LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Do Muslims call Allah “Father”?
Submitted to Dr. James Sulfridge
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the completion of
DSMN 500
Discipleship Ministries
By
Anthony Bean
Islam gives Allah 99 names, but not one of the names is Father. Jesus, however, called God
Father and taught His disciples (meaning "followers") to pray to God as Father (Matthew 6:9).
How can you be a disciple of Jesus? And how can you come to God as Father? Find out by
reading the Scripture passage John 8:31-59 .
From that passage, we find out the following:
• To be a disciple of Jesus, you must hold to His teaching (John 8:31).
• The truth of Jesus’ teaching sets His disciples free (John 8:32).
• Jesus, the Son of God, can set free those who were slaves to sin (John 8:34-36).
• Those who refuse to hear, love, and believe Jesus—the truth—show that they belong to the
devil—the father of lies (John 8:42-47).
• Those who keep Jesus’ word have eternal life (John 8:51).
• God glorifies Jesus (John 8:54).
• Abraham looked forward with joy to the coming of Jesus (John 8:56).
• Having existed before Abraham was born, Jesus is the eternal Son of God (John 8:58).
How do you respond? The Jews who heard Jesus responded by trying to stone Jesus, thinking
He was guilty of blasphemy. Muslims, too, would say a man claiming to be God would be guilty
of “shirk.” But Jesus is not a mere man claiming to be God. He is the Son of God!
The Son of God is the only one who can set you free from slavery to sin. Although the
punishment for sin is eternal death in hell, Jesus died on the cross in the place of believing
sinners to give them eternal life in heaven (Romans 6:23; John 3:16).
Those who receive Jesus as the Savior from sin and Lord of life become children of God the
Father. “He [Jesus] was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world
did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet
to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become
children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s
will, but born of God” (John 1:10-13; see also Ephesians 2:1-19).
Jesus is the only way to God the Father in heaven. “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth
and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6).
“Why don't Muslims call God ‘father’? Isn't God like a father to us?”
God is like a father to us in the sense that he cares for us, but the Quran term for that is
“rabb”. Whereas in Arabic, there is another term for father, which is “ab”. The Quran's
presentation of God is that he's our rabb, which means lord, yet could be translated as
sustainer. God is our caretaker and He is our provider. You may wonder, why don't we just say
ab? This seems to be a term of endearment, especially as it was popularised about Jesus, on
whom be peace. It has been said that Jesus spoke of God as a father and Christians have taken
this as a simple way of referring to God. Christians may find this to be a deficiency in the Islamic
system and ask why we can't refer to God as “Father”.
From the Quranic point of view, monotheism is extremely important. It seems that from
the Quranic point of view, if people call God “Father'', they may fall into a sort of confused
thinking that the Father is literally the father of Jesus, not biologically, of course, but in a real
sense.
If Jesus is the son of God, in a real sense, then he must be like God and maybe he deserves
to be worshipped as well. To avoid this sort of confusion, the Quran draws a clear line and
presents God as Rabb and as the only Lord. While there is no simple directive that says that a
Muslim cannot call God “Father”, the Quran castigates those who say, “we are the children of
God”. The Quran poses the question and asks, “why would God punish you if you are really his
children?” One might say that this is about those people, not about the faithful believer.
Nonetheless, the culture among Muslims developed in this way, so that we don't refer to God
as “father”. We refer to him as Lord and Creator. We don't say Ab, but we say, Rabb, our
Sustainer and our Cherisher. He is the be-all and end-all. If we start thinking of him as Father,
then perhaps this is presuming too much for ourselves as though we are children of God and
we have a right over him.
