Who is Allah?

In English, we use the word ‘God’ to mean a creator. Allah is a word that predates Islam, and in fact, it is a a contraction of the word ‘al-llah’ which means ‘the God’. The word is connected to the similar sounding words in Aramaic (elah) and Hebrew (eloah). For muslims, the word Allah has a deeper meaning, can be roughly translated in English to ‘God, the one and only, who has no partners or helpers’.

To muslims, the word Allah is followed by ‘(SWT)’ – which in arabic means ‘Subhanahu wa-ta’ala’. The translation is – ‘Glory be to him, the most exalted’. Going forward, I will use this when mentioning our creator.

Allah (SWT) has qualities and these qualities(or attributes) are summarized in his names. In other words, you may hear when muslims refer to the creator, they use his attributes instead. This is nothing more than appreciation of the creator and being in awe of his mighty and mercy. There are 99 attributes (sometimes called 99 names of Allah (SWT)).

The basic concept of Allah (SWT) that all muslims believe are:

  1. He is the creator of everything and everyone
  2. He has no partners, family or anyone he depends on. His creation can talk to him directly and he knows everything that is in the hearts.
  3. He is unlike anything we can think of – we use the word ‘He’ as in linguistics it represented a King, but the truth is, Allah (SWT) can’t be imagined.
  4. He is unseen – no one has, or will be able to see him – this is one of his attribute – and seeing him means limiting him to the space, and space is our concept and is limiting.
  5. He is just – and this is why to be a muslim, you must believe in the day of judgement. If you have done anything wrong to anyone (even to a non muslim), you will have to face accounting of your deeds. All our actions are recorded by 2 angels assigned to us and on the day of judgement, we will have to answer to these actions.
  6. He is merciful – and this fact is very visible in the muslim holy book of Qur’an. For example, majority of the chapters in the Qur’an start with ‘Bismillahi-rahmani-rahim’ – which means, ‘In the name of Allah, the beneficient and the merciful’. He shows mercy to all his creation

Muslims pray to Allah (SWT) every day, and part of the prayer is to prostrate your head down on the ground. This is a form of submittion to the creator – in other words, accepting the fact that the creator is there, He is listening, He knows and that He is just and merciful.

Here is a link of 99 names of our creator on Youtube.