Can There Be A Son With­out A Moth­er Or Father ? Respond­ing To Banal Mis­sion­ary ​“Log­ic”

The mis­sion­ar­ies in their lat­est alleged claim of con­tra­dic­tions in the Qur’an have cer­tain­ly out­did them­selves in their trav­es­ty of log­ic and idiocy.

To cite the mis­sion­ary claim, word-for-word :

In the realm of the nat­ur­al this is not pos­si­ble, but for God it is pos­si­ble ; actu­al­ly, it is not only pos­si­ble, it is easy for God. It is rather iron­ic that, when dis­cussing the iden­ti­ty of Jesus, the Quran says that Allah can­not have a son with­out a con­sort, but Mary can have a son with­out a con­sort, because all things are easy for Allah.

They have quot­ed Qur’an 6:100 – 101 as follows :

“And they make the jinn asso­ciates with Allah, while He cre­at­ed them, and they false­ly attribute to Him sons and daugh­ters with­out knowl­edge ; glo­ry be to Him, and high­ly exalt­ed is He above what they ascribe (to Him). Won­der­ful Orig­i­na­tor of the heav­ens and the earth ! How could He have a son when He has no con­sort, and He (Him­self) cre­at­ed every­thing, and He is the Know­er of all things.”

This, they claim, con­tra­dicts the gen­er­al nature of the fol­low­ing verse :

He said : I am only a mes­sen­ger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a fault­less son. She said : How can I have a son when no mor­tal hath touched me, nei­ther have I been unchaste ? He said : So (it will be). Thy Lord saith : It is easy for Me. And (it will be) that We may make of him a rev­e­la­tion for mankind and a mer­cy from Us, and it is a thing ordained. Sura 19:19 – 21 Pickthall

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the mis­sion­ary, an under­stand­ing can be reached if a lit­tle more thought can be put into their argu­ment. The mis­sion­ary has tak­en the under­stand­ing of these vers­es out of its intend­ed con­text and is con­fus­ing Mary’s nature (since she is only human, and hence pro­cre­ates) as a cre­ation of the Almighty, with God Him­self, who is the Uncre­at­ed. Cer­tain­ly, God Almighty could have tak­en a ​“wife” and have ​“chil­dren” or have ​“chil­dren” with­out any con­sort what­so­ev­er (nau’zu­bil­lahi min zaa­lik).

How­ev­er, if this were to hap­pen, it would mean that the Uncre­at­ed nature of God would be affect­ed, as any­thing that is ​“pro­cre­at­ed” by God (as the Qur’an argues in 6:100) is cre­at­ed. In oth­er words, to expect the Uncre­at­ed to ​“pro­cre­ate” chil­dren, whether with or with­out a ​“con­sort” (which would also be part of the Cre­ation) is not only an affront against what God Almighty has told us about Him­self, it is also a pre­pos­ter­ous posi­tion only held by pan­the­ists and the idol­aters. It is most cer­tain­ly not in con­for­mi­ty with pure monothe­ism or on how Islam under­stands divine transcedence.

Isma’il al-Faruqi described it per­fect­ly when he says that :

“This is the first asser­tion of the Islam­ic creed that ​“There is no god but God” which the Mus­lim under­stands as denial of any asso­ciates with God in His ruler­ship and judge­ship of the uni­verse, as well as a denial of the pos­si­bil­i­ty for any crea­ture to rep­re­sent, per­son­i­fy or in any way. express the divine Being. The Qur’an says of God that ​“He is the Cre­ator of heav­en and earth Who cre­ates by com­mand­ing the crea­ture to be and it is…He is the One God, the ulti­mate… (2:117, 163). There is no God but He, ever-liv­ing, ever-active (3:2) May he be glo­ri­fied beyond any descrip­tion ! (6:100)…No sense may per­ceive Him (6:103)…Praised be He, the Tran­sce­dent Who great­ly tran­scends all claims and reports about Him (17:43).” In ful­fil­ment of this view, the Mus­lims have been all too care­ful nev­er to asso­ciate in any man­ner pos­si­ble, any image or thing with the pres­ence of the divine, or with their con­scious­ness of the divine ; and in their speech and writ­ing about the divine to use only Quran­ic lan­guage, terms and expres­sions which, accord­ing to them, God has used about Him­self in the Quran­ic rev­e­la­tion.“Ismail Faruqi, Al-Tawhid : Its Impli­ca­tions for Thought and Life (IIIT, 1992), p. 24

Hence, we say that the claim that :

S. 6:101 stands not only in ten­sion to S. 19:21, but con­flicts with sev­er­al oth­er pas­sages as well.

is not only a pre­ma­ture con­clu­sion from the mis­sion­ary, but an obvi­ous igno­rance of the doc­trine of tawheed and what Islam actu­al­ly stands for.

And only God knows best ! 

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