The Root
The Greatness of God
None of us has ever seen God. What we have is what He has told us about Himself in the Quran, and the creation all around us, which shows His work everywhere we look.
He is the One GOD; there is no other god besides Him. Knower of all secrets and declarations. He is the Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
[59:22]None of us has ever seen God, and none of us will see Him in this life. What we have is what God has told us about Himself in the Quran, and the creation all around us, which shows His work everywhere we look, from the sky above us to the inside of our own bodies.
Let's go through this together, step by step. First, we will look at what the Quran tells us about who God is. After that, we will look at the signs God placed in the sky, and then the signs on the earth and inside ourselves. At the end, we will look at what all of this means for us, and how it should shape the way we live.
You can read the page from top to bottom, which is the best way to follow it, or you can go straight to any part that interests you, since each part also makes sense on its own.
On This Page
The page has four parts. At the end of each part, you will find the questions most people usually ask about that topic, along with their answers from the Quran.
Who God Is
When we think about God, most of us, without even realizing it, picture Him as the biggest or the strongest thing in a list of things, something like a very powerful king, only much greater. This is the first mistake almost everyone makes, so it is worth clearing it up before we go any further.
God tells us very clearly: “There is nothing that equals Him.” [42:11] This means God is not simply at the top of a list of powerful things. He is not part of that list at all, because nothing He created can be compared to Him. God also tells us: “No visions can encompass Him, but He encompasses all visions.” [6:103]
So whatever picture we form of God in our mind is really a picture of something He created, only made bigger, and that picture will always be wrong. Instead of giving us a picture, God gave us His names. His names tell us how He deals with us and what He is like, rather than what He looks like, and that is knowledge we can actually understand and use.
God tells us: “To Him belong the most beautiful names” [20:8], and He also tells us to use them when we call on Him: “call upon Him therewith, and disregard those who distort His names.” [7:180]
Some of the Names God Gave Us
Below are some of the names God used to describe Himself in the Quran. Next to each name, you will find the verse it comes from, so you can read it for yourself.
The One and only
God has no partner, no equal and no family. Everything else that exists, from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy, is something He created.
[112:1-4]
The Living, the Eternal
“Never a moment of unawareness or slumber overtakes Him.” [2:255] This means God has never been unaware of His creation, not even for a single moment, from the very beginning until now.
[2:255]
The Most Gracious, Most Merciful
These two names open every sura of the Quran except one. Sura 9 is the only sura that does not begin with this opening statement, so we are reminded of God's mercy at the start of almost every sura we read.
[59:22]
The Creator, the Initiator, the Designer
These are three names in one verse, and each one describes something different: bringing something into being, starting it from nothing, and then giving it its shape and design.
[59:24]
Knower of all secrets and declarations
Whatever we say out loud and whatever we keep to ourselves, God knows both equally well. Nothing we hide in our hearts is hidden from Him.
[59:22]
The Alpha and the Omega
“He is the Outermost and the Innermost.” [57:3] God was there before anything existed, He will be there after everything ends, and He surrounds all of creation while also knowing everything inside it.
[57:3]
The Almighty, Most Wise
God's power and His wisdom are mentioned together in this verse. This is important, because power without wisdom would be something to be afraid of, while God's power always comes together with perfect wisdom.
[59:24]
He Knows Everything
The verse most of us learn first is the one that tells us God never stops watching over His creation: “GOD: there is no other god besides Him, the Living, the Eternal. Never a moment of unawareness or slumber overtakes Him.” [2:255]
God then tells us how far His knowledge reaches, all the way down to the smallest details of the earth: “Not a leaf falls without His knowledge. Nor is there a grain in the depths of the soil. Nor is there anything wet or dry, that is not recorded in a profound record.” [6:59]
His knowledge also goes in both directions, from the very small to the very large, and nothing in between is missed: “Not even the equivalent of an atom's weight is hidden from Him, be it in the heavens or the earth. Not even smaller than that, or larger (is hidden).” [34:3]
But the verse that touches most people is not about the stars or about atoms. It is about what goes on inside our own mind, the thoughts we carry with us every day: “We created the human, and we know what he whispers to himself. We are closer to him than his jugular vein.” [50:16] The “We” in this verse is God speaking about Himself.
In other words, God knows even the thoughts we have never said out loud to anyone, and He is closer to us than any person in our life could ever be.
He Holds Everything
The Quran gives us a picture of the whole of creation held in God's hand: “They can never fathom the greatness of GOD. The whole earth is within His fist on the Day of Resurrection. In fact, the universes are folded within His right hand.” [39:67]
Let's think about the scale of this. Our universe has a billion galaxies and a billion trillion stars, and it stretches across many billions of light-years. We understand that our universe is the smallest and innermost of seven universes, and God tells us in this verse that the universes are all folded within His right hand.
God also tells us how much effort it takes Him to hold all of this together, and the answer is that it takes no effort at all: “His dominion encompasses the heavens and the earth, and ruling them never burdens Him.” [2:255] Nothing in creation stays in place on its own either, because everything depends on God holding it: “GOD is the One who holds the heavens and the earth, lest they vanish. If anyone else is to hold them, they will most certainly vanish.” [35:41]
God also tells us, in a gentle way, that there is a limit to how much of His greatness we are able to understand: “If all the trees on earth were made into pens, and the ocean supplied the ink, augmented by seven more oceans, the words of GOD would not run out.” [31:27]
So far, we have looked at what God has told us about who He is. From here, we will start looking at what God has created, beginning with the sky above us, then the earth, and then ourselves.
Questions About Who God Is
Why does the Quran give God names instead of describing what He looks like?
Because any description of what God looks like would end up describing something created, and God is not a created thing. God tells us this directly: “There is nothing that equals Him.” [42:11] He also tells us that our eyes are not able to see Him: “No visions can encompass Him, but He encompasses all visions.” [6:103] So whatever picture we might draw of God, it would really be a picture of something He made, and not of Him. The names work in a different way. They tell us how God deals with us and what He is like, and God tells us to use them when we call on Him: “To GOD belongs the most beautiful names; call upon Him therewith.” [7:180] This is knowledge we can actually use in our daily life, every time we pray or remember Him.
If God already knows what we are thinking, what is the point of praying?
Prayer is not there to tell God something He doesn't already know. The purpose of prayer is to turn us towards Him. God tells us He is closer to us than our jugular vein, and that He knows what we whisper to ourselves [50:16]. He also tells us: “I am always near. I answer their prayers when they pray to Me.” [2:186] Both of these are true at the same time: God already knows what we need, and He still answers us when we call on Him. The Contact Prayers were decreed for our own benefit, and God tells us why: “observe the Contact Prayers (Salat) to remember Me.” [20:14] So when we ask God for something He already knows about, the asking itself is how we keep Him in our mind and in our heart.
Is God male? The Quran keeps saying “He”.
No. God is neither male nor female. The word “He” is used because of the limits of language, and not because it describes God in any way. The verse that settles this question is a short one: “There is nothing that equals Him.” [42:11] Being male or female belongs to created things, and God is the One who created the pairs in the first place [42:11]. God also tells us He has no family of any kind: “Never did He beget. Nor was He begotten. None equals Him.” [112:3-4] He has no son, no wife and no family line. Since Arabic does not have a neutral word for a person, the translation keeps the word the Arabic uses, which is “He”.
Signs in the Sky
Now that we have looked at what God has told us about Himself, let's look at the first of the signs He placed in His creation, which is the sky above us. You will notice that God does not simply ask us to believe what He says about the sky. He invites us to go out and look at it ourselves, as many times as we want:
“He created seven universes in layers. You do not see any imperfection in the creation by the Most Gracious. Keep looking; do you see any flaw? Look again and again; your eyes will come back stumped and conquered.” [67:3-4]
The Quran mentions seven universes in several places, and each time the description is the same. They are above us, and they are in layers: “We created above you seven universes in layers, and we are never unaware of a single creature in them.” [23:17] And in another verse: “Do you not realize that GOD created seven universes in layers?” [71:15]
The lowest universe is the one we are able to see. God tells us: “He completed the seven universes in two days, and set up the laws for every universe. And we adorned the lowest universe with lamps, and placed guards around it.” [41:12] In another verse, the adornment of this lowest universe is described as planets [37:6], and the sun is described as a lamp [71:16].
This is very clear to us from these verses: there are seven universes, in layers, above us, and the lowest one, which is ours, is lit and guarded. God has told us about the lowest universe, but He has not told us what the other six contain, so we leave that knowledge with Him and do not make any claims about it.
A Sky That Is Still Expanding
God also tells us that the sky is not finished. He describes it as something He is still working on, and still expanding: “We constructed the sky with our hands, and we will continue to expand it.” [51:47]
He also tells us how the heavens and the earth began, as one mass that was exploded into existence: “Do the unbelievers not realize that the heaven and the earth used to be one solid mass that we exploded into existence?” [21:30]
Some numbers can help us understand the size of what we are talking about, at least for a moment. Light from the sun reaches us in a little over eight minutes. For light to travel from one side of our own galaxy to the other, it takes about a hundred thousand years, and our galaxy alone has a few hundred billion stars.
Please remember that all of this is only in the lowest of the seven universes. Keep that in mind, and then read the verse about the universes folded within His right hand one more time [39:67]. As you will realize, it reads very differently the second time.
Each One in Its Own Orbit
The night sky does not only show us God's power. It also keeps time for us, with an accuracy that people have relied on for thousands of years.
God tells us: “And He is the One who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon; each floating in its own orbit.” [21:33] The same picture comes again in another verse, this time with the timing explained: “The sun is never to catch up with the moon—the night and the day never deviate—each of them is floating in its own orbit.” [36:40]
God also tells us that this movement is exact, and not approximate: “The sun and the moon are perfectly calculated.” [55:5]
This is the reason we are able to have a very reliable and exact calendar. God tells us that He designed the phases of the moon for this purpose: He “designed its phases that you may learn to count the years and to calculate.” [10:5]
Anyone can be impressed by how big the sky is. What should really bring us to worship God is that He keeps all of it in such exact order that we can plan our days, our months and our years by the movement of the sky, and still be correct hundreds of years later.
Questions About the Sky
What are the seven universes? We only know of one.
We only know the lowest one, which is our own universe. God tells us there are seven universes, in layers, but He only describes the one we live in. He says: “We created above you seven universes in layers, and we are never unaware of a single creature in them.” [23:17] Our universe is the one God adorned with lamps and placed guards around [41:12]. This is how we understand it: our universe, with its billion galaxies and billion trillion stars, is the smallest and innermost of the seven. The Quran does not tell us what is in the other six universes, so we should not make any claims about them.
Does the Quran say the universe is expanding?
Yes. The Quran says it in one sentence: “We constructed the sky with our hands, and we will continue to expand it.” [51:47] It also describes how the heavens and the earth began: “the heaven and the earth used to be one solid mass that we exploded into existence.” [21:30] The Quran is not a physics book, and it does not try to prove these things the way a scientist would. It simply states them, and it did so fourteen centuries before anyone had the tools to measure either one.
Why would God make something this big for one small planet of people?
The Quran does not describe the universe as a background that was made only for us to look at. It describes the universe as a sign pointing to God, and also as something that worships God in its own way. God tells us: “Glorifying Him are the seven universes, the earth, and everyone in them. There is nothing that does not glorify Him, but you do not understand their glorification.” [17:44] This means the sky is glorifying God even when nobody is looking at it. God also tells us what this life is for: “The One who created death and life for the purpose of distinguishing those among you who would do better.” [67:2] So the size of the universe is not the main point. What really matters is what each of us does with the short time we have been given inside it.
Signs on Earth and in Us
We have looked at the sky, and now let's bring our attention closer to home. The sky is an easy place to see God's greatness, but it is also easy to admire it from a distance and then move on with our day, because nobody feels they have to do anything about a galaxy.
This is why God keeps bringing the signs closer and closer to us, until they are right in front of us and even inside us: “The earth is full of signs for those who are certain. And within yourselves; can you see?” [51:20-21]
God even names ordinary things He wants us to look at and think about: “Why do they not reflect on the camels and how they are created? And the sky and how it is raised. And the mountains and how they are constructed. And the earth and how it is built.” [88:17-20]
If you look closely at this verse, you will notice that God starts with camels, an animal people at that time saw every single day, and not with the stars. The signs of God are not only far away in the sky. They are also in the ordinary things we see every day.
The Water We Drink Every Day
There is a passage in the Quran that asks us to think about something as simple as a glass of water. If we follow this passage through carefully, we start to realize how much God has done to bring that water to us.
“Have you noted the water you drink? Did you send it down from the clouds, or did we? If we will, we can make it salty. You should be thankful.” [56:68-70]
Almost all the water on this planet is salt water, and we are not able to drink it. The water we drink comes from a process that God runs every single day without us even thinking about it. The sun heats the water in the sea and lifts it up, leaving the salt behind. The wind then carries it inland, and it comes back down to us as clean rain that we are able to drink.
God then tells us why water matters so much: “And from water we made all living things.” [21:30] This includes every living thing on earth, including our own bodies, which are mostly made of water.
And the instruction God gives us at the end of this passage is a simple one: “You should be thankful.” [56:70]
A World Made for Us to Live In
God asks us two questions in the Quran, as if the answer is obvious to anyone who stops to think about it: “Did we not make the earth habitable? And the mountains stabilizers?” [78:6-7]
Making the earth habitable covers a great deal. It means a planet placed at the right distance from its sun, turning at the right speed, with air we are able to breathe and water we are able to drink, and all of these need to be right for us to live here.
God says the same thing again in another verse, and this time He includes us in it: “GOD is the One who rendered the earth habitable for you, and the sky a formidable structure, and He designed you, and designed you well.” [40:64]
He also describes the sky above us as a ceiling, and a protected one: “And we rendered the sky a guarded ceiling. Yet, they are totally oblivious to all the portents therein.” [21:32]
And there is one verse that brings all of these signs together in one place: “In the creation of the heavens and the earth, the alternation of night and day, the ships that roam the ocean for the benefit of the people, the water that GOD sends down from the sky to revive dead land and to spread in it all kinds of creatures, the manipulation of the winds, and the clouds that are placed between the sky and the earth, there are sufficient proofs for people who understand.” [2:164]
And Within Ourselves
Now let's look at the closest sign of all, which is ourselves. God describes how a human being is created, step by step.
“We created the human being from a certain kind of mud. Subsequently, we reproduced him from a tiny drop, that is placed into a well protected repository.” [23:12-13] Then: “we developed the drop into a hanging (embryo), then developed the hanging (embryo) into a bite-size (fetus), then created the bite-size (fetus) into bones, then covered the bones with flesh.” [23:14]
Please notice that this description does not end with the body. It ends with praise of God, because God finishes it by saying: “We thus produce a new creature. Most blessed is GOD, the best Creator.” [23:14]
The body God created this way is working right now, without any instruction from us. It has around thirty-seven trillion cells, a heart that has been beating since before we were born, and something in our blood that finds and destroys harmful things inside us that we never even knew were there.
God sums all of this up in one short verse: “We created man in the best design.” [95:4]
This is why the question in 51:21 is such a personal one: “And within yourselves; can you see?” [51:21] We do not need a telescope or a laboratory to answer it. All we need is to pay attention to the body God has given us, which most of us rarely stop to think about.
Questions About the Signs Around Us
Is it not just as reasonable to say nature is impressive and leave God out of it?
Some people do see it that way, and it is an understandable position. Having said that, the Quran answers it by pointing to the order in creation, and not just to its size. The sun and the moon are “perfectly calculated” [55:5], each one “floating in its own orbit” [21:33], and so regular that we are able to count the years by them [10:5]. God then tells us what all of this adds up to: “there are sufficient proofs for people who understand.” [2:164] God calls them proofs, and He leaves it to us to think them through for ourselves. The Quran never asks anyone to believe without first looking and thinking.
What does the Quran mean by calling mountains stabilizers?
It means that mountains keep the ground steady. God tells us this in more than one place in the Quran. He asks it as a question: “Did we not make the earth habitable? And the mountains stabilizers?” [78:6-7] And He also states it directly: “we placed on earth stabilizers, lest it tumbles with them, and we placed straight roads therein, that they may be guided.” [21:31] The verse tells us what mountains do, but it does not explain how they do it. What the Quran asks of us is to look at the mountains and think about how they were built [88:19], which is a reasonable thing to think about for anyone standing at the bottom of a mountain and looking up.
Why does the Quran tell us to be thankful instead of impressed?
Because being impressed costs us nothing, and it does not change anything in the way we live. Being thankful is different, because it points us back to the One who gave us the blessing in the first place. The passage about water ends in exactly this way: “If we will, we can make it salty. You should be thankful.” [56:70] God does not tell us to be amazed. He tells us to be thankful. God also connects our thankfulness with what He gives us next: “The more you thank Me, the more I give you. But if you turn unappreciative, then My retribution is severe.” [14:7] So noticing a blessing is only the first step, and thanking God for it is what completes it.
What Greatness Asks of Us
We have looked at who God is, at the sky, at the earth and at ourselves. Now let's think about what all of this means for us. If you go outside tonight and look at a single star, please remember that the light you are seeing left that star a long time ago. For the nearest stars, it left a few years ago. For most of the stars we can see, it left hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
Now think about that next to the verse we read in the first part of this page, which tells us the whole earth is in His fist, and the universes are folded within His right hand [39:67]. If all the universes fit in God's hand, then they cannot be used to measure God at all.
This means no number from astronomy, however big it is, will ever help us picture God. That is the honest conclusion, and God already told us this in the same verse: “They can never fathom the greatness of GOD.” [39:67]
Great and Close at the Same Time
If God's greatness stopped there, we might be left feeling very small and very far away from Him. But God does not leave it there, and this is one of the most beautiful parts of His message to us.
The same God who holds the universes in His hand also tells us that He knows what a person whispers to himself, and that He is “closer to him than his jugular vein” [50:16]. He also tells us: “I am always near. I answer their prayers when they pray to Me.” [2:186]
This is where God's greatness really shows. It is not only in how great He is, and it is not only in how close He is to us. It is in the fact that He is both of these at the same time.
Once we understand this, two worries go away. We never have to ask ourselves whether a problem is too small to bring to God, and we never have to wonder whether He is too busy with the rest of His creation to notice what we are going through.
That Is Why We Go Straight to Him
Since God is both this great and this close to us, there is no need for anyone or anything to stand between us and Him.
God says this very clearly: “Absolutely, the religion shall be devoted to GOD alone.” [39:3] In the same verse, God quotes the excuse people give for putting someone between themselves and God, and then He calls the people who say it liars and disbelievers.
God makes the same point with the example of a fly: “the idols you set up beside GOD can never create a fly, even if they banded together to do so.” [22:73] And the verse that comes right after it is one worth remembering: “They do not value GOD as He should be valued.” [22:74]
Once we understand how great God is, this does not sound harsh at all. Putting a prophet, a saint or any object between us and God only sends our prayer through something He created, and that is not humility, even if it may feel like it.
So let's go straight to God with everything. About the people who are guided, God tells us: “They are the ones whose hearts rejoice in remembering GOD. Absolutely, by remembering GOD, the hearts rejoice.” [13:28]
Questions About Living With This
What does it mean to be conscious of God through an ordinary day?
It means keeping God in our mind while we go about our day, and not only during the times of the Contact Prayers. God tells us to remember Him in every way: “You shall remember your Lord within yourself, publicly, privately, and quietly, day and night; do not be unaware.” [7:205] You will notice that remembering Him quietly and within ourselves is part of that, and that covers most of a normal working day. In practice, it is made up of small things we can repeat every day, such as thanking God for something specific that happened, saying His name before we start something, and taking a worry to Him first instead of last. The Contact Prayers hold the day together, since God decreed them “to remember Me” [20:14], and the rest of the day sits in between them.
How can God be near to every person at once?
Because for God, being near is not about distance. God is not in one place while being away from another place. God describes Himself this way: “He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Outermost and the Innermost. He is fully aware of all things.” [57:3] He also tells us that ruling the heavens and the earth “never burdens Him” [2:255]. His attention is not divided between us or shared out, the way a person's attention would be. The simplest rule to remember here is the one we started with: “There is nothing that equals Him.” [42:11] Our idea of being near is based on how created things work, and God is not like anything He created.
Does God need our worship?
No. Nothing we do adds anything to God. God tells us He is “much too high above needing any partners” [39:67], and that everything in the heavens and the earth already glorifies Him, whether we join in or not [17:44]. Worship is for our own benefit. God tells us why He created us: “I did not create the jinns and the humans except to worship Me alone” [51:56]. He also tells us what remembering Him does for us: “by remembering GOD, the hearts rejoice.” [13:28] So the benefit of our worship comes back to us, and not to God.
What the Quran Says About God's Greatness
Here are the main verses this page is based on, all in one place, so you can come back and read them again.
GOD: there is no other god besides Him, the Living, the Eternal. Never a moment of unawareness or slumber overtakes Him. To Him belongs everything in the heavens and everything on earth. Who could intercede with Him, except in accordance with His will? He knows their past, and their future. No one attains any knowledge, except as He wills. His dominion encompasses the heavens and the earth, and ruling them never burdens Him. He is the Most High, the Great.[2:255]
God never stops watching over His creation, and ruling all of it is no burden for Him.
Initiator of the heavens and the earth. He created for you from among yourselves spouses—and also for the animals. He thus provides you with the means to multiply. There is nothing that equals Him. He is the Hearer, the Seer.[42:11]
The verse that rules out any picture we could form of God.
No visions can encompass Him, but He encompasses all visions. He is the Compassionate, the Cognizant.[6:103]
Our eyes are not able to see God, but He sees everything.
They can never fathom the greatness of GOD. The whole earth is within His fist on the Day of Resurrection. In fact, the universes are folded within His right hand. Be He glorified; He is much too high above needing any partners.[39:67]
The whole of creation is folded within His right hand.
We created the human, and we know what he whispers to himself. We are closer to him than his jugular vein.[50:16]
God is closer to us than our jugular vein, and He knows our thoughts.
He created seven universes in layers. You do not see any imperfection in the creation by the Most Gracious. Keep looking; do you see any flaw?[67:3]
Seven universes, and an invitation to look again and again for a flaw.
The earth is full of signs for those who are certain. And within yourselves; can you see?[51:20-21]
The signs of God are all over the earth, and also inside us.
They do not value GOD as He should be valued. GOD is the Most Powerful, the Almighty.[22:74]
What God says about people who put anything beside Him.
There Is Always More to Learn
We will never finish learning about God. The names on this page are the ones He gave us to call Him by, and He tells us to use them when we call on Him [7:180]. The Commemorating God page looks at how we can make remembering God part of an ordinary day.
Growth Prompt
Please take ten minutes today to look closely at one thing God created, and then write down what you noticed. God is not asking us to be experts. He is asking us to pay attention: “And within yourselves; can you see?” [51:21]
When did I last feel how great God is, and what did I do about it the next morning?
Keep growing
Every topic on this site connects to the others. Here is where this page leads next.