Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Aqidah Snippet Why Do We Use He for God 04222017.mp4
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A question was asked, why is it that
Allah ta'ala is referred to with
male pronouns
in the Quran?
Isn't this
sexist
or
somehow
misogynistic?
Is this not somehow
a patriarchal
construct
of some nebulous ancient world that needs to
be overturned
now that we're more enlightened?
And the question seems kinda silly to a
number of people, and I would contend that
it is silly, but not for the reasons
people think it is.
People say there's no such thing as a
stupid question. I can't agree with that, with
a straight face while being a 100% honest.
But,
I will say that some questions are
not stupid for the reasons people think they
are, and, some questions that people may think
are stupid are not stupid at all. So,
hopefully, this will be a a teaching and
learning moment for
all of us.
So the idea before answering the question the
answer to the question should be really simple.
But the idea before answering the question within
the framework of Sunni theology
is
that
the one
not just general rule, but unlimited rule, rule
that has no exception with regards
to the nature of God
is that laysa kamitlihi shay, there's nothing like
him and there's nothing like anything like him.
Meaning if you can think of it with
your intellect
that is not what Allah is.
He is fundamentally
unknowable by the intellect, the most
perfect knowledge that the intellect can know about
Allah
is that anything can think of.
Allah is not like that thing.
So we have this issue in the text
of the Quran that sometimes,
Allah Ta'ala, the yad, the hand of Allah
is referred to,
or the,
the,
shin
is referred to, or, you know, Allah Ta'ala's
in the hadith, like the right hand side
of Allah Ta'ala's referred to, etcetera.
So the question will come up that, you
know, don't these things mean
don't these things mean that Allah Ta'a has
some sort of physical or corporeal body?
Don't they don't they imply from the direct
text of the Quran that Allah Ta'ala somehow
resembles other things? Whereas, there's this other text
that says that he doesn't resemble,
things that we can think of or know.
And Allah Ta'ala actually
addresses this
issue in his own book
also.
And he says in in in the in
the beginning, Ayat al Surah al Imran, that
he's the one who sent down the book,
and,
certain verses of the book are.
They're very clear in their delineation
and their distinction and their indication what they
mean.
So for example, the commandment to,
you know,
the the the male and female thief cut
their their hands off.
The idea is that there's something called theft.
What the legal definition of it, we can
leave to the fokaha, but there's something called
theft and whoever is guilty of it by
whatever legal standard,
that that that their you know, the amputation,
of their hand
is the punishment for it, obviously, within the
construct of a sovereign state that practices,
the law of Islam and the sacred sharia
of Islam. So don't, you know, kids don't
try this at home.
But, you know, that's very clear in his
delineation. It's not an allegory for something or
another.
That some ayaat are mukhamat. They're clear in
their delineation. It's very clear what they're talking
about.
And some ayaat, some verses of Quran are
allegorical and what they're indicating.
That as for the people who have twistedness
crookedness inside of their hearts, they will seek
those allegorical verses.
Those allegorical verses will capture their imagination.
They will not worry about the other very
simple and straightforward teachings of the Quran
that take a life to, practice and implement
and that will give so much khair and
good to a person in their life in
this world and the hereafter, like taking care
of the orphans, praying praying on time, fasting
in the month of Ramadan, giving regular zakat,
the the dew of of of the poor,
you know, being good to your parents,
you know, making, you know, solving conflicts between
people, etcetera, etcetera,
worshiping no one except for Allah Ta'ala, honoring
the messenger of Allah salallahu alaihi wa sallam,
and all of God's messengers, honoring the people
of knowledge, etcetera.
They won't they that stuff is, like, trite.
It's not interesting to them. So what they'll
do is they'll their imagination
and their attention will be all completely captured
by these allegorical,
verses,
and they'll seek those allegorical
verses out, and they'll seek the punishment of
God by trying to interpret them.
Even though nobody understands what the taweel of
those verses are. Nobody understands the correct interpretation
of those verses are. The idea in Islam
is that everybody has to come to terms
with there being certain things they'll never understand.
And if you can't come to terms with
that, then Islam is not a good religion
for you because the word Islam itself means
to submit your will to, to the Lord.
And if you can't accept that there may
be things that you don't understand,
then there's no submission there,
at all, and it's not really gonna work
out.
So,
Allah himself gives the interpretive framework of how
to deal with if there's anything,
in the Quran that's mentioned that implies,
the attributes of created things or even knowable
things to the holy essence of Allah,
then that's an incorrect interpretation.
And nobody knows except for,
nobody knows the interpretation of those allegorical,
you know, parts of the Quran except for
Allah.
And and the people who are firm in
knowledge, they say we believe in all of
it. All of it comes from our Lord.
Meaning that the parts we understand, the parts
we don't understand,
all of it
we the the common thread between all of
it is that we believe all of it
is from our Lord, but we're able to,
you know, vouch safe and consign the knowledge
of certain things with Allah to Allah and
say we don't know. And to be able
to say you don't know, to be able
to say I don't know for every Muslim
is
part of the bedrock of our of our
our tradition
and the irony is that by pretending to
know something you don't know you'll never learn
it. It doesn't mean you do know and
it will close the door it'll slam the
door shut for learning and benefiting,
in the future. Whereas if you say I
don't know even to something you do know
then maybe, the door is open for you
to even increase the knowledge more about it
and definitely the door is open for you
to know the thing that you knew not
from before. The
whole point of the wahi is to teach
insan the thing that he didn't know and
the thing that he wouldn't have known without
without that wahi and without that revelation.
So
the idea is yes. When the Quran refers
to the hand of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
or other allegorical,
references to the different sifaats, the different
attributes of Allah Ta'ala, then we say that
that any attribute that indicates
any sort of resemblance to the creation. It's
from the Mutashabeha.
It's completely allegorical. What the real meaning of
it is God knows best. He mentioned it
in his Quran
and it has a meaning. We just don't
know what that meaning is. And, whatever the
true meaning is, we consign it and vouchsafe
it to the knowledge of our Lord and
we say that Allah knows what the meaning
of this and what the meaning of it
is is something that's appropriate for His being
God,
and He knows what that is. So coming
back to the question now that we know
this is this is like a general framework
of how to deal with all of these
things.
You know, and as a small side note,
many people are atheists and I think the
reason that they're atheists is not because they
don't believe in Allah, but because they don't
believe in a kind of a human type
picture of Allah Ta'ala that many of the
Jews and Christians and even the firaqballah,
the misguided,
misguided,
sectarian groups that claim Islam,
have made for Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So
what they disbelieve in is something that we
also disbelieve in. So when the question comes
up, how come God has,
you know,
a you know, how come the male pronoun
is used for him and not the female
pronoun?
The strictly speaking,
the the the answer
that comes forth is that,
that the pronoun that is used to describe
Allah Ta'ala is
complete the fact that it carries gender is
completely one of the mutashabihat.
It doesn't imply any sort of similarity to
the creation male or female.
And an extension to that answer is that
if anybody
believes or feels
that
Allah Ta'ala has any sort of maleness
because of
the the the masculine pronoun referring to him,
then that itself is kufr. We consider that
to be disbelief.
Allah Ta' doesn't resemble his creation to attribute
attributes of the creation to him is is
is disbelief,
and it's to not know who Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is.
And,
so
in that sense then asking why is why
is the male pronoun used and not the
female pronoun used. It's,
you know, an attempt to
ascribe gender and ascribe meaning to something that
the Quran itself says that you will never
know what the meaning of it is. And
he has no similarity to his creation.
As an interesting side note by the way,
English has 3 grammatical genders. You know, you
did a difference between grammatical gender and biological
gender
And now there's like a gender identity. So,
like, grammatical gender is,
like, you know, which set of pronouns you
use to refer to something.
And biological gender is like what set of
reproductive organs you have. And now we have
also have this idea that maybe somebody may
have,
you know, they can they they may have
a a a, gender they attribute to themselves
based on their own self identity
that may be different than their biological gender
or whatever. And without getting into that, that's
fine. Maybe somebody feels like that whether legally
it receives sanction in the sharia or not.
That's a different issue but maybe someone feels
like that. They feel like that, you know,
I'm not I'm not gonna question how a
person feels inside.
The idea is
the idea is that English has 3 grammatical
genders. It has the masculine gender, the feminine
gender, and the neuter gender.
So generally for for living things that actually
have biological organs, we give
the masculine gender for those things that have
the masculine,
reproductive
organs. The female gender for those things that
have female reproductive organs and the neuter gender,
we say it for, you know, inanimate things
like the book. Right? It's a good book.
We don't say he's a good book or
she's a good book. We say it's a
good book.
We do have certain peculiar
usages. For example, we refer to like ships
as, as
as grammatically female. So we'll say, yeah, she's
a fine vessel.
It doesn't mean that like that ship can
like get pregnant and have children or has
like a certain set of genitalia or
you know, like other like, you know, other
things that we associate with the feminine gender.
It's just a custom
that we refer to a ship using
the feminine,
feminine,
feminine,
grammatical gender because there's a difference between grammatical
gender and biological gender. Well, Arabic has
Arabic has 2 genders. It has,
masculine and feminine.
So, for example, you'll say he's a good
book
and you'll say she's a very hot fire
and you'll say she's a beautiful,
you know, she's a beautiful sky and she's
a beautiful sun and he's a beautiful moon.
Does that mean that the sun is, you
know,
you know, the sun has periods and the
moon has
is able to like, you know, like get,
you know, something else pregnant or that like,
you know, you know, fire is filled with
estrogen
whereas water is filled with testosterone,
or any of these things. Absolutely not. It's
a completely it's a grammatical issue. There
it's a completely grammatical issue. And so it
is possible in
in Arabic for things to take grammatical gender
without having any sort of
without having any sort of connection to some
sort of biological,
something or another. Now, is it misogynistic
to say that fire is feminine and water
is masculine?
You know, someone can have that debate as
long as, as long as, like, philosophy and
linguistics departments have funding. I'm sure there'll be
all sorts of,
you know, papers written on about it,
Imagining the other, cross interdisciplinary
narratives regarding, grammatical gender and misogyny in, you
know, classical Arabic literature or whatever. It's fine.
Hey, man. Someone funds you. More power to
you.
Grad school, you know, paid off. Cha ching.
You can go fly around and present at
conferences and stuff like that. And, you know,
I'm not I'm not gonna hate on another
person for, you know,
making a living. But the idea is that
the the idea that like, you know, a
person would conceive. I think the greater tragedy
in all of this is that a person
could
conceive of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala who created
the heavens and the earth from nothing to
whom even time and space are microcosm of
His
creation. They they even time and space don't
envelope him. That, you know, that that people
would look at Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala who
transcends all of these,
all of these,
all of these small things and in front
of whom all things are small that someone
could try to, you know,
capture him into
such a very small limited understanding
anthropomorphic understanding
that that could be an issue for a
person. I'm not insulting the person asking the
question. I'm just saying that you know in
retrospect after having explored the issue slightly that
that's, you know, that's a little unfair with
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. So,
Allah Ta'ala Insha'Allah
forgive us for our sins and Allah Ta'ala,
honor us by allowing His greatness to enter
into our heart and may He rectify
our our thoughts and our feelings and our
speech and our actions,
that they'd be pleasing to Him, and that
we worship him in the way that pleases
him and that he accepted from us on
the day of judgment
and that he, continue to shower his blessings
on us in this world and the hereafter
and that he'd be pleased with us.