...no it did not go over my head but the way of "contingent" just emphasizes majority of man's total lack of awareness and understanding of spiritual issues. They need the crutch of "personal" characteristics to relate and explain events beyond their understanding.
oh hermes, it seems that you are regurgitating this argument somewhat blindly
just think about all the obvious signs of Allah's 'contingent' qualities hermes and you will see they are evident
what do you think all the blessings and good things indicates of Allah; can it sound like 'Mercy'?
what about all the bad metahpysical consequencs for bad acts, and the purgotory and punishing legislation for it in His revelation; does that not indicate 'Justice'?
And does not Allah have to be all aware of everything happening in his creation for these laws to be correctly applied, indicating 'hearing' and 'seeing', thus it dont take much thinking at all Hermes to know that Allah's attributes are evident
if a person changes his ways for the better, does not the metahpysical laws effect him in a positive way?, thus indicating Allah is 'relenting' and i could go on with so many other qualities which are analogous to humans too, but the difference is ofcourse that human qualities are created and finite while Allah's are infinite and transcendent
what is man projecting his own qualities on God is when one anthropomophises or incarnates God or judges Him by human standards, as Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad explains;
To say, on the basis of this language, that God is a �person� (which Muslims can in some careful sense do, although the term is absent from our classical theology), because He possesses qualities which we identify as analogous to those found in human life, such as consciousness, purpose, will, capacity, and perception, is, however, not to affirm a Christian notion of �God amongst us�,
immanuel. Firstly, because for God, as a personal, localised presence, to be at one place inside His creation suggests that He is otherwise absent from it, which is a dualist notion. And secondly, because it concedes to the natural human desire to think that God is like ourselves, only without the imperfections. Keep adding to power, this logic seems to suggest, and eventually you arrive at omnipotence.
This reasoning, however, is not accepted by our theology. The relationship between God�s power and our power is not one of degree, but of category, just as the difference between the finite and the infinite is categoric. His power is ultimately quite unlike our power. Our power is what it is because of the reality or the possibility of its encountering an obstacle. If we had omnipotence, we would probably not immediately associate it with the power we used to have at all. The same may be said for the other divine names which appear to have human applications. Hence the Qur�an says, �there is nothing like unto Him.� (42:11) And in the hadith: �whatever occurs to your mind; Allah is other than that.�
Part of the brilliance of the Qur�an is that it makes no compromises over God�s transcendence, as it battles against pagan and Christian attempts to �localise� God; while at the same time it makes no compromises over the human requirement to worship Him.
He tells us that He is �Hearing�, not because He possesses an organ which can physically intercept sound-waves, but because this is the truest way of conveying to our minds an aspect of His nature. And put together, His names of immanence do not yield a person truly analogous to other persons. Thus Islam does not say, �God is love�. God is loving (
wadud), and mercy is ultimately His preponderant quality, but it is to limit His plenitude to deny that He is other things as well, some of them easier for our finite minds to make sense of than others. Christianity, because of its insistence that the immanent Christ was truly God, banished from Him the attributes of rigour, which are less intrinsic to immanence. Once �back in Heaven�, this person-God could then be validly questioned about events we dislike in the world, just as Odysseus challenges Poseidon to explain a storm.
...........................
ps; infact the very reason why God created us is so that we can witness and experience his attributes:
we may note that the entire universe has been created by Allah in order that His names and attributes might be manifest, that is, in order that He might be
known, for He says,
"Nor did I create jinn and men, except to worship Me" (Qur’an 51:56).
(al-Baghawi Mujahid [ibn Jabr al-Makki (d. 104/722)], said this means ‘except to
know Me’ which is a sound interpretation, since if He had not created them, they would not have known His existence and His oneness (
Ma‘alam al-tanzil, 5.230).
Now, the divine names, such as,
al-Rahman ‘the All-merciful’,
al-Karim ‘the Most Generous’,
al-Rafi‘ ‘He-Who-Raises’,
al-Khafid ‘He-Who-Lowers’,
al-Sabur ‘the Most Patient’
al-Muntaqim ‘the Avenger’, and the others, entail and comprise the existence of the entire spectrum of human conditions—but particularly, ultimately, eternally, and at their fullest manifestation—the outcomes of paradise and hell.
Haqiqat al-Muhammadiyya
