1. The Quran emphasizes in many places that it is a “warning” (Nazir) and harbinger of “good tidings” (Bashir);
2. It claims to have no errors whatsoever and is consistent with itself;
3. It will remain unchanged or unaltered till the end of time;
4. It consists of “Ayah” which are verses (6236) or signs and Surahs which are chapters numbering 114;
5. To support its message - of a belief in a one true God - the Quran refers to biblical prophets, other previously unknown prophets, to creation, scientific facts, historical accounts, resolves longstanding questions and clear doubts and misconceptions that exist in previous scriptures;
6. The Quran is the primary source on which the Islamic shariah is based on and gives clear guidelines on how a Muslim should act in almost any situation.

Of course this holy scripture is much more than what is listed above as we will see in many other articles to follow - Insha-Allah

Thinking rationally we know that gender mainly represents or defines identity for purposes of human relationship or basically sexual identity.

For example the labels of father, brother, son and nephew applies exclusively to the masculine gender. Whereas for the feminine gender usual terms are mother, brother, daughter and niece.

So does God figure in all this - question is does God require a gender as a necessary attribute? The clear answer is no.

Anyone having read the Quran knows that Allah is referred to as a “he” implying the masculine gender however we must also consider that in arabic their is no neuter gender everything has to be categorized into masculine or feminine - according to these grammatical rules Allah gender is determined as masculine.

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

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.