In the Islamic consciousness, we generally associate “beautiful names” with Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, as mentioned in the Qur’an and the Hadith (prophetic narrations). Some of these sources include the following:
Yet to Allah belong the most excellent names. So call upon Him with them. And leave [alone] those who profane His names. They shall be [duly] recompensed for all that they have done [in life]. (Qur’an, 7:180)
It has been narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) that Allah’s Messenger ﷺ said: “Verily Allah has ninety-nine names. Whoever memorizes them shall enter Jannah.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, 2736)
The expression “beautiful names” (al-Asma’ al-Husna) plants within the minds of Muslims a sense of awe and reverence as well as the feeling of having a personal relationship with Allah, as referring to someone with their name involves knowing them. And, as many of you will already know, Allah’s names are also not limited to just ninety-nine.
The following brief elucidation by Mufti Zameelur Rahman is quite enlightening:
“He is the First and the Last, the Transcendent and the Immanent, and He is Knowledgeable of all things.” (Qur’an, 57:3)
[…]
These Beautiful Names and Attributes bestow upon us a language that enables accurate and reverent discourse about Allah. Internalising the knowledge of these divine attributes enhances and deepens one’s understanding and perception of Allah’s connection with the world and with oneself.
Given the importance and benefit of this subject, esteemed scholars such as Abu Mansur al-Baghdadi, al-Bayhaqi, al-Qushayri, al-Ghazali, Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi and al-Sanusi, have dedicated entire works to unravelling the depths of Allah’s Names.
Thus, these names naturally become a source of spiritual growth and reflection. It is for this reason that many of our most eminent Muslim scholars throughout history have authored countless pages and even entire treatises dedicated to this subject, highlighting its great importance for stimulating religious education and development. (You may see here for a work by Imam Al-Ghazali on the topic in English.)
But, of course, we live in a secularized age. And if secularization can be viewed as the methodic triumph of the material over the spiritual, it is unsurprising that certain materialist vernacular (concealed behind the veneer of “scientific” vernacular) invades our religious space and even our terminology, something we had touched upon a few months ago in an article entitled Spirit, Soul, and Body: Secularized Vernacular and the Thought of Iqbal.
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One of these linguistic casualties of ambient secularism is the idea that “God is infinite.” Upon hearing this, the first impression one generally gets seems to be that there is nothing controversial about it. After all, “infinite” does best denote a sense of hyperbole.
However, there are numerous philosophical issues with this idea.
To begin with, many have denied the legitimacy of the idea of an actual infinite (as opposed to a theoretical infinite), beginning with Zeno of Elea in his famous paradoxes, from around 500 BCE, up to David Hilbert, one of the most influential mathematicians of the last century, who expressed some skepticism in a 1925 lecture (Hilbert himself had worked on the question a great deal—see his famous paradox of the Grand Hotel):
We have already seen that the infinite is nowhere to be found in reality, no matter what experiences, observations, and knowledge are appealed to. Can thought about things be so much different from things? Can thinking processes be so unlike the actual processes of things? In short, can thought be so far removed from reality? Rather is it not clear that, when we think that we have encountered the infinite in some real sense, we have merely been seduced into thinking so by the fact that we often encounter extremely large and extremely small dimensions in reality?
Another German mathematician who was admired by Hilbert, his contemporary Georg Cantor, talked of different sizes of different infinities. For example, the set of all real numbers would be larger than the set of all rational numbers, which is in turn larger than the set of all natural numbers.
In mathematics, the “continuum hypothesis” has gathered some of the best modern mathematical minds, not only Hilbert and Cantor but also the likes of Kurt Gödel (whose incompleteness theorems also have a religious relevance), but all of this technical debate, though it may appear inconsequential, does at least teach us an important lesson—that the concept of “infinite” is not as straightforward as it might initially appear.
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In fact, of the first to describe God as “infinite” was René Descartes, the 16th century French philosopher who launched modern philosophy through his rationalism. However, as some have noted, this would place God in the “material” or phenomenal world, as “infinite” pertains to our dimension, i.e., that of physicality. This is the reason why Leibniz, despite acknowledging an overall Cartesian influence, displaced the notion of infinity to his idea of monads and into pure mathematics (he developed calculus independently of Isaac Newton).
Another French René, this time the infamous René Guénon, the founder of the very problematic “Traditionalist School,” dedicated what is perhaps one of his least well-known works to this question—one of the very last books published during his lifetime: Les Principes du calcul infinitésimal (“The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus”), published in 1946.
In this book of his, Guénon mentioned all those philosophers and mathematicians who wrote about the infinite, mostly Leibniz, and he demonstrated that their idea of the infinite is limited to the material world.
Of course, as Muslims, we know that everything besides Allah is created and that Allah does not exist or reside within His creation. He is transcendent and not limited.
In other words, it could be argued very strongly that Muslims shouldn’t even use the word “infinite” in the context of speaking about Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, because it would “bring down” His existence into a “temporal reality,” that of matter, where “infinite,” even if you accept its usual understanding, becomes operative.
This is why I personally believe it’ll be infinitely wiser and more beneficial, in more way than one, for us to simply stick to what the Qur’an and the Sunnah have conveyed in relation of Allah’s beautiful names and attributes. It is important to remember that Allah’s names and attributes are tawqifiyyah, i.e., they are known solely through revelation (the Qur’an and Sunnah) and cannot be determined by reason or logic.
And Allah’s names are indeed the most beautiful of names. They provide us with knowledge and understanding regarding why we must submit to Him, obey Him, revere Him, love Him, fear Him; why we yearn and hope for His guidance, forgiveness, love, mercy, and reward. They give us guidance to life and meaning beyond this temporary abode, whereas “infinite” has no tangible quality.
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