The Father in Islam and in Anthropological Reality

Résumé En

Commentators present this passage as a refutation of the Christian God the Father. The word "absolute" is intended to exclude God from the order of sex and procreation-by contrast with the open nature characterising humans, who are sexed beings-since in Arabic the word for sex (farj) means hole, defect, incompleteness. Therefore, we might say that in Islam there is an explicit prohibition against conceiving the humanity of God, and representing Him as an ideal Father. The expression God the Father would be considered blasphemous. The Koran also denies the status of father to the founder of Islam: "Muhammad is not the father of any of your men."[2] From the start, the prophet is placed in the position of son and of orphan, since one of the first names by which God addresses him is "the Orphan". This means that God refers Muhammad at once to the dead father. Muslims do not see the prophet as either paternal or patriarchal. Contrary to Judaism, in Islam paternity never held an essential place in the alliance with Yahweh as the Father of fathers. Islamic monotheism has not adopted Judeo-Christian paternalism. In general, Islam has not sacralised the Father, either when it was founded as a new religion, or throughout the history of its transmission. Moreover, the father is the object of a distancing, of insistent criticism found in the Koranic text. First, there are very few instances (seven) when the Koran refers favorably to what it calls "the first prophets".[3] Several commentators have remarked that the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet (the Hadith) never use the term "father" in the singular, but only in the plural, as if THE FATHER as essential entity did not exist. The first