Why Do We Refer to Allah as 'He'?

The Claim

The argument, increasingly circulating in Western Muslim spaces, runs as follows: referring to God as "He" imposes a male identity on God, reinforces patriarchy, and should be replaced with gender-neutral language or even "She." Some who make this argument are sincere Muslims who have absorbed this framing from feminist discourse without examining it against Islamic theology and Arabic linguistics.

This entry addresses the claim directly, because the confusion it creates (though it may feel like a small linguistic matter) touches something foundational: who God is, and whether humans have the right to change how God has described Himself.

Arabic Grammar Is Not English Grammar

The English word "he" refers to a male person. When an English speaker hears "God is He," they import the associations of biological maleness, because that is what "he" means in English.

Arabic does not work this way. Arabic, like French, Spanish, Italian, German, and many other languages, assigns grammatical gender to all nouns, not just living beings. In Arabic:

• The sun (al-shams) is grammatically feminine
• The moon (al-qamar) is grammatically masculine
• The earth (al-ard) is grammatically feminine
• The sky (al-sama') is grammatically feminine, while the throne (al-'arsh) is grammatically masculine

No one argues that Arabic speakers believe the sun is a woman or the wall is a man. Grammatical gender is a feature of the language's structure; it does not assign biological sex or social identity to objects.

The pronoun huwa ("He" in English translations) is the grammatically masculine default in Arabic. The masculine form is the unmarked default: used for males, for mixed groups, for any referent whose gender is unspecified, and for any entity that is not specifically and unambiguously feminine. This is a structural feature of the language, not a theological claim. Calling Allah huwa therefore no more asserts that He is biologically male than calling the moon al-qamar asserts that it is biologically male. The feminine pronoun hiya is used only when the referent is specifically feminine.

This means that in Arabic, using huwa for God does not say God is male. It says God is not specifically feminine, which is exactly what Islamic theology holds. God is beyond biological sex entirely. Huwa is the only Arabic pronoun available for an entity that transcends gender without reducing that entity to a thing.

What the Quran Says

The Quran uses huwa for Allah consistently and repeatedly. Some of the most foundational statements about God in the entire Quran use this pronoun:

"Huwa Allahu alladhi la ilaha illa Huwa (...)" (He is Allah), there is no god but Him. (59:22)

"(...) Huwa ar-Rahmanu ar-Rahim" (He is the Most Merciful), the Most Compassionate. (59:22)

"Qul Huwa Allahu Ahad" (Say: He is Allah), One. (112:1)

This is not incidental. The opening of Surah al-Ikhlas (the surah described by the Prophet ﷺ as equal to a third of the Quran in weight) begins with Huwa. God chose this word to describe Himself. The question is not whether we find it linguistically convenient. The question is whether we will accept what God said about Himself.

The Two Alternatives and Why Both Are Wrong

If someone insists on avoiding huwa, the available alternatives in Arabic are hiya (she) or a neuter construction. Both are theologically worse than huwa:

"She" (hiya): In Arabic, using hiya for God would specifically and unambiguously assign the feminine gender to God, which is the very thing the objection claims to avoid by insisting God has no gender. It would make God grammatically female in a way that huwa does not make God grammatically male.

"It": In Arabic and in English, the neuter pronoun denotes inanimate objects, things without intelligence, things without will or action. Applying this to God would attribute to Him the characteristics of an object (lifeless, irrational, without agency). This is closer to the rejection of God's attributes than anything huwa implies.

Huwa is the only pronoun in Arabic that can refer to an entity that is living, intelligent, active, and not specifically feminine. It is the most appropriate available designation, and more importantly, it is the one God chose.

Why This Argument Arises

The argument that calling God "He" is patriarchal makes a category error: it imports the social meanings of the English pronoun "he" into a completely different linguistic and theological context.

In English, "he" means male person. In English gender politics, maleness is associated with dominance, power, and patriarchy. The argument then says: God is called "He" therefore God is being constructed as a patriarchal male figure.

This reasoning only works if you are thinking in English, with English gender politics, and applying that to Arabic theological language. The moment you understand that huwa in Arabic is not "male person" but "the default pronoun for any entity not specifically feminine," the entire argument collapses.

What the argument actually demands is that God's self-description (consistent throughout the Quran, in the language God chose to reveal His final message) be changed to accommodate associations carried by a different language in a different context. This is not a small request.

The Salaf's Method on God's Self-Description

The position of Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama'ah on the names and attributes of God is to affirm what He has affirmed about Himself, in the wording He chose, without distortion of the wording (tahrif), denial of its meaning (ta'til), asking how (takyif), or likening it to creation (tamthil). The pronouns God uses for Himself fall under the same principle as the names and attributes: they are part of His self-disclosure. To replace huwa with another pronoun because of associations imported from a different language is precisely tahrif al-lafz.

The Theological Boundary

Islam is clear: God has no gender in the biological sense. He is not male. He is not female. He does not have a body, does not reproduce, and does not share any of the physical characteristics that distinguish male from female in creation. The Quran says: "There is nothing like Him." (42:11).

What Islam is equally clear about: God has described Himself in specific ways, using specific language, in the Quran. Human beings do not have the authority to revise those descriptions because they are emotionally uncomfortable with the associations those descriptions carry in a different language and a different cultural context.

The desire to make God's description feel more comfortable by changing it is an act of placing human preference above divine self-disclosure. This is not reform or inclusion. It is the substitution of a constructed God (one designed to fit current ideological preferences) for the God who revealed Himself.

For Muslim Women Encountering This Argument

If you have encountered this argument and found it compelling, the honest question to ask is: where is it coming from? Is it coming from Islamic scholarship, from tafsir, from Arabic linguistics? Or is it coming from a framework developed in a different language, applied to Arabic by analogy?

The concern for justice, for the equal dignity of women before God, is a fully Islamic concern. The Quran affirms it directly: "The most noble of you before God is the most righteous." (49:13). God's mercy and love extend equally to men and women. The rewards of the Hereafter are given equally.

None of this requires changing how God described Himself. The justice you are rightly seeking is already in the religion. The argument that you need to revise God's pronouns to achieve it is a detour into a different project: one that, if followed, does not end at equality but at the revision of the Quran itself.

Hold to what God said about Himself. The linguistic clarity, when properly understood, removes the problem entirely.