How the One Becomes the Many: The Quran’s Affirmation of Plurality within Unity
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Muslims will argue that Allah is a singular person, though they may not employ that specific term, on the basis of Quranic texts which state that the Islamic deity is one. They further base this on the fact that the Quran often ascribes singular verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc. to Allah.
Suffice it to say they are major problems with this approach.
In the first place, the Muslim scripture also employs plural verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc., to describe the Islamic god:
It is We who give life, and make to die, and it is We who are the inheritors. S. 15:23
Surely We shall inherit the earth and all that are upon it, and unto Us they shall be returned. S. 19:40
No, indeed! We shall assuredly write down all that he says, and We shall prolong for him the chastisement; and We shall inherit from him that he says, and he shall come to Us alone… Hast thou not seen how We sent the Satans against the unbelievers, to prick them? S. 19:79-80, 83
Secondly, the Quran identifies other divine beings besides Allah such as the Spirit, which the Islamic text identifies as a personal entity whom Allah breathes out, that can appear as a man, is able to create and give life, is omnipresent and omnipotent, who is personally distinguished from all angels, and whose precise nature is mysterious (cf. Q. 2:87, 253; 5:110; 15:28-29; 16:2, 102; 17:85; 19:16-21; 21:91; 38:71-72; 58:22; 66:12; 70:4; 78:38; 97:4).
The Quran even depicts Allah as a subordinate deity who is subject and answers to another as his very own Lord:
We shall turn about their hearts and their eyes, even as they believed not in it the first time; and We shall leave them in their insolence wandering blindly. Though We had sent down the angels to them, and the dead had spoken with them, had We mustered against them every thing, face to face, yet they would not have been the ones to believe, unless God
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