(extracted from Fast Facts on Islam)
Islam teaches that the true God is the Muslim deity, Allah. All other views of God are false because the Qur’an teaches, “The true religion with God is Islam.”[1] Thus the Qur’an emphasizes of Allah, “There is no God but he, the Living, the everlasting.”[2]
But who is Allah? Is he similar to the God of the Christian faith? First, the Qur’an stresses that Allah is one person only: “They are unbelievers who say, ‘God is the Third of Three.’ No god is there but one God. If they refrain not from what they say, there shall afflict those of them that disbelieve a painful chastisement.”[3]
Here, the Qur’an emphasizes that Christians are considered unbelievers because they accept the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity.[4] However, the Bible unmistakably teaches that God has revealed Himself as a triune Being, as One God eternally existing in three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19; John 1:1,14; Acts 5:3-4).[5] Although many Muslims think otherwise, Christians do not believe in three gods. Christians are not polytheists, but monotheists who believe in one God.
Allah also has a different character than the biblical God. It is significant, that of the “99 beautiful names for Allah,” which Muslims memorize and use for worship, not one of these names is “love” or “loving.” The Qur’an stresses that Allah only loves those who do good, and that he does not love those who are bad. Allah does not love the sinner.[6] Thus, the love of Allah and the love of the God of the Bible are distinct from each other. The biblical God does love the sinner—in fact, He loves all sinners. God does not love the sin, but He does love the sinner:
“Christ died for the ungodly…. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us…. if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:6,8,10).
Allah is primarily a God of transcendence and power, not a God of love. But the Bible declares, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
Can Allah Be Known?
Allah is ultimately unknowable and incomprehensible. In Who Is Allah in Islam?, Abd-al-Masih writes, “Allah is the unique, unexplorable, and inexplicable one—the remote, vast, and unknown God. Everything we think about him is incomplete, if not wrong. Allah cannot be comprehended.”[7] This stands in contrast to the biblical teaching that men and women can know God personally on an intimate, relational level. Consider these Scriptures: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Jesus said, “my sheep know me” (John 10:14). The apostle Paul prayed for Christian believers concerning God, “that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17). The apostle John emphasized, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
In “What Is Allah Like?” George Houssney writes,
“We humans can never know Allah, because he is so far from us and so different from us. The only knowledge Muslims may admit to is knowledge about Allah, not a personal, experiential knowledge of him. People cannot know Allah and should not even try to know him. Allah is not involved in the affairs of humans…. The Christian claim that humans can have a relationship with God is considered by Muslims to be a metaphysical impossibility. To Muslims, Allah has not revealed himself, but rather he has revealed his mashi’at (desires and wishes, i.e., his will). His will, according to Islamic teaching, is limited to Islamic law. A person performs the will of Allah when he follows the dictates of the Islamic legal system.[8]