Author: Zulfiqar Ali Shah

Publisher: International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)

Published: 2022-01-01

Total Pages: 78

ISBN-13: 164205853X

This monumental study examines issues of anthropomorphism in the three Abrahamic Faiths, as ‎viewed through the texts of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an. Throughout ‎history Christianity and Judaism have tried to make sense of God. While juxtaposing the Islamic ‎position against this, the author addresses the Judeo-Christian worldview and how each has chosen ‎to framework its encounter with God, to what extent this has been the result of actual scripture and ‎to what extent the product of theological debate, or church decrees of later centuries and absorption ‎of Hellenistic philosophy. Shah also examines Islam’s heavily anti-anthropomorphic stance and ‎Islamic theological discourse on Tawhid as well as the Ninety-Nine Names of God and what these ‎have meant in relation to Muslim understanding of God and His attributes. Describing how these ‎became the touchstone of Muslim discourse with Judaism and Christianity he critiques theological ‎statements and perspectives that came to dilute if not counter strict monotheism. As secularism ‎debates whether God is dead, the issue of anthropomorphism has become of immense importance. ‎The quest for God, especially in this day and age, is partly one of intellectual longing. To Shah, ‎anthropomorphic concepts and corporeal depictions of the Divine are perhaps among the leading ‎factors of modern atheism. As such he ultimately draws the conclusion that the postmodern longing ‎for God will not be quenched by pre-modern anthropomorphic and corporeal concepts of the ‎Divine which have simply brought God down to this cosmos, with a precise historical function and ‎a specified location, reducing the intellectual and spiritual force of what God is and represents, ‎causing the soul to detract from a sense of the sacred and thereby belief in Him.‎