Surah 112 - Al-Ikhlas (The Purity)
1 Say: He is Allah, the One!
This opening declaration asserts absolute divine oneness (ahad), not merely numerical unity but uniqueness and indivisibility. From a Christian perspective, this verse directly confronts Trinitarian theology, which Islam understands as compromising God’s oneness. Christianity, however, distinguishes between unity of essence and plurality of persons, insisting that God is one being who eternally exists as Father, Son, and Spirit (Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 28:19). Thus, the disagreement here is not over whether God is one, but what kind of oneness God possesses.
Muslims often attack the trinity doctrine by saying that “the word ‘trinity’ is not in the Bible”. Ironically, the word “tawheed” (oneness) is not in the Quran. The lack of vocabulary does not mean the lack of concept.
[Tags: Monotheism , Tawheed , Trinity , Oneness]
2 Allah, the eternally Besought of all!
The term al-Samad (the eternally Besought of all) conveys self-sufficiency, independence, and the one upon whom all depend. Christianity strongly affirms this attribute of God (Acts 17:24–25). Yet from a Christian lens, God’s self-sufficiency does not exclude self-giving love. While Surah 112 emphasizes God as the one who is needed but who needs nothing, Christianity holds that God’s fullness overflows relationally - “God is Love”. (1 John 4:8) If this is not true, and the center of reality is not loving, then reality is a nihilistic hellscape. Allah is said to be self-sufficient, but is He? Before creation, whom did Allah love? Himself? That’s narcissism. So either Allah is devoid of love, which means he lacks something even his lowly creation owns. Or he had to create other sentient beings to be able to have a relation with, in which case he is not self-sufficient.
The triune God presented in the Bible is fully self-sufficient, including relational self-sufficiency, as the three persons of God share eternal love. But the Islamic description of Allah is either narcissistic, devoid of love, or not self-sufficient.
[Tags: Trinity , Self-sufficient , Necessary being , Love , Allah - Not love , Allah - Narciccist]
3 He begets not nor was begotten.
This verse is the most explicit polemic against Christian belief, rejecting both divine sonship and any notion of God generating offspring. Christianity agrees that God begets not in a physical or biological sense. However, Christians insist that the Son is eternally begotten, not created - a metaphysical, not corporeal, relationship (John 1:1–3; Nicene Creed). From a Christian viewpoint, the Quran here critiques a misunderstood or caricatured version of sonship, rejecting physical generation rather than the eternal relational distinctions affirmed in orthodox Trinitarian theology.
[Tags: Begotten , Beget , Eternally begotten , Quran misunderstands trinity , Quran contradicts Bible , Sonship]
4 And there is none comparable to Him.
This closing affirmation emphasizes divine incomparability and transcendence (tanzih). Christianity fully concurs that God is incomparable in essence (Isaiah 40:18). The divergence lies in Christology: Christianity claims that God can remain incomparable in nature while freely choosing to reveal Himself in human form without ceasing to be God (Philippians 2:6–8). Islam safeguards transcendence by exclusion; Christianity, by paradox—God is wholly other, yet personally revealed.
Ironically, Muslims who question the trinity doctrine insist that God must be one nature - one person, just like a human, but at the same time the Quran explicitly tells them that God can not be compared to anything in this world. So why should it be such a hard thing to accept the trinity concept? If that’s not incomparable to anything in the world, then what is?
[Tags: Transcendence , Incomparability]
Surah 112 offers a clear, powerful, and philosophically rigorous statement of monotheism, rightly rejecting any conception of God as dependent, generated, or comparable to created beings. From a Christian perspective, however, its insistence on divine unity comes at the cost of divine relationality. Christianity maintains that God’s oneness is not threatened - but rather enriched - by eternal relational distinctions within the Godhead.
In short, Al-Ikhlas proclaims who God is not with remarkable clarity; Christianity seeks to go further by proclaiming how this one God has made Himself known.