Allah’s 100th Name Is?

Sakinah-Shekinah is a very important concept of personal Devine presence for Muslims; and a famine personal Devine name of God for Jewish thought. In Islamic thought, it refers to the tranquility, serenity and peace of mind that results when a believer becomes totally aware of God’s nearby presence. Although Sakinah dwells in the heart of one who is already a sensitive and faithful believer; it now comes to him or her directly from God’s close presence and personal interest; to confirm and strengthen that believer’s faith.

As the Qur’an says “It is God who sent down Sakinah-tranquillity into the hearts of the believers, that they would increase in faith along with their (present) faith.” (48:4)

Thus, the experience of Sakinah is both God’s gift of enhanced, confirming faith and the product of one’s own faithfulness. (Qur’an 9:26 & 40) This is clearly stated in the example given in the Qur’an about Prophet Samuel’s selection of Saul to be the first King of Israel; “Their prophet (Samuel) said to them (The People of Israel), “Indeed, a sign of his (Saul’s) kingship is that the chest (ark of the covenant) will come to you in which is Sakinah- assurance (Ghali translates; serenity) from your Lord, and a remnant of what the family of Moses and the family of Aaron had left (the ten commandments’ stone tablets), carried by the angels. Indeed, in that is a sign for you, if you are (already) believers.” (Qur’an 2:248)

All faithful Christians, Jews and Muslims, no matter how pious they are, will benefit from enhancing their trust in God due to a Sakinah experience. Even Usayd ibn Khudayr, who according to Aishah, the wife of Prophet Muhammad, was one of three men among the Ansar whom no one could excel in virtue, could still benefit from a Sakinah experience he had while reading the Qur’an.

In a similar way, Jewish tradition asserts that even Torah scholars may experience a Shekinah blessing during study, Rabbi Chananiah ben Teradion said . . ‘when two sit together and words of Torah pass between them, the Shekinah dwells between them’ . . , (Mishnah Avot 3.3): and “Rabbi Chalafta ben Dosa used to say “… this applies to even one…” (Ibid 3:7) Community prayer is also a place where one can become aware of Shekinah as Talmud B’rachot 6a says: “Whenever ten (or more) are gathered for prayer, there the Shekinah dwells.”

The Sakinah can also dwell in a sacred object like the ark of the covenant or in a lowly bush (Qur’an 2:248). Those who are truly “Blessed by the Lord…with the best gifts of the earth and its fulness, and the favor of Him who dwells in the bush”. (Deuteronomy 33:16) And the Sakinah can also dwell on or in a holy person; a saint, a sage. or a Prophet like Muhammad: “Allah sent down His Sakinah (tranquillity) upon His Messenger and upon the believers and imposed upon them the word of righteousness, and they were deserving and worthy of it.(Qur’an 48: 26)

A well known Hadith relates that Allah’s Messenger said, “Allah has ninety-nine Names, one-hundred less one; and one who memorized them all by heart will enter Paradise.” To count something means to know it by heart. (Al Bukhara book 97 Hadith 21) For the average believer to count something is to memorize it; but for the wise believer it means to know it in ones heart. So “the Greatest Name”, also known as Ism Allah al-Akbar (اسم الله الأکبر, ‘the Greatest Name of God’), refers in Islam to the greatest name of Allah, known only to the prophets; especially Prophets Abraham and Moses.

There is no universal agreement among all Islamic exegesis scholars about the many names of God since only Ibn Hazm agreed about the limitation of 99 names. Instead, many Islamic scholars such as al-Khattabi, al-Qurtubi, Abi Bakr bin Thayyib, Ibn al-‘Arabi, Abu Abdillah ar-Razi, Ibn Taymiyya, Al-Nawawi, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya and Ibn Rajab, all stated that Allah has an unlimited numbers of names. Many Islamic scholars saw the 100th name of Allah as a future name like “ana” (I am). The learned scholar and mystic Mansur Al-Hallaj was put to death in the 9th century for revealing this secret name before its time.

Unlike the biblical Yahweh (often misread as Yehovah), Allah has no personal name, and his traditional 99 names are all really epithets. These include the Creator, the King, the Almighty, and the All-Seeing One. Some polemical leaning Christians claim that in Islam God has 99 names, and non of them is The Lover; however the Lover is also not found in the New Testament.

The sufi terms Ya Hu, Huwa, HuwaHu or Ya Huwa is strikingly similar to YHWH. Sufis claim this name is in the Quran in surat al-Ikhlas as “Qul Huwa AllaHu ahad…”, thus extracting the Huwa Hu from that sentence. The name HuwaHu basically means “He is He” in Arabic just as in Hebrew YHWH means “I am who I am”.

Jews have one very special name for God (YHVH) that is untranslatable; and has not even been pronounced verbally out loud by Jews for the last 2300 years.

In the days of Abraham, the religions of the Near East and India had hundreds of gods, and so they had hundreds of different names for their gods. But for the monotheistic religions that trace their prophets back to Prophet Abraham, and his two sons Prophets Ishmael and Isaac, the many names of God are not really names of God: they simply describe different aspects or attributes of the one God’s multifaceted personality.

For monotheists the many names of God are just appellations: titles and descriptions. Thus, to say that God is a King or a Judge describes one of many ways the one God acts. To say that God is the Compassionate One is to describe one of the many character or personality traits of the one God. So for monotheists each of the many ‘names’ of the one God is only one of the many appellations of the one universal creator of space and time; both Islam and Judaism also have one special Divine name that is always in the believer’s heart and soul.

Because the Qur’an is filled with beautiful Arabic poetry; it is not surprising that the Qur’an is also filled with so many (99) ‘names’ of the one God. Because the Jewish tradition reaches back more than thirty five centuries; it is not surprising that Jews have used many additional ‘names’ (70) for God over those many centuries.

The word God in English is not a name of the one God like Allah or YHVH. It is the generic term used for any and every deity, similar to the West Semitic root word EL as it is found in Sumerian and Akkadian Ellil-Enlil; Hittite and Hurrian Ellel, and Hebrew El-Elohim. The words El, Elah, Elohei and Elohim are all pre Abrahamic West Semitic generic terms for a God or for many Gods. In these various forms they appear almost 3,000 times in the Hebrew Bible.

But for Jews, the most important unique personal name of the one God is the name that God himself reveals to Moses at the burning bush: YHVH, which appears more than 6,800 times in the Hebrew Bible.

In Exodus 3:13-15, Moses said to God, “If I go to the Israelites and tell them, ‘The God of your fathers sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’—what should I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh”.

Ehyeh is the verb “to be” future tense singular and means I will/could-might-may be-become who I may-could-will-might be-become i.e. Ehyeh is The God of Potentialities, The God of Possibilities, The Living God of Becoming and Transforming, the One who can and will liberate Israel from bondage in Egypt.

Unfortunately, the Greek and Latin translations of this verse were influenced by the Greek philosophical idea that God was similar to a permanent ideal form (like an equilateral triangle) or an unmoved mover; and is not similar to a living personality. Since the Greeks thought God must be a static unchanging being, they mistranslated “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh’ as ‘I am who I am’ rather than its plain Hebrew meaning of ‘I will be whatever I should be to redeem you” i.e. God Almighty

The Torah continues, “And God said, “You must say this to the Israelites, “I am” (the usual false translation for God’s self revealed name) has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “You must say this to the Israelites, Ehyeh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial from generation to generation.’ (Exodus 3:13-15) When Jews speak of God in the third person, God’s name is pronounced Yehyeh and written YHVH– “One who causes being and becoming; the One who brings potentials into existence.”

The name YHVH was spoken publicly for almost a thousand years, from the time of Moses, throughout the centuries of the 1st Temple of Solomon. But it was ultimately replaced by Adonai (Lord) before the 3rd century B.C.E., because God’s actual Holy name was eventually considered too holy to speak audibly.

In later centuries even the substitution Adonai was considered too holy to utter; and pious Jews till this day do not use any name for God at all (except in prayer); but say only HaShem–the name (of God) when speaking about the one and only God.