Can Anyone See Allah? the Truth About Visions, Dreams, and the Verse of Light
By James H. Sterling
Confusion regarding God's appearance often originates from a literal reading of Surah An-Nur 24:35, famously known as *Ayat an-Nur* (The Verse of Light): "Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth."
Casual readers sometimes misinterpret this phrase as an assertion that God is a literal luminescence, a radiant plasma, or a physical aura. Classical scholarship thoroughly refutes this reductionist view. Al-Ghazali, in his renowned treatise Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche for Lights), clarifies that calling God "Light" signifies that God is the metaphysical source of all illumination, truth, guidance, and physical reality, not that God is composed of photons.
The verse continues with an intricate parable: His light is comparable to a niche holding a lamp, enclosed in glass, fueled by a blessed olive tree whose oil catches fire without touch. Islamic linguistic scholars emphasize the syntax here: the parable illustrates the illumination of divine faith and revelation entering the human heart, not God’s biological anatomy. If God were physical light, God would be subject to physical mechanics, travelling at 299,792 kilometers per second and refracting when passing through glass. That would make God contingent on created physics, a concept directly opposed to Islamic monotheism.
James Sterling reports on renewable energy developments, climate policy, ecological conservation, and green tech innovations around the globe.
