There Is Nothing Like the Like of Him

Another very important thing is a verse in the Qur'an. Allah (swt) says: laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ. There is none like Allah. This is the common meaning given for this verse: laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ, there is nothing like Allah. Think about that in all of its possibilities: any likeness to Allah (swt) has to be negated. Whether it is His entity, His attributes or His actions, there is nothing like Allah. Whatever comes into the mind, He has to be beyond that. Allah is beyond that. So Allah can never be conceived.

Lā tudrikuhu al-abṣār. The wording of the first verse, laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ, will be all the more appreciated by those who understand Arabic to some level. Broken down, it proves a very eloquent way of saying what it says.

Laysa means there isn't; it is a verb. Laysa means there isn't. Then ka: laysa ka. Ka means to be like: the likeness, an equal, a like. Mithl also means the same thing: ka, mithl. So there are two words together. In ka-mithlihi, the hi is a pronoun: like Him. So: there is nothing like the like of Him. Shayʾ is something. Put laysa and shayʾ together, and the meaning is: there is nothing like the like of Him.

Translated verbatim, or literally, this is what the translation would be: there is nothing like the like of Allah. What it basically says is that if we hypothetically assume that Allah had a likeness, another, then there is nothing even like that. So, more conclusively, there is nothing like Allah. The logic runs like this. To tell someone, “There's nobody like you in this world,” is to say that there is nobody who is like them. To tell them, “There's nobody like the like of you,” means something even greater: even if we say that there was somebody like them, there is not even anybody like that. So it is like a second degree. It is a stronger emphasis on rejecting likeness.

But that literal translation is best not given when talking to common people; it is only going to confuse them. The point of it is to say that there is absolutely no likeness to Allah (swt) in anything. That has to be understood. And once this is right, a lot of what the creed goes on to say, the thought about Allah (swt), will be far clearer.