Sam Shamoun

Bassam Zawadi wrote a rebuttal (1, 2) to a specific article which uses a common philosophical argument to support God’s Triunity and self-sufficiency, namely that God is love.

It is not the aim of this paper to critique Zawadi’s response so as to show why his points do not refute the argument, but only demonstrate his inability to grasp the validity of such philosophical reasoning. Lord Jesus willing, we will do that in an upcoming rebuttal.

In this rebuttal we want to apply one of Bassam Zawadi’s counter-arguments to the Islamic conception of God since this will help to basically affirm the logical soundness of the Christian argument.

Zawadi responds:

This logic is very weak. Because then I could argue the following:-

There was no one for the Unitarian God to love in the beginning and therefore he was not All Loving. But also, there was no one for God to forgive before he created us, so that also means that God is not All Forgiving!

Anyone can see this fallacious argument crumbling already. Are Christians trying to also say that since God is triune then that means that each member of the God head forgave the other so that God could be All Forgiving? Of course not. For someone to be forgiven he would have had to commit a sin right? Well does any member of the God head commit sins? Christian will respond back and say no.

And:

Similarly:-

For any event of "forgiveness" we do need the subject who forgives, we need an object which is forgiven, and we need an expression of this forgiveness in some way, i.e. an interaction between the first two.

How ironic that Zawadi would use this example in light of the statements of the so-called sound ahadith which state that Allah deliberately created sinful humans in order to demonstrate his forgiveness!

Chapter 2: THE OBLITERATION OF SINS WITH THE HELP OF SEEKING FORGIVENESS PROM ALLAH

Abu Sirma reported that when the time of the death of Abu Ayyub Ansari drew near, he said: I used to conceal from you a thing which I heard from Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) and I heard Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: Had you not committed sins, Allah would have brought into existence a creation that would have committed sin (and Allah) would have forgiven them. (Sahih Muslim, Book 037, Number 6620)

Abu Ayyub Ansari reported that Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: If you were not to commit sins, Allah would have swept you out of existence and would have replaced you by another people who have committed sin, and then asked forgiveness from Allah, and He would have granted them pardon. (Sahih Muslim, Book 037, Number 6621)

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) having said: By Him in Whose Hand is my life, if you were not to commit sin, Allah would sweep you out of existence and He would replace (you by) those people who would commit sin and seek forgiveness from Allah, and He would have pardoned them. (Sahih Muslim, Book 037, Number 6622)

Muhammad’s statements that humans must commit sins since Allah needed to display forgiveness presuppose the validity of the philosophical argument that God being love implies that God is a multi-personal Being since genuine love can only exist and be truly expressed between at least two parties. Muhammad realized that in order for Allah to truly be forgiving he must have a way of expressing it, which necessitated the creation of rational beings.

Yet Muhammad’s statements clearly prove that Allah was in need of sinful human beings to exercise his divine prerogative of forgiveness so he created them.

Thus, Muhammad’s claims place Muslims like Zawadi in a dilemma, since Muhammad’s position basically admits that Allah is not self-sufficient but is totally dependent upon his creatures in order to express his attributes and characteristics.

This is why we had mentioned how ironic that of all the examples Zawadi could have brought up, he decided to mention the very one his prophet used in a context that basically proves that Allah is not an all-sufficient deity!

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