Why Quran uses masculine pronouns (He/Him/His) for Allah?

๐–๐ก๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐ซ๐š๐ง ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ž๐ฌ ๐ฆ๐š๐ฌ๐œ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐ž ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ๐ง๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ฌ (๐‡๐ž/๐‡๐ข๐ฆ/๐‡๐ข๐ฌ) ๐Ÿ๐จ๐ซ ๐€๐ฅ๐ฅ๐š๐ก?


Mohamad Mostafa Nassar

Twitter:@NassarMohamadMR

Some people raise the question as to why Muslims refer to Allah with masculine pronouns when they say He has no gender and is not like unto anyone.

In order to understand the whole idea, please consider the following points:

Natural and Grammatical genders:

There are two kinds of gender; 

1) Natural (Haqeeqi), related to oneโ€™s biological bearing and 

2) Grammatical (Majazi) considering their usage in the language.


These two kinds of genders are found in many languages but more especially in Arabic. Ibn Sida in his classical Arabic grammar book quotes Al-Farisi as saying:

ูˆุงู„ุชุฃู†ูŠุซู ุนู„ู‰ ูˆุฌู‡ูŠู† ุชุฃู†ูŠุซู ุงู„ู…ุนู†ู‰ ูˆุชุฃู†ูŠุซู ุงู„ุงุณู…ู

โ€˜There are two kinds of femininity: femininity of meaning and femininity of wording.โ€™ (Al-Mukhassas 4/135)

And obviously the same goes for masculinity.

In Arabic Sun is feminine and Moon is masculine, surely they have no gender but thatโ€™s what their etymological form makes of them.

Even in English states and ships are referred to with feminine pronouns. This fact does not assign them a de facto gender as in humans and animals.

Arabic has no neutral gender:

An important point we need to keep in my mind is that Arabic has no neutral gender so there is nothing like โ€˜itโ€™ in Arabic. Everything is referred to using either masculine or feminine pronouns.

‘Allah’ (ุงู„ู„ู‡) cannot be feminine according to the rules of Arabic:

In fact the makeup of the word ุงู„ู„ู‡ (Allah) is such that it cannot be feminine for;

1- A word is feminine in Arabic if it is so by nature like ุฃู… i.e. umm but obviously Allah is not feminine by nature.

2- A word is feminine if it ends with the third of the Arabic alphabet i.e. taa like ู…ุฑูˆุญุฉ (fan). This is not the case with the word ุงู„ู„ู‡ (Allah).

3- A word is feminine if it ends with ุข i.e. Alif Mamduda and indeed this also is not the case with the word ุงู„ู„ู‡ (Allah).

4- Something can be feminine if it happens to be in pairs like ุนูŠู†ูŠู† (eyes) or ูŠุฏูŠู† (hands). Certainly, this is not the case with the word ุงู„ู„ู‡ (Allah).

These points clarify that the makeup of the word Allah does not allow us to refer to it with feminine pronouns.

๐‹๐ž๐ญ ๐ฎ๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐š๐ญ๐œ๐ก ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ฌ ๐ฏ๐ข๐๐ž๐จ: ๐–๐ก๐ฒ ๐ข๐ฌ ๐€๐ฅ๐ฅ๐š๐ก ๐š๐ฅ๐ฐ๐š๐ฒ๐ฌ ๐ซ๐ž๐Ÿ๐ž๐ซ๐ซ๐ž๐ ๐ญ๐จ ๐š๐ฌ โ€˜๐‡๐ž/ ู‡ูˆโ€™ ๐š๐ง๐ ๐๐จ๐ญ โ€˜๐ฌ๐ก๐ž/ ู‡ูŠโ€™ | ๐€๐ซ๐š๐›๐ข๐œ๐Ÿ๐ŸŽ๐Ÿ

Masculinity generally denotes Majesty:

If one asks why to use the masculine pronoun for Allah and not feminine then the answer is that generally masculinity represents Majesty and femininity denotes meekness and softness. And as the primary relation of man with Allah is that of a humble servant to his lord so the masculine pronouns suit more the Divine Majesty.

Last word:

Masculine pronouns used for Allah do not give any anthropomorphic sense because it is normal at least considering the Arabic language convention. And it, we may say, denotes the Divine Majesty.

INDEED ALLAH KNOWS THE BEST!

โ€ฆby Waqar Akbar Cheema

๐ˆ๐ง ๐œ๐š๐ฌ๐ž ๐ญ๐ก๐ž ๐‚๐ก๐ซ๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐š๐ง๐ฌ ๐š๐ญ๐ญ๐š๐œ๐ค ๐ˆ๐ฌ๐ฅ๐š๐ฆ ๐š๐›๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ž โ€œ๐‘๐จ๐ฒ๐š๐ฅ ๐–๐žโ€ (๐–๐ž, ๐”๐ฌ, ๐Ž๐ฎ๐ซ) ๐ข๐ง ๐“๐ก๐ž ๐†๐ฅ๐จ๐ซ๐ข๐จ๐ฎ๐ฌ ๐‡๐จ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐๐ฎ๐ซ๐š๐ง. ๐‘๐จ๐ฒ๐š๐ฅ ๐–๐ž (๐Œ๐š๐ฃ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐œ ๐๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ซ๐š๐ฅ) ๐š๐ฅ๐ฌ๐จ ๐ž๐ฑ๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ ๐ข๐ง ๐ญ๐ก๐ž๐ข๐ซ ๐๐ข๐›๐ฅ๐ž.

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