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

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’zu-bil­lahi 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.“1

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 ! Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, Respond­ing To Banal Missionary Log­ic”: Can There Be A Son With­out A Moth­er Or Father ?,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Octo­ber 26, 2005, last accessed March 29, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​q​u​r​a​n​/​s​o​n​-​w​i​t​h​o​u​t​-​p​a​r​e​n​ts/
  1. Isma’il al-Faruqi, Al-Tawhid : Its Impli­ca­tions for Thought and Life (IIIT, 1992), p. 24[]

Comments

3 responses to “Respond­ing To Banal Mis­sion­ary Log­ic”: Can There Be A Son With­out A Moth­er Or Father ?”

  1. kursi2255 Avatar
    kursi2255

    As salaa­mu alaykum to every­one. I will go straight to the point. The Holy Qur’an has refut­ed EVERY con­cept of son­ship ascribed to God, whether intend­ed as a metaphor­i­cal or meta­phys­i­cal ascrip­tion. Asim is right by say­ing that chil­dren imply the same nature as the father. A lion begets a lion,not an ox. But in the case of God hav­ing chil­dren (God for­bid!), it would be a tremen­dous absur­di­ty. God is al-Ahad (The One and The Only), that is, He is not just One ; He is entire­ly Unique, tran­scend­ing all kinds of lim­i­ta­tions, com­par­isons, and cat­e­gories. Even our Chris­t­ian broth­ers-in-human­i­ty would have to agree to this, oth­er­wise they would have to con­cede that the con­cept of God in Islam is far supe­ri­or to their con­cept of God. If He is One, Sole, Absolute­ly Unique, the case of Him beget­ting (God for­bid!) a son of like nature to Him would negate His Unique­ness. If not a Unique God, then no bet­ter than the idols poly­the­ists wor­ship. If His being Unique is negat­ed, then the whole con­cept of monothe­ism would be destroyed. If He would beget one son godling”, then there would be two Gods. If there would be two gods, we will have two worth­less, impo­tent gods who need each oth­er, and who are no bet­ter than the idols the Prophet Muham­mad (sal­lal­lahu alay­hi wa sal­lam) smashed. Besides, the begot­ten godling’ would nei­ther be eter­nal nor absolute, since being begot­ten means hav­ing an ori­gin, and hav­ing an ori­gin is not an attribute of God (Exalt­ed is He against such alle­ga­tions by Chris­tians, poly­the­ists, and their ilk!). If the one begot­ten by the Eter­nal, Ever­last­ing God is not an Eter­nal, Ever­last­ing God like Him, then that crea­ture would­n’t have been begot­ten, nei­ther can we call it a son of God. Again, a lion does­n’t beget an ox. Thus, not only the Trini­tar­i­an Chris­tians, but all Chris­tians who believe that Prophet Isa the Mes­si­ah (peace be upon him) can be called son of God’ in any sense, metaphor­i­cal, meta­phys­i­cal, or lit­er­al, are clear­ly in the wrong path. And only God knows best.

  2. Mehroz Avatar
    Mehroz

    Salam. Obser­va­tion­al Sci­ence agrees with Al-Quran in say­ing that Man can­not have a child with­out Woman. Where­as Bible is in con­flict with Obser­va­tion­al Sci­ence in say­ing that Man can have a child with­out a Woman.

    * I said Man because Chris­tians believe that their god-father is an old-Man who lives in Heaven.

  3. Asim Avatar
    Asim

    Jameal– > It was the crit­ic who wrote the Qur’an who had the prob­lem with
    > lan­guage. One is still not sure what the Qur’an means by the term
    > Son” exceept it means some­one pro­duced in the ani­mal way — Hence God
    > not hav­ing any con­sort could­n’t have a son” — but this is utter
    > confusion.

    Asim-You don;t get it at all. First of all, these argu­ments are primarily
    addressed to the poly­the­ists. Sec­ond, the poly­the­ists acknowledged
    that God has chil­dren, but NO CONSORT. The Quran is say­ing that YOU
    KNOW that God has no con­sort, and YOU KNOW that God created
    every­thing, so why is it you assert these beings as divine ?

    The first verse he quot­ed was in surah Anaam, which explci­it­ly states
    that How can He have a son when He has no con­sort?” The same verses
    dis­cuss that Allah orig­i­nat­ed the Heav­ens and the Earth out of
    noth­ing, of which even the poly­the­ists rec­og­nized. The argument
    entailed is this, and it is in this case relat­ed to the POLYTHEISTS.
    They too assert­ed that God had NO CONSORT. Yet, they ascribed to God
    children.

    It is demon­strat­ing the absur­di­ty, that that the poly­the­ists never
    ascribed to God a WIFE, yet they ascribe to God children.

    This par­tic­u­lar verse, quot­ed above, is demon­strat­ing the absru­di­ty of
    hav­ing any chi­ol­dren based upon the Absolute­ness and Tran­scen­den­cy of
    God Almighty. Thus, the notion of own­er­ship of every­thing in the
    heav­ens and the earth and the men­tion of every­thing com­ng before God
    as a slave. Chil­dren imply the same nature as the father, and this
    strikes total root against monotheism.

    First of all, the verse is direct­ed to the POLYTHEISTS.

    Sec­ond­ly, they did not believe God had a CONSORT also. Yet they still
    claimed God had chidl­ren. Wow. Impres­sive the­ol­o­gy. Why did they
    claim God had children ?

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