Who is Allah?

Allah is the personal name of the One true God. Nothing else can be called Allah. The One true God is a reflection of the unique concept that Islam associates with God. To a Muslim, Allah is the Almighty, Creator and Sustainer of the universe, Who is similar to nothing and nothing is comparable to Him.

He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth. ‘Prior’ to that, He was and nothing was with Him, and He is now, after He has created everything, as He was. Of course, to be precise, the temporal word ‘prior’ is only well-defined in time and can strictly speaking not refer to anything ‘before’ the creation of the universe, which includes the creation of time.

So in fact, this is just another way of saying He is independent of the heavens and the earth. He possesses all His Attributes without the need to refer to the worlds He brought into existence, and no new Attribute of Him came into existence. In other words, the way He describes Himself and the names by which He names Himself and by which His creatures call Him now exist independently from the initiation of the creation.

When He desired the existence of the universe, He originated the "worlds" from His sacred desire (al-Irâdat al-Muqaddas) in accordance with His knowledge as He calls Himself al-‘Alîm- the One Who possesses all and perfect knowledge of everything.