What do you think of when I ask you if God is male or female? Or better yet what image comes to mind when I ask you to picture God? Is it a man in the sky, with a beard perhaps? God has been pictured as an old white man since the Renaissance for European Christians to a stoner in Family Guy. Such images would be unthinkable in Judaism and Islam, as God isn’t seen as a physical being that lives on clouds. Ironically on the topic of God and gender, both Islam and Judaism relatively agree on a few aspects…..in fact, the two religions are far more similar than they are with Christianity. Which makes sense as Christians are the older sibling, while Islam is the younger child who likes to say they don’t like mom but are in fact exactly like mom. Analogies aside, Ms and Js don’t believe Jesus was God or the physical representation of God. It is forbidden in Sunni Islam to depict God or any of the Prophets, or otherwise your creating shirk.

The real reason Muslims don’t depict God is that we don’t know what God looks like. There isn’t a verse in the Quran or in the Bible that describes God’s appearance. The text alludes we were created in God’s image but so were the angels and they definitely do not appear human-like. If we were created in God’s image, then perhaps God looks like us? Well, which one does God look like then a male or female? Because God created us both in his image, soooo that means…..God is two genders? There are plenty of Christian arguments about this, all leading down to proving God is male since he is the “heavenly father” with a “son”. In Islam God is not a heavenly father nor begotten a son. In fact, the Quran says multiple times he is not a father, his miracle of the virgin birth can happen again if he so chooses.

How do Muslims view God, why use words like “he” if God is supposed to be Genderless? God is unrepresentable, to great for us mere humans to fully understand the capability of it. Such so even the angels can not see the full might of God. The concept of Tawhid plays as hand as it is God is one and God is Incomparable to anything, including ourselves. Surah 112states, “Say, He is God, the One. God, the Absolute.  He begets not, nor was He begotten. And there is none comparable to Him.” According to Izutsu God can only be known indirectly, through nature, science, art, and etc. The Quran tells us that “wherever you turn, there is the face of God” (2:115). God is above gender because gender is a representation of sexual characteristics. God is not the father but the God of thy fathers, as translated in English. The Hebrew Bible also states Yahweh is God of our fathers before being the father.

God is beyond any anthropocentric comparison, so Islamic theology used ungendered divine attributes to relate to God. These attributes are apart of the 99 names of God in Islam. God is Al-Rahman and Al-Rahim. Yet God is also Malki? The Ruler or King why is the word masculine if God is gender-neutral or really nothing. Arabic is a gendered language that favors the masculine pronouns. In Spanish if there is a group of girls we call them “ellas” but if there is a group of boys it is “ellos”, now if there is a group of girls with one boy it becomes “ellos” and not “ellas”. Arabic works the same way, so even if God is gendered neutral the language is not. This gender neutrality is problematic for those gen-zers wanting to be completely ungendered, so languages are improving in incorporating new words. The language of the Prophet’s time wasn’t gender-neutral, but the people understood the context in which it was spoken and Muslims have maintained the concept of God’s gender neutrality throughout history. Allah is the Arabic word for God and its pronoun is huwa or he, but not to be confused with humanity’s masculinity. God also refers to itself in the Quran as I, he, we and they.

In a very abstract view, God is the vastness of nothingness. Well, at least that’s how I prefer it. Even though Muslims generally believe God is gender-neutral we still use the pronoun “He” while referring to him, instead of it. It is perhaps that some generally believe use the term “its all-powerfulness” vs “his all-powerfulness” falls on the word “it” being seen as rude or sacrilegious. Since most of the prominent Prophets were men or the ones written down at least, as we know in the Bible that there were female Prophets, human men began to assert their patriarchal dominance over women. It also wasn’t relatively keen to use she or Goddess because of the Goddess cults, to separate themselves as different “He” was used more often. This is of course speculation, but humans just like to gender things. We gender rocks, trees, and etc from a very young age. Even gender neutralizing something is still gendering something. Yet throughout history, people wanted to feel closer to God, since we can not know God or only allude to God, using pronouns like “He” or “Him” ground us to an aspect of it.

Trust me, humans don’t like the idea of the gender-neutral primordial light void in the sky that doesn’t think or act like a human. That’s right God isn’t human nor an animal, it doesn’t act or think like us. It isn’t wrong to use he, I use He or him not because I mentally think of God as a “He”. I don’t like even to think of God as God, because it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what it is. That’s one of the reasons Allah has 99 names, each one attributing to an attribute/aspect of God. Now, there have been Muslims who tried to describe God sitting on a throne and being physical. As there are Jews who did so and then quickly yelled at by Rambam….seriously if you’ve never read Rambam do it! So if it makes you feel better to use he or she to refer to God, than do so as long as you understand Islamically God is genderless nothingness.