According to many scholars of Islam Allah has 99 names or attributes - however we cannot strictly place an upper limit as Allah may also have other attributes that may have not been revealed - aptly named hidden attributes.

Knowledge of Allah’s attributes is important to understanding Islam and also answers some of the fundamental controversies such as contradiction in freewill and predestination.

If we analyze Allah’s attributes we see that they are all attributes of “being” explaining Allah’s nature and also some others are how Allah affects/influences his creation - i.e. Allah is unchanging but influences and makes changes in His creation.

For a detailed list of His attributes:

http://www.jannah.org/articles/names.html

Understanding the concept of God or Allah in Islam is vital to any understanding of the religion itself:

1. Allah outlined in the Quran is one based on intelligent design i.e. Allah’s existence has been argued through the many arguments of intelligent design
2. Allah has been described based on his attributes
3. Allah is not masculine or feminine gender
4. Allah can not do anything or everything - only what his attributes allow him to do
5. Allah has a purpose

We will go through each of the above aspects one by one in a series of articles to follow.

One of the first questions posed by the athiest is why can’t we see God and empirically prove that he exists?

Existence itself requires form and Allah has no form and is limitless - therefore he cannot be physically represented in any way or any formula.

Why do we need to believe or have faith in a God that is wholly unable or unwilling to manifest himself in a visible form?

God cannot manifest himself as demonstrated in the earlier answer and even if he was to do so we would not need faith to believe in Allah. Allah however wants us to believe in him purely through our faith and reason. This act of faith cannot be tested by Allah if he made himself visible to all.