A Muslim believes that God is unlike anything we can imagine.
No one can look at him and live. He never tires. He is
All-Knowing, All-Seeing, All-Powerful, Perfect. All he needs do
is decree a matter and it will be. Yet the language of the
current Bible never fails to picture even God himself in
undignified terms:
God goes for a stroll:
Genesis 3:8"And they heard the voice of the LORD God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his
wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst
the trees of the garden."
God can not find Adam (not all-knowing):
Genesis 3:9-10"And the LORD God called unto Adam, and
said unto him, Where are you? And he said, I heard your voice in
the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid
myself."(from God?)
God does not know if Adam ate from the tree or not (not
all-knowing):
Genesis 3:11"And he (God) said, Who told thee that thou
wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded
thee that thou shouldest not eat?"
Before looking for hidden meanings for the above verses, we
should consider the following:
1) Read section 2.3.
2) If you were to give your child total, unconstrained
freedom to do whatever he wants in your house, you only ask him
"don�t play with my stereo." If he then goes ahead anyway and
proceeds to dismantle it into fifty different pieces. If you
know for a fact that he did it and you know exactly
where he has hidden himself (maybe you had a hidden camera
somewhere), would you walk all over the house calling out "Where
are you my son?," "come out, come out wherever you are"?, or
would you storm up to the place where he was hiding, pull him
out by his ears, and punish him severely?
3) If you did not know where he was hiding, but
knew what he had done without a doubt, would you, once you
had found him, ask him: "why are you hiding? Did you break my
stereo?" It is important to first attempt to think logically
before looking for abstract meanings.
Note: For the Islamic version of this incident please read
chapter 15.
God becomes tired and needs to be refreshed:
Exodus 31:17"It is a sign between me and the children of
Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth,
and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed."
Notice that the verse does not claim that God Almighty
"abstained from work," but rather that He "rested." This
implies that it is possible for God Almighty to experience
fatigue and that He is not All-Mighty and All-Powerful since He
sometimes needs to be "refreshed."
God is not cognizant and/or is not eternally aware (not all
knowing, all seeing, attentive and aware):
Psalms 44:23"Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise,
cast us not off for ever."
When God finally becomes cognizant attentive and aware, He
acts like a drunkard:
Psalms 78:65"Then the LORD awaked as one out of sleep,
and like a mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine."
The above verses are responded to by the Almighty in the
noble Qur�an as follows:
"And verily We (God) did create the heavens and the earth in
six days and no fatigue touched Us."
The noble Qur�an, Qaf(50):38
"Allah! there is no god but He, the Living, the Sustainer and
Protector. Neither slumber nor sleep overtake Him. His are all
things in the heavens and the earth. Who can intercede in His
presence except as He permits? He knows what is before and
behind them. Nor do they encompass aught of His knowledge except
as He wills. His throne does extend over the heavens and the
earth and He feels no fatigue in preserving them. For He is the
Most High, the Supreme."
The noble Qur�an, Al-Baqarah(2):255
Jacob wrestles with God. God can not win against Jacob. Jacob
sees God face to face:
"And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him
until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed
not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the
hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with
him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said,
I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto
him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name
shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast
thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob
asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he
said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he
blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel:
for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
Genesis 32:24-30
Many people claim the Jacob wrestled with an angel. Does this
sound like he wrestled with an angel? Did Jacob (pbuh) say "I
have seen the angel of God"? Did he say "I have seen the light
of God" or some other statement that might have had an abstract
meaning? No! He said "I have seen God" and just so
that there would be no doubt in anyone's mind he added the words
"face to face." If Jacob (pbuh) had wrestled with an
angel, then why would he need to say "my life is preserved"?
Do people who see angels die? (Numbers 22:31, 2 Samuel 24:17, 1 Chronicles 21:16, ...etc.). If Jacob had seen the face of an
angel then why would he name the place "the face of God"(peni-el),
and not "the face of the angel"(peni-malak)? Indeed, this is how
the great St. Augustine and many others understood this verse.
This brings up another question. How do we reconcile this with
point 25 in the table of section 2.2 (regarding seeing God)?
We are beaten over the head four times with the fact that a
human (Jacob, peace be upon him) managed to out-wrestle
God Almighty, but the translators realizing the fallacy
of this concoction continually try to reinterpret this verse and
make excuses for it. Notice how we are beaten over the head not
once, but four times with the fact that this was
GOD who was beaten by Jacob:
1) "I have seen GOD."
2) "FACE to FACE."
3) "And my life is preserved."
4) They called the place "Peniel" ("FACE OF GOD").
Are we now to believe that God wrestled with Jacob all
night, He resorted to hitting Jacob (pbuh) below the belt,
and in the end was still bested by Jacob ("I will not
let thee go, except thou bless me")? When someone has you in
a headlock and tells you: "do as I tell you," is he victorious
or not?
God forbid! High exalted is He! Illustrious! Mighty!
Magnificent! All-Powerful! Neither Moses nor Jacob would ever
make such a claim. Nor would the other prophets of God. The
great and noble prophets would never dare to claim that God had
been reduced to a punching bag to further their own egos. Notice
how we are encouraged to believe that it is not sufficient to
humbly prostrate oneself before God, bowing down and beseeching
Him for His favors in earnest prayer and in all submission.
Rather it is necessary to slap Him silly and beat Him into the
ground then force Him to bless the victor. Is this
not preposterous? Does this not reek of tampering fingers? May
God Almighty forgive me for even repeating these words.
God regrets his actions, God can not see the future, God can
not change the past:
Genesis 6:6 "And it repented the LORD that he had made man
on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."
It is not possible to regret doing something unless
the result of this action was something bad that had not been
foreseen and can not be changed. In Webster's New Dictionary
(1990), the word "repent" is defined as follows: to regret,
sorrow for, to wish to have been otherwise what one has done or
left undone.
Thus, God is claimed to be:
1) Unable to see the future: If I know for a
certainty that performing "action" will result in "result,"
then when "result" comes about I will not regret it unless I was
forced in the first place to perform "action." There is a
difference between "disliking" something and "regretting"
something.
2) Unable to change the past if he wanted to: As per
the above Webster's definition, to repent is to "wish to have
been otherwise what one has done or left undone." But if God is
capable of doing all things, as a Muslim believes, then he does
not need to "wish." He simply decrees it and it is.
Also notice that God is not merely claimed to have regretted
this action, but to have "grieved at His heart." Webster's
defines grief as: Deep sorrow caused by loss,
distress. So according to this passage, God felt the deepest
sorrow from the bottom of his heart. If one of us felt this kind
of torment and was given the means to change matters, would we
hesitate? God is not this helpless!
For the Islamic perspective on God Almighty, read the
following:
God Almighty: Al-Ikhlas(112):1-4, Kaaf(50):38,
Al-Aaraf(7):143, Al-Shurah(24):11-12, Al-Anaam(6):3,
Saba(34):27, Al-Zumar(39):1-7, Al-Hashir(59):21-24,
Al-Hadeed(57):1-6
