Is THEM Guilty of Shirk? - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

Sunna is a formless, invisible God affirmed. These sources are twisted out of shape in order to impose this
god on them. But as I have demonstrated in my writings, these sources actually affirm an
anthropomorphic and visible Allah who has a beautiful human-like form after which Adam‘s form was
modeled.
2. Qur‟anic “Proof” that Allah is Not a Man?
The Qur‘an does not explicitly affirm or deny that Allah is man. Such clarification was left to
Allah‘s Prophet, Muhammad ibn Abd Allah, who did just that (see below). However, Bro. Mubaashir
claims that in the Qur‘an ―Allah makes it plain…that He is not a man…‖ He says further:
Equally curious is the way that Dr. Wesley has tried to circumvent Allah's proof in the Qur'an that He
(Allah) is not a human being. In Sura 4:1 Allah says "O men! Reverence Allah who created you and your
mate from a single soul and from them scattered like seeds countless men and women."
Sura 4:1 along with Surat al-Ikhlas (112) are the two ―proofs‖ Bro Mubaashir alleges ―makes plain‖ that
Allah is not a man. I will address Surat al-Ikhlas in Part Two of this response.
The first verse of Surat al-Nisa‘ [4] reads: ―O People (Yā ayyuha al-nās)! Reverence your Lord
Who created you from a single Person/Soul (nafs) and created, of like nature, his mate and from these two
scattered many men (rijālan) and women.‖ Bro. Mubaashir apparently assumes this verse is a ―proof‖ that
Allah is not a man because here it is affirmed that Allah created rijālan (men) and nās (people). This is a
very shallow engagement of the Qur‘an that takes no account of its philological context.
Bro. Mubaashir is apparently unaware of the distinct connotations of the different words in
Arabic for ‗man‘. To illustrate the relevance of this philological fact to our subject, allow me to cite the
Biblical Hebrew example. Hebrew has five words (plus their derivatives) for man: „îsh, geber, ‘ādhām, ‘ enôš
and mt. The last two terms (‘ enôš and mt) connote human frailty and weakness and as such are never
applied to God. It is a different story, however, with „îsh and geber. These two terms connote strength,
kingship, and spirituality and the Hebrew Bible declares that God is this sort of man: Yahweh is an „îsh
and geber or rather gibbôr, mighty man. The Book of Exodus states emphatically YHWH „îsh milhāmāh,
―Yahweh is a man („îsh) of war (15:3).
We find the same linguistic circumstance with Arabic. There are several terms for ―man‖ or
―human,‖ each with distinct connotations. The general term for ―mankind‖ or ―human being‖ is bashar.
This term derives from the verb bashara which means ―to peal, scrap, shave off; to grate, shred.‖ It also
means ―peal the hide or skin off‖. The noun bashara means external skin closest to the flesh (epidermis). It
is thus a cognate of the Hebrew word bāsār ―flesh‖. The Arabic term bashar thus indicates that human
beings are ‗fleshy‘ and it associates them with ―scrapes‖. It also hints at humans as sexual beings: Form III
of the verb means ―to touch; to have sex with‖. We can understand why this term is never associated with
God. In the Hebrew, God is a kingly, spiritual man („îsh/ gibbôr) but He is emphatically disassociated from
bāsār ―flesh.‖
For related reasons the common term for man, rajul, would be disassociated from Allah, the Most
High as well. The lexicons tell us that a rajul is specifically an adult male from among bashar or human
beings (See Lane s.v.). The ―lowness‖ of this designation is inherent, as it is related to ―feet‖. The verb
rajala means ―to go on foot‖ and rijl is foot or (lower) leg. Those familiar with Arabic culture and the taboo
associated with feet therein understand immediately why this term would be inappropriate as a
designation for God. The term nās may be derived from nāsa, yanūsu, ―to hang down; to be in a state of
19