God being Female?

I was wondering, whether if the Q’uran explicitly states the gender of Allah, and if it does whether it is important.

God in many religions is known as genderless, yet the term HE, HIS, HIM is used quite often, suggesting God as a male gender person.

Having said that. If God is all-perfect, self-existing, what is the purpose of God having a GENDER to begin with? He has no need of re-production, nor does he need sexual satisfaction (since he is all-satisfied).

I am sure, many of you guys may have not thought up such a topic in depth. Since, it does seem like an obvious question, yet it does contradict alot of religious theories quite nicely.

Arai

We Muslims are not alow to go in depth with such topic. Allah has ordered us not to, he will reveal and tell us about himself on the judgement day. With that said: I will have to press the submit button. Take it easy.

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PS: I will post some readings on this topic, you can clarify any misunderstanding or such! Good Luck.

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V~V~VHe came, He saw, He conqueredV~V~V**

Hi arai,

The Quran does not explicitly state that Allah is a male.

I am quite certain that the Islamic word for GOD i.e. Allah is neither a feminine or masculine word, therefore any suggestions that they are male or female have completely no ground.  

As for Him or He being used, well that is just patriarchal society for you, everywhere.

Please anyone feel free to correct me.

[This message has been edited by Mariah (edited November 07, 2000).]

Take this translation of the meaning of Quran:

[quote]
[2:28]
28. How can you disbelieve in Allah? Seeing that you were dead and He gave you life. Then He will give you death, then again will bring you to life (on the Day of Resurrection) and then unto Him you will return.
[/quote]

In the English translation, Allah is referred to as 'he'. I'm not sure how the original Arabic Text compares.

Anyone know enough Quranic Arabic here to comment?

Allah or God has created genders.He Himself is certainly above genders etc.Having said that the fact is that Muslims have been advised not to think too deeply in such issues as we can never completely understand God.He is beyond our imagination.
As for languages all languages use 'he' for God as that is a linguistic requirement.All things are either he she or it.Allah is not 'it' i mean linguistically speaking.The Quran does not use 'she' for Allah.nowhere is it used in islamic literature either.So 'he' it is.This also has nothing to do with patriarchal society.So the use of 'he' doesnot attribute any gender to Allah.

Sorry, I didnt mean patriarchal society, rather male dominated society. I`m feeling a bit dizzy today

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Ahmed,

  I feel it does has something to do with the society.  If women ruled then they would use "she" not he for translations. However as men rule they use "he" in their translations.

Mariah,
I don't really want to debate this issue but I don't think that translations have anything to do with male dominated society.I did allude in my earlier post to the fact that the Quran itself uses the word 'he' to refer to God.Translations have to follow that.
But that is for arabic.All languages throughout history have used this word to go with God.And Quran was not the first book revealed.
My main point here is don't bring in society.You don't have to bring in male dominance everywhere.Allah has no gender, that's all.The scriptures use 'he' so we have to stick with that.

Arai yaar, the word HE doesn’t exclusively means a masculine form.

The tense can also be used in a generic sense or when the gender is unspecified
e.g <he that hath ears to hear, let him hear -- Matthew 11:15 >
e.g
e.g .

Browse through any lexicon, the word “He” is always gender non-specific.

[This message has been edited by Zalim (edited November 07, 2000).]

Yes zalim,
Exactly my point.

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Arai, interesting question…

In order to answer this question a basic knowledge of Arabic grammer is useful.

First look at the English language. Effectively it only has three genders: masculine, feminine and neutral.

Now look at the Arabic language. It only has two genders: masculine and feminine.

Now “He” in arabic is called hua i.e. for the masculine gender.
“She” in arabic is called hia this time for the feminine gender.

Because there is no neutral gender in Arabic, then Hua translates into English as “He” and “It”. Hia translates into English as “She” and “It”.

Now let us look at the feminine case…

In Arabic, there are certain criteria for the word to be feminine i.e. using hia.

Any of the following criteria makes a word feminine:

i) If the word being feminine by its nature.

For example, mum, daughter etc.

Now look at the word “Allah”. We know that Islam says that Allah has no gender. So this particular criteria does not apply here.

ii) If the word ends in a “t”.

Does the word “Allah” end in a “t”? No. So this particular criteria does not apply here.

iii) If the word is plural for something.

For example, hands, eyes etc.

Is the word “Allah” plural? No. From Islam, we know that there is only One God. This is explicitly stated throughout the Qur’an e.g. the first line of Surah Al-Ikhlas:
Qul Huallahu Ahad….

It is quite clear that the word “Allah” cannot be feminine by any of these criteria.
So by default the masculine term is generally used for the word “Allah”. This is why you see the word “hua” which means “he” or “it” in the Qur’an. The issue lies in the Arabic grammer itself. Not Islam.

I hope this helps.

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They shoot partypoopers, don’t they?

We use HE to address Allah (SWT), Understanding the nature of Allah (SWT) is beyond human comprehension. We simply cannot think of Allah (SWT) in human terms. In pre-Islamic Jaahilia era, there were many Gods and they had different names. Along with all those Gods, The name ALLAH was used as One God the gender was considered as "HE", besides there was a female GOD called ALLAT. But Allah (SWT)picked up ALLAH as the name for him to be called by the humanity.

[This message has been edited by Musalman (edited November 08, 2000).]