Author: Harris Abdullah
Quran has 114 chapters, various verses on the surface stated that God has no son. All the references could be found in Allah:has no son link to (http://www.islamicity.org/quransearch/….). Examples of the verses are:
Sura 17:111 – Praise be to God Who has adopted no son and has no partner in control. He needs no protector against pettiness. Magnify Him greatly! [T.B. Irving]
Adopt, begotten, taken. Beget, choose. All these words are used in a negative sense.
Sura 19:35 – It befitteth not (the Majesty of) Allah that He should take unto Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is. [M.M. Pickthall]
Sura 19:92 – It is not befitting to the Compassionate (Allah) that He should beget a son .[Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam Malik]
Other references such as: Surahs 23:91 and 112:3. They are all very similar and they have just one thing in common, that they all deny that Allah or God has a son, or begot a son, or whatever. In other words, as far as Allah is concerned, no son! No matter what way the son is obtained – no son. It doesn’t matter which way you get the son. It’s irrelevant. Simply that He has no son. That’s it.
To understand Quran saying: God has no son: we need to do proper exegesis/tafsir.
Exegesis is, and that’s what tafsir should be just as in Physics-Bombarding Atom. We need to ask the right and logical questions:
Is it absolute or relative?
Without much thought, a traditional Muslim has concluded that these passages were absolute statements rather than relative ones. An absolute statement means? It is not possible for God to have a son. With such conclusion, they never thought that they have limited God, what’s possible for God. That means under no circumstances, any conceivable possibility that God could have, in one sense or another. Absolute means the subject is closed. He has no son and that’s it. Finished!
1st Point: Let’s ask questions.
A lot of teachers of Islam have the tendencies of telling others to just accept traditions and not to ask questions because you might go to oblivion if you ask too many questions. So, traditions to them can never go wrong and don’t ask questions. Sadly, that is the way it has been.
Let us just approach this from a very general view. We will approach these texts, if we may say so respectfully, questioning them from different angles. So, let us view from a very general approach – God has no son. First we should ask, ‘Do you mean absolutely or relatively?’ The reply should be: ‘Absolutely no son. God cannot have a son. He will not have a son. He never had a son,’ and so on and so forth, ‘and under no circumstances whatsoever conceivable that He could ever have a son.’ That’s the absolute position.
We will take on this position and begin to ask: He has no son, which presumably also means that He has no daughter, are we on the right track? That is logic, it must follow, which means that He also has no grandchildren, is that correct? This also means that He has no wife, He has no father, no mother, and no children, no anybody. Now, why does a God who has no relationships of this intimate kind from any angle whatsoever wanted to create man that has father, mother, son, daughter, and so on. Could you explain the reasons for this? We do not suppose you want say that He wants to make up in man what He does not have in Himself?’
Hopefully from this exercise, we can open up a path and the aim of it is to show that what you are doing here gives such a negative concept of God. From a human standpoint, where we, in our lives, some of the most important values in human life are the social values of having mother and father, and sons and daughters and perhaps brothers and sisters. If you, not speaking of God but speaking of you, if you have no father, no mother, no brother, no sister, nobody, then what kind of a life have you got? Is it not amount to nothing? And you are asking me to accept that the Qur’an is saying that God is some singularity worth, frankly, nothing?
If you say He has all power, all wisdom… All right, supposing you have all the money in the world, but you have not one person in the world that you can relate to on your own level, or as a relative, in any sense of the word; supposing you are all-wise but you have nothing, what do you actually possess in reality? In other words, you want to believe that this is what the Qur’an says – that God does not have a son, is incapable to have a son, does not wish to have a son, and yet He wants mankind to have all these. Maybe you can explain what concept of God you have because Qur’an is a revelation from God. What is it telling me about God? Try to give me a picture of God from this ‘no son’ thing. What is being affirmed that could glorify God in all these?
In the Qur’an, the only relationship anyone has with God, from the highest to the lowest, is simply master to servant. As the Qur’an says, everyone is His servant, repeatedly many times. God has no sons, no daughters, no friends, nothing. No friends either, in fact. Only servants. Does that give you a beautiful picture of God? What can you say in defence of a God who is not only incapable of having but does not even want to have one? Does that glorify Him? If you still insist that this is what the Qur’an says, and honestly, we do not think that is what the Qur’an says, let us look further.
Of course, you may want to say the only reason is because God is all-sufficient in Himself. He does not need this kind of emotional link to anyone. Man needs it but not God. In fact, you are right. That is about the only thing that any traditional Muslim can say. But this answer, as we are going see in this second phase of bombarding such idea, is hardly going to stand up to any examination. It is a misconception of what all-sufficiency means.
Let’s begin dismantling this particular point like this. You might have another approach, which is fine. It is the approach of understanding God from the point of view of negatives. This is a well-known concept among the Greeks; that is, to say God is not this, and He is not that, and He is not that because you cannot even speak about God. He is indescribable and therefore, since He is indescribable, you can only speak in terms of negatives. That is something from medieval philosophy.
Let’s see what problems this notion generates. We saw in the first case, if we press the logical point that God has no son and keep pressing the issue to the point where logic cannot go any further, we see that there is no defence left except the one which says that He is all-sufficient. Let’s see whether that constitutes anything like a defence because to base an understanding of all-sufficiency on negatives… Not having a son was supposed to prove all-sufficiency! Does that even stand up to the understanding of how negatives can be used? For example, there is a proper use of negatives in relation to God, and there is an improper use of negatives in relation to God. What might be a proper use of negatives? We can say, for example, He is light. The negative of that being that there is no darkness. No darkness; the negative stands in opposition to a positive. We can say there is no falsehood in God. That is a negative and that is a proper negative. Why? Because God is truth, therefore there cannot be any falsehood in Him. We can press on in this way because each time you say ‘No, no this or no that,’ it stands as a contrast to something that is positive. That is very important to grasp. Tell me, what is the positive of ‘no son’? Is there some kind of positive?
Good for you! You can say to the person that in the Qur’an it says ‘no sons’ but it didn’t say ‘no daughters.’ You say, ‘You want to read something into the text, we can also read something into the text. Qur’an never says He has no daughters.’ You have a very good point. There you are. When you start arguing with this negatives, ‘no son’ is supposed to prove sufficiency, then kindly tell us in what way having no son proves sufficiency. In fact, using this to prove sufficiency is like tying your own noose to your neck, as we will see in a moment.
2nd Point: (Using Mathematical Equation – Is No Son = No Need/All-Sufficient)
There are arguments that are prima facie, that is on the surface they seem valid, but upon closer examination, they simply crumble. Take, for example, if ‘no son’ equals (using a mathematical equation) ‘no need’, because that is the argument for all-sufficiency. Does ‘no son’ really prove ‘no need’? Does the ‘no need’ prove all-sufficiency? That’s a long jump from ‘no need’ to all-sufficiency. How you are going to cover that distance is another question.
Let’s put it this way, to make it simple and not get too philosophical. A man who is a multimillionaire, does he need money? By definition, he is a multimillionaire. He does not need any money, right? So, all-sufficient, no need; by using this equation. But does it mean that he does not need money, then he doesn’t desire money? Does all-sufficient, meaning ‘no need’, also mean ‘no desire’? You have to prove further than just ‘no need’, you have to talk about ‘no desire’ either.
A man may have a huge fortune, he does not really need money, but that doesn’t mean that he does not want money or desire money. It’s because he may have many projects in his mind. He might want to build a great multi skyscraper. He might want to have this or that grandiose project, precisely because he does have some of the means to get these things done. In order to go on, he also needs, or desires money. He doesn’t really need it because he can scrap his project. He doesn’t have to do it. But he desires to implement that project, therefore he desires the means to implement that project. Even if you had all the money in the world and you can build whatever, does that mean no more desires exist?
If you say that God has no emotional needs, meaning He has no desire, you are truly unaware that you are beginning to put a rope around your own neck. Why is that? You then could ask: If so, does He desire you to worship Him? Does He desire you to love Him? If He has no need, then why does He want you to worship? Why does He command everyone to worship Him? No desire, then out of what motive? Can God have no motives, whatever? What kind of God are we talking about?
That is where the all-sufficiency thing is, the mistake is to equate all-sufficiency with ‘no need’ but lost the point that ‘no need’ is not equivalent to ‘no desire’. There is nothing that proves insufficiency if you have a desire. What’s the insufficiency? Maybe we are thinking of human, purely human desires, but if we limit God to the point where He has no desire in the sense that He does not want anybody to worship Him…, dare you say that? And if He does desire that you do worship Him, and therefore He commands you to worship Him, is that not a desire? Or can they have any other explanation? He wants us to love Him. He wants us to worship Him and because of having this desire, does that prove that God is not almighty? Does that prove that He is not all-wise, He is not all-sufficient? What is the point of the argument that they want to put up?
The problem gets even more complicated because that is not all yet for this miserable case of all-sufficiency, as stated in this manner. In fact, there’s no other manner to state it, I suppose. According to this argument, because He is all-sufficient, He needs no son. That was the argument in this absolute interpretation of the text. Then, kindly tell us why did He need to create mankind? The position for that case is impossible by now. Why did He have any desire to create mankind? Why did He have the desire to create anything at all for that matter? Having a son, and creating Adam – could you tell us the difference? He doesn’t need a son, why does He need Adam? By now, are you aware that the case has really become a rope around your neck, with which you can hang yourself because in fact, you are finished. There is not a case left. There is not even an explanation or purpose or meaning for creation because whatever is true of the creation would be true for the matter of having a son or not having a son. Basic argument is the same. If you don’t need a son, even less do you need creation. What do you need Adam for? What do you need the rest of mankind for?
That is why if you stick to an absolute interpretation of that text, you are completely done for. You have no credibility left. You can’t even account for the existence of anything other than God Himself. You see the point. If God is all-sufficient, there needs to be nothing else beside Him in existence other than His pure being. If you can accept creation, then on the same logic, you cannot reject His having a son. The argument is basically the same. What’s the difference in it? All-sufficiency just doesn’t work.
If, by this point in time, our friend or whoever it is, is willing to surrender the absolute understanding of ‘no son’, there is beginning to be some hope for discussion. If one is prepared to say, ‘All right, God, even though He is all-sufficient, He wanted to create Adam. So, why could He not have a son?’ Now, we can begin to talk about the relative meaning.
What then does the Qur’an say? God absolutely does not generate a son in the same way that human beings do, i.e. through a sexual process. (Also like the concept of Greek gods with human beings) It has nothing to do with sexual or physical elements in the matter of generating a son. We can concede that, and that is certainly the main point in the Qur’an. Do not think of God having a son in the same way as a human being has a son – that is the warning in the Qur’an, and that is a valid warning. Therefore, there is no argument about it. We accept that as true. We are not going to think that God has a son, meaning that He has a wife, that He went through some kind of process of having the son in the way human beings do, by some kind of quasi-sexual relationship of some sort. That would be blasphemy, and we would agree with that. This truth, that we cannot bring God to the level of man, is what the Qur’an wants to protect. It is the only valid interpretation of this text because if you press it beyond that, as we saw in the previous two points, we begin to talk nonsense. In bombarding the text, we are demolishing the false elements in it in order to get to the true element in this text. By the time weI have demolished the absolute position, they would say, ‘You are attacking the Qur’an.’ We would say, ‘Not at all. Now we can talk about what is true in this text,’ when you have finished with all the nonsensical interpretation about this text.