IB World Religions 5.4.4. Cosmogony and Cosmology: Allah as Creator and the Purpose of Creation Notes

5.4.4. Cosmogony and Cosmology: Allah as Creator and the Purpose of Creation

Allah as Creator

1. Muslims hold that everything other than Allah was created by Allah. One of His names in the Qur'an is al-Khaliq, the Creator, and the act of bringing things into being is khalq.
2. Creating is presented as effortless. The Qur'an says that when Allah decrees a matter He says to it kun fayakun, be, and it is, so nothing has to be shaped from existing material or worked at over time.
3. This makes creation an application of tawhid, the oneness of Allah. If Allah alone creates, then nothing else has independent power, and treating any created thing as a partner to Him is shirk.
4. Muslims also insist that Allah is not part of what He made. The Qur'an says there is nothing like unto Him, so creation is never described as an outflow or a piece of the divine.
5. Creating is not treated as a single past event. Rububiyyah, the lordship of Allah, means that He keeps every created thing in being and supplies it, and the Qur'an says He is engaged in some matter every day.
6. Because the world depends on Allah at every moment, Muslims read dependence as the basic fact about it. Everything in the heavens and the earth is described as asking of Him and as glorifying Him.

Six days and one command

1. The Qur'an gives two pictures of how creation happened, and Muslims hold both. In several places the heavens and the earth are made in six ayyam, days or periods, and in others the divine command works in a single instant.
2. The six-day passages describe a sequence. One surah sets out the earth in two periods, its provisions measured in four, and the heavens completed in two more, with Allah then established over the throne.
3. The instant passages describe the command itself. One verse says that the command of Allah is only one word, like the twinkling of an eye, which scholars take to mean that Allah needs no process even where the result unfolds in stages.
4. Most classical scholars therefore say that the world was created in time, with a real beginning, while the divine act behind it took no time at all. The days are commonly read as periods rather than as spans of twenty four hours.
5. Muslim theologians and philosophers argued about this for centuries. The mutakallimun defended a world with a beginning, some philosophers held that Allah's creating is eternal so the world always was, and al-Ghazali wrote against them in defence of a created beginning.
6. Muslims also hold that the world will end, which rules out reading the cosmos as everlasting. The Qur'an says that everything on the earth will perish and that only the face of your Lord, full of majesty and honour, will remain.

The created world as sign

1. The Qur'an calls the natural world a field of ayat, signs, using the same word it uses for its own verses. Night and day, rain reviving dead ground, ships on the sea and the variety of human languages are all listed as signs for people who reason.
2. Creation is described as measured rather than random. Allah is said to have created everything and determined it by qadar, a measure or proportion, and to have set up the mizan, the balance, in the heavens.
3. The Qur'an also insists that the world is not a joke or a plaything. Muslims pray in the words of the Qur'an that our Lord did not create this in vain.
4. The whole of creation is described as already obedient. Since islam means submission, non-human creation is said to submit by its nature, while humankind and jinn are the ones asked to choose it.
5. Because the earth is Allah's and held in trust, waste and destruction are treated as religious wrongs. Muslims cite the instruction not to spread corruption in the earth after it has been set right.
6. Contemporary Muslims apply this directly. The Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change of 2015 argued from khalifah and mizan to a duty on Muslims to cut consumption and protect the natural order.

Humankind and the trust

1. Muslims hold that human beings were made deliberately and given a task. The Qur'an describes Adam shaped from clay and dust, after which Allah says that He breathed into him of His spirit.
2. Adam and his wife Hawwa are presented as the parents of humankind, created from a single soul. The Qur'an addresses their descendants as bani Adam, the children of Adam.
3. Humankind is appointed khalifah on the earth, a steward or successor who acts on trust. In the Qur'an the angels question the appointment, and Allah replies that He knows what they do not know.
4. The role comes with the amanah, the trust, which the Qur'an says the heavens, the earth and the mountains declined to carry, while humankind took it up. Muslims read the trust as moral responsibility, which is only possible because human beings can choose.
5. Every person is also said to be born with fitrah, an original disposition inclined towards Allah. Muslims hold that Adam's disobedience was forgiven when he repented, so no guilt is inherited by his descendants.
6. The Qur'an describes a covenant taken from all human souls before birth, when Allah asked, am I not your Lord, and they answered yes. Muslims cite it to say that recognising Allah is a recovery of something already known rather than a new idea.

Angels and jinns

1. Belief in mala'ikah, angels, is one of the required articles of faith. Muslims hold that they were created from light, that they have no free will, and that they never disobey what Allah commands.
2. Angels are described by their duties. Jibril brings revelation, Mika'il is associated with rain and provision, Israfil will blow the trumpet, and the angel of death takes souls.
3. Other angels attend individual lives. Muslims speak of the recording angels who write a person's deeds and of the two who question the dead in the grave.
4. Jinn are a separate creation, made from smokeless fire, and unlike angels they can choose. The Qur'an says Allah created jinn and humankind for the same purpose and that both will be judged.
5. Jinn are described as living in communities with their own beliefs. One surah reports a group of jinn hearing the Qur'an recited and accepting it, so Muslims speak of Muslim and non-Muslim jinn.
6. Iblis, also called Shaytan, is identified in the Qur'an as one of the jinn who refused the command to bow to Adam. His refusal is presented as pride, and he is granted respite to tempt human beings until the Day.

The purpose of creation

1. The Qur'an states the purpose plainly. Allah says that He did not create jinn and humankind except that they should worship Him, which Muslims read as the reason the whole arrangement exists.
2. Ibadah, worship, is understood widely rather than narrowly. It covers ritual acts such as salah, but also honest work, care of parents and kindness to animals, once these are done for the sake of Allah.
3. Life is also described as a test. The Qur'an says Allah created death and life to test which of you is best in deed, so the world's difficulties are treated as part of its design.
4. Muslims connect the purpose of creation to what follows it. Because the world was made with a point, the reckoning of the akhirah is presented as the moment the point is made clear.
5. Theological traditions weight this differently. Ash'ari thinkers in Sunni Islam stress that Allah's will sets what is good, while Shi'ah theology and the earlier Mu'tazila stress that Allah acts justly by a justice reason can recognise.
6. The doctrine is meant to be felt in ordinary life. Muslims say bismillah, in the name of Allah, before eating, travelling or beginning work, treating a common action as an act done inside a created and purposeful order.