 Save 10% with my code Bobby10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. All right, guys. Welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, very interesting video today. We're going to watch Do Muslims Believe? They are created in God's image by Dr. Shabir Ali. Extremely interesting topic for me personally, guys. I wanted to know if Muslims believe that they are created in the image of God. This is not a video recommendation of you guys. I searched for this by myself because I really want to know. Metal Effect on our upcoming podcast with Sheikh Udman Farooq. I wanted to ask him exactly about the image of God. Therefore, let's have a look. You're watching Let the Quran Speak. Now we answer questions we receive from you, our viewers. If you have a question, visit our website, QuranSpeaks.com. Dr. Shabir, the question is, do Muslims believe they are created in God's image? So we need to tease out some background for this because the question might actually be surprising to some Muslims, like what is meant by God's image. Because for Muslims, God does not look like anything we know. We cannot imagine that conceptualize a God in some form. So we are told since we are children that angels are like this. Angels are neither male nor female. So we realize from childhood in our Islamic teachings that we can even visualize what angels look like. I mean, we may see popular iconography mainly from Christian sources with angels having wings and so on. But the Quran in fact says that angels have wings or describe some angels as having wings. But they're not physical beings like us. They're spiritual beings. When we think about God in the Muslim conception, God is even beyond that. God is transcended. He is referred to in the Quran as Al-A'la. He is above everything. And the Quran says, La tu-dhrikuhu al-absarwa hu yudhriku al-absarwa hu allatifu al-khabir. No vision can grasp him, but he grasps all vision and he is subtle yet aware. So God is that subtle being. The Bible describes him as the hidden God in the book of Isaiah. Exactly. Christians do agree, even if they're Trinitarians, that the essence of God cannot be fully explained. And the image of God, it is not meant that we are created in the image of Jesus or anything like that, but in the likeness of God, that we share some sort of attributes with him. To tease out that background a little bit more in our sister religions of Judaism and Christianity, this was already discussed and that's largely where the question seems to come from. Is it a biblical concept? Yes. In the book of Genesis, in chapter one, it says that on the, you know, God created things day one, day two, day three, then on the seventh day God rests. On the sixth day, God created human beings. And then it says in the image of God, he made them. So it's interesting that he made them in the image of God, which means male and female. God made them male and female in the image of God. He made them. So what does that mean for what God looks like? Does it mean that God is both male and female? This is especially interesting to feminists because for a long time, the traditional view has been that God looks like a man and God is addressed as father. And though he, you know, God is shown to have some traditionally feminine qualities like, you know, nurturing and gathering people and so on. Gathering people is a female attribute? What? Nonetheless, the prevailing image of God is that of a father and of a man. And now in the book of Genesis, we see that God sometimes comes down in the form of a human being as a man. And he appears, for example, to Abraham. And then he dines with Abraham apparently. So the idea of God looking like a man, this became the prevailing image. And modern feminists, you know, are paying some attention to the idea that God is somehow both male and female, because that's literally what the verse seems to entail. God created them. Crazy feminists, for them it would be ideal if God was a transgender. In his image, male and female, he made them. Thinking about this imagery for God, however, Jewish interpreters like Maimonides, they have said that what is referred to here is not a physical form of God, but that human beings are created like spiritually and like God in some way. And I think this is where the Islamic tradition can pick up. The Islamic tradition says, this is mentioned in Sahih al-Bukhari as an authentic hadith that God created Adam in his image. Now, if the Prophet peace be upon him said that, then what it must mean is that the same kind of spiritual meaning that Maimonides referred to, because in the Islamic concept, just like the Jewish concept, God does not have this physical form. So it must mean that just as God is kind and compassionate and so on, human beings have been created with this, also given intelligence and language, which sets human beings in distinction. Exactly right. We can embody certain aspects of God, of course, in a very, very downgraded fashion. I believe this is what Jesus meant when he said, only God is good. We as humans, we cannot be fully good like God, but we can reflect those attributes from other created physical things that we see on earth. Thank you for sharing those interesting insights. Thank you very much. All right. And this is already it for today's video. A very short, brief explanation about the image of God. Please, as always, let me know in the comments section as well. If you agree here with Dr. Shabir Ali or is he wrong? Is it an authentic adith? I have no idea. I have to take his word for it. I personally do sympathize, however, with the explanation of the image of God. But as I said, not as a literal image, not that God is a human and he made little humans after him. But however, that his likeness can be reflected in us. All right. This is it. Let me know in the comment section what you think. If you like this video, leave it a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed already, guys, please do so. And if you want to support this channel, all the links are in the description box below. Thank you so much for your ongoing support, especially on Patreon. As always, may God bless you all. Much love and peace.