Can Allah be called Father?

[FaithofAbraham]

Nothing personal FoA, but I have noticed that no “orthodox” Muslims are responding, and I wish they would. Since they seem to be ignoring this thread, can you point me to a source for them as to why God should not be called Father?

There has to be a reason and I am trying to get to it. Do you know of a good Muslim website?

Maybe islamicity.com. Or one of the Muslim groups on MySpace.

 

[ralphinal]

Never mind. I found some answers on Islam101. God cannot be called Father because he is not male, there is no such thing as a Mother-God, and, most importantly, God did not call himself that in the Koran. I should point out that if teh prophet called him a name, it is good, but if a prophet did it, it is not. Therefore, for all the talk about Jesus being a prophet, he did not have the authority to call God Father.

islam101.com/tauheed/conceptofGod.htm

In other words, Muslims should not call him Father because Mohammid didn’t and neither did he in the Koran.

My other question stands, and probably will until I die: why did God change his mind?

 

[ralphinal]

Maybe islamicity.com. Or one of the Muslim groups on MySpace.

I had posted at the same time you did. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[FaithofAbraham]

Never mind. I found some answers on Islam101. God cannot be called Father because he is not male, there is no such thing as a Mother-God, and, most importantly, God did not call himself that in the Koran. I should point out that if teh prophet called him a name, it is good, but if a prophet did it, it is not. Therefore, for all the talk about Jesus being a prophet, he did not have the authority to call God Father.

islam101.com/tauheed/conceptofGod.htm

In other words, Muslims should not call him Father because Mohammid didn’t and neither did he in the Koran.

My other question stands, and probably will until I die: why did God change his mind?

That is just an opinion though, and another example of Muslims obsessing on one point and taking it to absurdity. Yes it may not be accurate to attribute human qualities like fatherhood to such an infinite being, yet Muslims will go ahead and say God is merciful like a human and pin dozens of other human attributes on Him, thereby contradicting themselves.

So it is a selective bias regarding the father quality of God, entirely due to being indoctrinated that it is a bad thing, which arises solely from its use with Jesus as a supposed demigod.

 

[ralphinal]

That is just an opinion though, and another example of Muslims obsessing on one point and taking it to absurdity. Yes it may not be accurate to attribute human qualities like fatherhood to such an infinite being, yet Muslims will go ahead and say God is merciful like a human and pin dozens of other human attributes on Him, thereby contradicting themselves.

So it is a selective bias regarding the father quality of God, entirely due to being indoctrinated that it is a bad thing, which arises solely from its use with Jesus as a supposed demigod.

When I did that search, I found a site that was clearly biased against Islam, so I did not pull info from it. One concept it had, though, is that Allah seemed to be of one mind with Muhammid in the Koran and at times reflected his thoughts. God of the Bible often disagrees with those to whom he speaks and does things that they did not choose. This could be a reflection of having only on author vs. multiple ones. It could be that the Koran is limited in scope and story where the Bible covers thousands of years. The website, again very negative on Islam, says it is because there was no devine inspiration of the Koran.

All of that said, are there times in the Koran where Muhammmid did not agree with Allah?

 

[FaithofAbraham]

All of that said, are there times in the Koran where Muhammmid did not agree with Allah?

I’m not real sure, I haven’t come across any yet that I can remember. I’ll have to Google around and see if there are any.

 

[ckonrad]

Can Allah be called Father?

No. Allah means destroyer.
From Strong’s…

Abaddon= destroying one of Rev.9

Abaddon = **“destruction”**1) ruin
2) destruction
3) the place of destruction
4) the name of the angel-prince of the infernal regions, the minister of death and the author of havoc on the earth **
Apollyon = “Destroyer”**1) the angel of the bottomless pit, the Destroyer

Allah and Saddam both mean destroyer/destruction.
Islam means submission or surrender.

So a suicide bomber is in submission to Allah the destroyer. Sound familiar?
SE

That is a bit absurd, there are many arabic speaking christians in the world, if you ever look at a bible that has been translated into arabic you would see that allah is used to refer to God. The word allah is actually two words which are Al which means “the” and illah which means “god”. Its kind of like in english we have the word god with a small g which conotates a pagan god so we capitalize the g to make it refer to God. In arabic however they dont use capital letters and have no reason to so they need to use the definte article “al” which means “the” in order to make the word Al-illah contracted into Allah in order to mean God. I think many of my arabic speaking christian friends would be somewhat offended by your logic. Its interesting to note that the word Theos in the greek of the original new testament manuscripts comes from a pagan god of agriculture if you follow the historical etymology of the word does that mean you and I worship a pagan god? Of course not its the only word the greeks had, its the same with arabic speaking people they only have the word Allah for God. I think its very important to understand that in Catholicism we MUST respect Islam in fact it is part of our canonical law, in our canon law it is just as much of a sacrilige to destroy an Islamic Mosque as to destroy a synogogue or a church. Albeit that we dont regard Islam as the perfect truth, God’s grace still operates in that religion you can go to the catechism to verify that.

-corey