English: Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies from Headington Hill Park (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Qur’an is the last Book God revealed to mankind. God whispered the words of the Qur’an to the angel Gabriel. Gabriel came to Earth and revealed to the last Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) the litereal words of our Creator.
At the heart of the Islamic doctrine is the basic tenet that there is no god but God. This is to say that Allah (Arabic for God) is the only deity worthy of praise. Allah has no partners and there is nothing equal to Him. Allah reminds mankind of this in the Qur’an. “But as for my part, I believe that He is Allah, my Lord, and none shall I associate as partner with my Lord.” Qur’an 18:38
Throughout my beautiful path to discovering Islam I have been blessed to immerse myself in the word of the glorious Qur’an. I was humbled to read the unchanged word of God. I was repeatedly brought to tears by the splendid beauty of the Rope of Allah.
The more I read, the more I discovered God’s use of “We” and “Us” throughout the Book when referring to Himself. For a while I couldn’t understand why the ONE God would refer to Himself in the plural. “And indeed, We know the first generations of you who had passed away, and indeed We know the present generations of you mankind, and also those who will come afterwards.” Qur’an 15:24. Thankfully there is a simple answer to this confusion.
When Allah used “We” and “Us” in the Qur’an He was employing a style of speech referred to as “Royal We.” It is used in many languages including Arabic, English, Hebrew and Persian. “Royal We” is used for singular person displaying the meanings of royalty and grandness. It displays the highest position in a language and is used here to display the Majesty, grandness and endless power of Allah. He spoke to mankind via the Qur’an at times in the third person to remind us of His absolute Majesty.
When a king says, “We decree the following declaration…..” Even though there is only one king, he is using “We” in his speech to denote absolute power for that region.
