Presented by Gemini

Abstract

This essay explores the nature of divine perception and volition, challenging historical and artistic anthropomorphism—the tendency to conceive of God in human form—by contrasting it with the Islamic paradigm of absolute transcendence (Tanzih). Focusing on the foundational declaration of Surah Ash-Shura 42:11, we examine how the divine attributes of perfect sight (Al-Basir) and hearing (As-Sami) function without physical organs or material limitations. By extending this theology into modern science, this paper incorporates the philosophical frameworks developed by Dr. Zia H. Shah, specifically his revitalization of Al-Ghazali’s occasionalism and his groundbreaking “Four Books Thesis.” Through these lenses, we analyze how divine observation and action operate down to the minutest quantum level. We further demonstrate how the bizarre, probabilistic behavior of light and the informational architecture of the cosmos provide clear indicators of an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent Creator who sustains and guides a universe of two trillion galaxies and millions of conscious species.

1. The Sistine Chapel Counterpoint and Divine Transcendence

For centuries, human art and philosophy have struggled with the temptation to project human limitations onto the divine. A pinnacle of this anthropomorphic inclination is famously captured on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. There, Michelangelo painted the Creator as an old man with muscular limbs, a flowing grey beard, and physical hands stretching out to touch the finger of Adam. While masterfully executed as art, this image highlights a profound theological vulnerability: the urge to create God in our own image.

Michelangelo’s anthropomorphic representation of the Creator. Source: Michele Falzone / Getty Images

In sharp contrast to this physical depiction, Islamic theology establishes a strict framework of absolute transcendence (Tanzih). The Glorious Quran firmly disconnects the reality of the Creator from any human form, biological necessity, or material constraint. God’s perfection means He possesses attributes like sight and hearing in an absolute sense, completely free from the requirement of bodily organs such as eyes, ears, retinas, or neural networks.

This foundational concept is beautifully summarized in the second chapter of Surah Ash-Shura (42:11):

لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْءٌ ۖ وَهُوَ السَّمِيعُ الْبَصِيرُ

• Sahih International: “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.”
• Yusuf Ali: “There is nothing whatever like unto Him, and He is the One that hears and sees (all things).”
• Pickthall: “Naught is as His likeness; and He is the Hearer, the Seer.”
• Shakir: “Nothing is like a likeness of Him; and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.”
• Mohsin Khan: “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearer, the All-Seer.”
• Abdul Haleem: “There is nothing like Him: He is the All Hearing, the All Seeing.”

This single verse outlines a profound theological methodology. By first declaring “There is absolutely nothing like Him,” the Quran wipes away any physical comparisons or anthropomorphic projections. Only after establishing this complete uniqueness does it affirm His attributes: He is the All-Hearing (As-Sami) and the All-Seeing (Al-Basir). Thus, His hearing and seeing are entirely non-physical, operating infinitely and absolutely beyond the bounds of matter, space, and time.

2. The Epistemology of Divine Perception

When the Quran mentions sensory faculties like eyes and ears regarding human beings, it highlights our inherent physical limitations—our dependence on acoustic wavelengths, visible light spectra, and anatomical organs to process raw data. For humans, consciousness is walled off; we have no direct access to the thoughts, inner feelings, or subjective experiences of our fellow human beings.

Furthermore, we suffer from what philosophers call the “cognitive problem of other minds.” In 1974, philosopher Thomas Nagel famously posed the question, “What is it like to be a bat?” pointing out that human beings can never truly grasp the subjective, echolocating consciousness of another species. We are fundamentally blind to the sensory worlds of the roughly 9 million species sharing our planet, from the UV-mapped vision of a butterfly to the deep-ocean sonar of a cetacean.

The grand cosmic architecture of our expanding universe. Source: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images

Allah’s knowledge and perception, however, are infinite, absolute, and unmediated. He does not view the universe from a distance or through a localized lens. He has complete, immediate access to the most hidden thoughts of all human beings—even the subtle psychological motives and subconscious whispers that individuals try to hide from themselves.

His omniscience encompasses the subjective experience of every conscious life form in intimate detail. From the neural firings of a single insect to the grand mechanics of an expanding universe containing up to two trillion galaxies, nothing escapes His immediate awareness. God does not wait for sound waves to vibrate an eardrum or for photons to strike a pupil; His perception is identical to His absolute knowledge of all things.

3. Quantum Omniscience and Omnipotence

To truly comprehend how God sees, hears, and acts without physical constraints, we must look to the fundamental building blocks of matter. Traditional classical physics imagined the universe as a collection of macro-level objects moving like clockwork. However, modern physics reveals that the bedrock of reality is fundamentally quantum.

At the minutest quantum level, the neat distinction between “animate” and “inanimate” matter fades into an intricate web of informational states, wave-function collapses, and subatomic interactions. God sees, hears, and knows everything at this precise micro-scale. Every superposition, every quantum entanglement, and every subtle state transition across the cosmos is immediately known to Him.

More importantly, His divine volition—His power to act—is exercised at this exact quantum level. Where secular science sees indeterminacy or pure randomness (such as the unpredictable decay of a radioactive isotope or the chaotic path of an electron), theological realism recognizes the theater of divine action. God acts at the quantum level to execute His precise intentions, collapsing possibilities into realities and steering the macroscopic universe according to His overarching plan without violating the statistical regularities that we perceive as natural laws.

4. Al-Ghazali’s Occasionalism and Continuous Divine Causality

To understand how divine knowledge connects with physical action in time, we can look to the profound framework of Islamic Occasionalism. Historically championed by the medieval theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111), this doctrine has been revitalized and analyzed in contemporary scientific terms by Dr. Zia H. Shah. This extensive body of work, compiled on The Quran & Science Occasionalism Section, argues that created things possess no intrinsic, autonomous causal power. Instead, what we call “cause and effect” in nature is simply a regular sequence of events that God directly creates and maintains moment by moment.

This concept relies heavily on the divine attribute Al-Qayyum—the Self-Subsisting Sustainer who actively holds every atom of existence in being at every fraction of a second. As Dr. Shah notes, the universe does not run on “battery power” (autonomous laws established at the Big Bang and left to run on their own); rather, it runs on a continuous flow of divine “electricity.” If that divine sustaining will were to pause for a single millisecond, the entire cosmos would cease to exist.

+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|               GOD'S OMNISCIENT PRIOR KNOWLEDGE             |
|  (Absolute awareness of all parameters & quantum states)    |
+------------------------------+------------------------------+
                               |
                               v
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|                  CONTINUOUS DIVINE AGENCY                   |
|  (Moment-by-moment sustenance of reality via Al-Qayyum)     |
+------------------------------+------------------------------+
                               |
                               v
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|                 THE "SUNNAT ALLAH" OCCASION                 |
|  (Direct creation of physical effects at the quantum level) |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+

A key realization in Dr. Shah’s analysis is that God’s prior knowledge of the situation is an absolute necessity for Him to act in time on any detail. For a cause to be seamlessly linked to an effect at every point in space, the Creator must possess an exhaustive, instantaneous map of all preceding conditions, particle positions, and conscious intentions. Divine action is never a blind reaction; it is a deliberate, highly ordered execution of decree (Qadar) rooted in perfect, eternal omniscience. What scientists call “laws of nature” are actually descriptive patterns—the habitual way God chooses to operate, or the Sunnat Allah—rather than prescriptive forces that independently rule the physical world.

5. The Architecture of Radiance: The Miracle of Light

Nowhere is this continuous divine action and omniscience more apparent than in the study of light. Light serves as a beautiful bridge between relativity and quantum mechanics. As detailed across several of Dr. Shah’s articles, including The Universal Mediator and Ghazali’s Occasionalism and the Crown Verse, light behaves in ways that defy materialistic determinism.

When we study light through Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity—as explored in The Miracle of Light and Special Relativity and The Architecture of Radiance—we discover that the speed of light ($c$) remains constant for all observers, regardless of their motion. This absolute constancy makes light the cosmic anchor of spacetime, providing a strong teleological pointer toward a deliberate, overarching Intelligence.

When we look at light at the quantum level through Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), things become even more fascinating. As Dr. Shah highlights, when light hits a pane of glass or a body of water, roughly 4% of the photons reflect while 96% refract (transmit through). Yet, if you isolate a single, individual photon, modern physics cannot tell you why or how that specific photon chooses to reflect or refract. Physics only offers a probability.

From the perspective of Islamic occasionalism, this choice is not decided by blind, autonomous laws of nature. Instead, each individual photon’s path is determined directly by Allah Himself. The precise behavior of every single quantum of light reveals His active Omniscience and Omnipotence. Light is not just a passive, mechanical phenomenon; as argued in Light upon Light: A Multidisciplinary Analysis, it functions as an ongoing, real-time expression of divine sovereignty.

6. The Tetrabiblos of Cosmic Reality: The Four Books Thesis

To unify this understanding of divine observation, knowledge, and action, Dr. Zia H. Shah formulated the Four Books Thesis. Detailed in his comprehensive commentary, The Mother of the Book, Divine Sovereignty, and the Four Books of God, this thesis expands the classical “Two Books” metaphor (Scripture and Nature) into a four-fold informational architecture of reality based on Surah Ar-Ra’d (13:38-39).

This four-fold model aligns closely with the “informational turn” in modern cosmology, particularly John Archibald Wheeler’s famous “It from Bit” concept—the idea that physical matter grows out of underlying informational bits.

By applying the Holographic Principle from black hole physics, Dr. Shah’s thesis explains how the Book of Deeds functions. Just as the information of objects falling into a black hole is preserved on its two-dimensional event horizon, the entire universe can be understood as an information structure where no data is ever lost. The principle of quantum unitarity ensures that information cannot be truly destroyed. Therefore, every human thought, secret intention, and physical action is permanently recorded in the cosmic archive. This demonstrates that divine accountability is not a mere metaphorical threat, but a physical certainty woven directly into the quantum fabric of creation.

7. Thematic Epilogue

The deep mysteries of modern physics do not obscure the divine; rather, they serve as profound signs pointing directly toward it. Every equation in quantum mechanics, every relative twist of spacetime, and every probabilistic path of a photon acts as a clear clue. They point to a universe that is completely dependent on a singular, conscious, and absolute Ruler.

God does not see through eyes, nor does He hear through ears; He is intimately aware of everything because He is the source, sustainer, and ultimate reality of all information. Human attempts to picture Him using physical traits fall short. Instead, the deeper we dive into the microscopic and macroscopic details of the cosmos, the more clearly we perceive His unmatched majesty.

This absolute freedom from physical comprehension is perfectly encapsulated in the timeless declaration of Surah Al-An’am (6:103):

لَّا تُدْرِكُهُ الْأَبْصَارُ وَهُوَ يُدْرِكُ الْأَبْصَارَ ۖ وَهُوَ اللَّطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ

• Sahih International: “Vision perceives Him not, but He perceives [all] vision; and He is the Subtle, the Acquainted.”
• Yusuf Ali: “No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things.”
• Pickthall: “Vision comprehendeth Him not, but He comprehendeth (all) vision. He is the Subtile, the Aware.”
• Shakir: “Visions do not comprehend Him, and He comprehends the visions; and He is the Knower of subtleties, the Aware.”
• Mohsin Khan: “No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision. He is the Most Subtle and Courteous, Well-Acquainted with all things.”
• Abdul Haleem: “No vision can take Him in, but He takes in all vision: He is the All-Subtle, the All-Aware.”