Is God Man or Woman?
By: Aiq Edogawa
Tags: Goddess, God, Womanism, Man, Allah

Have you ever questioned something so deep that you think about it every single time over your life, and the answer comes to your mind in sudden and you feel just like, aha! It could be the right answer. Have you?

I have done that way. I have ever questioned about the sex of God. Is God man or woman? Is it true if I use “He” as God’s pronoun, or should I use “She” instead? Those possibilities just running into my mind randomly and in some periods. I asked myself continually, however, some books I read didn’t answer it clearly. It seemed blur and I didn’t satisfied enough. I consider what book gave to me not as the answer, but the process of finding the answer.

Then Ariana Grande released a single, the tittle is “God is Woman”. And I was really shocked, yet proud at the same time. She tried to against the consensus that God should be a man. People use He/his/him as God’s pronoun and Ariana was brave enough to against them.

The lyric of “God is Woman” song has been researched by (Setiawan et al., 2019), they states that video decoded and literature review reveals that Ariana Grande’s “God Is Woman” is not only a song, it’s also very subtly a reminder that there lies before us a rich history of Goddess worship altogether separate from the patriarchal religions, customs, and laws most of us were raised on.

However, I don’t really focus on what they found. I do agree to them that God for the very first time is considered as Goddess, where the gender dominantly feminine. What makes me so sure that God is a woman is the way I found God in Arabic language.

I intensively discuss about the root of God’s name. Why in Arabic, God is called as Allah, what is the root and how is the formation? I thought it took for about five years to be answered. I thank HMI so much because it facilitates me to find the answer that satisfies me. Really.

Allah comes from the root الة , the meaning is gods. In Arabic, the formation of الة known as nakiroh, it means abstract, indefinite. Then to be identified, it should be added by ال, so the formation should be الله, it is not anymore nakiroh, it is ma’rifat, it’s concrete and definite.

Several days ago, my sociolinguistic class talked about the language and gender, and Arabic includes into one of the gendered language. My lecture asked me how to identify gender in Arabic, then I answered him what I know.

One of the feature that could mark thing as female in Arabic is by adding (ة) into the words. As example عزيز identified as masculine, then it could be feminine if it is added by (ة) -> عزيزة.

The masculine is عزيز, while عزيزة is feminine.

And it enlightened me. I thought the word Allah I have known for so long has feminine feature in Arabic language. So, should I use هي for Allah’s pronoun? Because God’s feminine.

But, God is not God if not wise. Yeah He told me that He is the best judge on Al-A’raf: 87, there is no doubt about it. The proof is on the first verse of Al-Ikhlas, God still uses هو to mention His name even Allah contains of feminine features. قل هو الله احد

From those considerations, I do take conclusion that the truth is God has no gender or perhaps God could be woman (feminine) or man (masculine). Yeah He could be anything He wants. God is God. He is beyond the human. What I believe is true is that God is balance. As Sachiko Murata says on his book Tao of Islam, in the existence of God, there is feminine and masculine in balance.

So be questioned no more what is the sex of God, because God has no sex, God’s gender is balance, and God is God.