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Who is the creator?Manar As-Sabeel Issue 7, p.6 Rajab 1413 H. - January 1993 Dr. Jaafar Shiekh Idris Can
It Be Matter?
A very
popular question among atheists is, ‘Granted that the existence of temporal
things necessitates the existence of an eternal cause, why should that cause be
the God of religion? Why can’t matter be eternal and be therefore in no need
of an eternal creator?’ I shall argue, on an Islamic basis but at the same
time also on a rational basis, that the attribute of eternity entails other
attributes, which matter does not and cannot have, and cannot, in view of this,
play the role of the original and ultimate cause of temporal things. Muslim
theologians say that eternity of existence logically implies everlastingness.
This is true because, if something is eternal then it does not depend for its
existence on anything outside itself. If this is so then it can never pass away,
because only those things pass away that lose some of the external conditions on
which they depend for their existence. If the ultimate cause of temporal things
is eternal and everlasting, it must of necessity be self-sufficient, qayyoom
and ghanee. Can there
be more than one such creator? The Quran tells us that this is impossible; This
Quranic argument was paraphrased by some Muslims theologians in a way somewhat
like the following: The assumption that there are gods beside the one true God
leads to false consequences and must therefore be false. If there is more than
one god, then (a) if every detail of everything in the world was the result of
the action of one of the gods, it cannot at the same time be the result of the
action of another god. But if (b) some things in the world were created by some
gods, and others by other gods, then each god would rule independently over what
he created, which means that nothing in his world can even in principle, be
influenced by anything outside it. But this contradicts the observed unity and
interdependence of the world. And if that is impossible, then (c) some gods will
overcome others, but if that happens then the ones who are vanquished cannot be
true gods. There can, therefore, be no more than one creator. How does
this creator create? Since He is self-sufficient, He cannot be said to depend on
anything outside Himself in any actions, and cannot therefore be said to produce
His effects the way natural causes do. But if He is not a natural cause, He must
be a volitional agent. And since intention implies knowledge, and knowledge and
intention imply life, he must be a living being. Since He is an eternal and
everlasting being, all His attributes must reflect this quality; thus He must be
not only knowing, but all-knowing, not only powerful, but all-powerful, etc. Since no
matter in any form can answer to these attributes, and since all these
attributes are implied by the two attributes of eternity and everlastingness, no
form of matter can be either eternal or everlasting, and thus no matter of any
form can play the role of that ultimate cause. This much of the attributes that
an eternal and everlasting creator must have is enough, I suppose, to show that
it cannot be matter. But this
conclusion can be further confirmed by what modern science tells us about the
nature of matter. Why
Should He Be The God Of Islam?
Some
might say, ‘Granted that this god is a personal and living God, and that He
has the attributes which you mentioned, why should He be the God of Islam and
not, say the Christian or Jewish God?’ The God of Islam is the God of all true
prophets of God from Adam down to Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. But it is a basic
claim of the religion with which Muhammad came that previous religions
(including Christianity and Judaism) have not been kept in their pristine form
which those prophets advocated, but have been tampered with and distorted. The
only religion whose book has taken upon itself to be preserved from any such
distortions is the religion of the last of God’s prophets, namely Muhammad
(peace be upon him). This is not to say that everything in those religions is
false or bad. No! There is much in them that is good and true; it is only those
elements in them that contradict Islam which must be false or bad. But even if
they were to be purged of everything that is not in consonance with Islam, they
would still be less perfect than Islam is, especially in their conceptions of
God, therefore unsuitable for being universal religions. Having
said this, let me give one example of a non-Islamic religious belief which the
Quran considers to be a stupendous blasphemy against God, namely that He has
children. At the time of the Prophet, some Arabs believed that the angels were
the daughters of God, while some Christians believed that Jesus was the son of
God, and some Jews believed that Ezra was the son of God. Just as the Quran gave
arguments for the impossibility of there being any gods besides the one true
God, it also gave elaborate arguments to show the impossibility of Him having a
child, whether male or female. If the Creator is one and self-sufficient, then
He is also unique, ahad, “Nothing is like Him.”2
But if so then, “He neither begets nor is He begotten.”3
“How can He have a child if He has no consort, and if He created
everything?”4
The Quran is here saying that the claim that God has children contradicts the
facts (acknowledged by those who make this claim) that He is the Creator of
everything, that He is self-sufficient, and that He has no spouse. Now if He is
the creator of everything, this necessarily includes the one who is claimed to
be His child. But if this is created by Him, it cannot be His child; it has to
be one of His creations. One does not create one’s child; one begets it. If it
is insisted that the child is actually begotten and not created by God, this
will entail the following false consequences:
No wonder
than that the Quran said about those who claimed that Allah has a child, |
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