Anthropomorphic Allah

Often it appears that muslims think they know and have all the rights to explain christianity for christians. Imagine muslims lecturing christians why Jesus couldn't be a god since he had human attributes. I find it quite funny when Islamic preachers throw challenge to christians asking for a bible verse where Jesus claimed to be god yet try to downplay the same problem in their own religion. I can turn the table and accuse muslims of worshipping a deity who, according to Quran and Hadith, has physical attributes. We could draw quite a similitude — Just like trinitarian christians wholeheartedly accept Jesus' divinity despite him being a human, muslims consider islamic god Allah unique even though some verses of the Quran and multiple Hadiths indicate anthropomorphipm.

Allah has a face, hands, fingers, shin. Allah has an eye, foot also. Allah goes up because he has a place to stay and sit. What goes up must come down therefore allah descends!

Of course, muslims vehemently deny all these features and resort to semantic gymnastics in order to explain away the Mutashabihat... unclear, ambiguous verses.

According to the islamic scholars, there are three ways of understanding the mutashabihat Quranic verses and hadiths:

1. Tafwid which basically means uttering: "allah knows best" because we are clueless. The companions of Muhammad as well as classical scholars held the position that only allah has full knowledge of these ambiguous verses.

2. Ta’wil which means ‘figurative interpretation within the parameters of classical Arabic usage. It is to claim that these are all metaphorical or poetical figure of speech etc. Muslims who like to defend their religion generally adopt this position. After all, who likes to appear clueless in a debate? And lastly,

3. Tashbih or anthropomorphic literalism. More specifically Tasjim, meaning ascribing bodily characteristics to god. Most muslims do not agree with it except perhaps some fringe minority.

In order for allah to see or do certain things, it need not have to posses eyes, foot, hands etc. This is a collective Mind projection fallacy which was committed by the then pagan idol worshipping society. Muhammad demanded everyone should accept him as the messenger of this pagan deity and modified the deity to suit abrahamic god. But he couldn't refrain himself from humanizing this deity since it was after all, a projection of his own mind.