, whether the comparison is to Schwarzenegger or to King Kong, whether it is a thousand times or a million times stronger, it fails the Qur’anic criterion, "There is none like unto Him".”

This is a absurd claim. God of Islam is claimed to be Merciful. Is Mercy exclusive property of Islamic god Allah?

Volume 8, Book 73, Number 29:

Narrated Abu Huraira:

I heard Allah's Apostle saying, Allah divided Mercy into one-hundred parts and He kept its ninety-nine parts with Him and sent down its one part on the earth, and because of that, its one single part, His creations are Merciful to each other, so that even the mare lifts up its hoofs away from its baby animal, lest it should trample on it."

Allah is 100 times more merciful than the combined Mercy of all Creations. Whaa...?

At this point i would like to ask him about his opinion on the muslims who says that love of allah is seventy times the love of one’s mother. Does that count as anthropomorphism as per Dr Naik? Is there any Islamic reference which says that love of Allah is seventy times the love of one’s mother? If yes does Allah fail the Quranic criterion too?

As usual the rest of the articles is filled with rhetoric where he goes on to present verses from quran and a brief explanation without bothering to defend them. I do not feel that these are in need of any further analysis.