When I'm starting somewhere new, I always like to start with what I mean by 'God', as when talking to others that is usually the first bone of contention. Not that the listeners necessarily hear things from the beginning, but I do and it gives me a good place to start.

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim - In the Name of God the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. Along with many other muslims around the world, I use this phrase when I begin things, like making my prayers, starting the car, pressing the button in the lift, or taking the first sip from a cup of tea. Because I use the phrase so frequently, all too often the words come to my lips out of habit, and are gone almost before I noticed they were there, no more than a moment's hesitation before the act.

Sometimes it is nice to slow myself down, however, and give a little more thought to what I am saying. Why do I begin in the Name of God, and not just start By God? Because God is beyond my definition and understanding. I cannot measure God. I am only human and cannot contain the Creator of the Universe in my puny imagination, so the best that I can do is use a Name. We can agree on a name for something that we understand in very different ways. Some may think of rain as a longed for blessing, while others think of rain as a threat to their lives, and both can use the same word for that water from the skies.

As a muslim, I use the Name Allah for what I call God in English, but the fact that I use an Arabic word doesn't mean that I worship a different God from those who call God a different Name. How can that be if we each believe in the One apart from whom there is no one? As a muslim I also know that God is not an It but a Who, and this means that I can speak my thoughts to God addressing Him as You. I refer to God as Him, but of course that doesn't mean that I think of God as male, just that He is not female. He is neither male nor female. He is the One apart from whom there is no one.

Now I may not be able to contain God within the borders of definition, but if Allah is to be more than just a Name without any meaning whatsoever, we must have ways of describing God that relate to our human understanding. In fact, I can describe certain aspects of God in terms of values we humans can share in our limited ways, but which in God are Absolute. The Qur'an is filled with different Names for God, but of them all, the nearest to Allah is the All-Merciful. Call Him God or call Him the All-Merciful says the Qur'an, and nearly every chapter of the book begins In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. The closest we can come to understanding God is in terms of Mercy and Compassion.

The Words of God in the Qur'an say of the Prophet "and We did not send you except as a mercy to all the worlds", and the Qur'an itself is described similarly as "a healing and a mercy for the believers".

[From the Qur'an, the chapter called The Gathering, vv. 21-24]

If We had sent this Qur'an down upon a mountain
you would have seen it humbled, split asunder in awe of God.
And such likenesses - We strike them for men
so that they will think about them.

He is God, there is no god but He.
He is the knower of the Unseen and the Visible.
He is the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.

He is God, there is no god but He.
He is the King, the All-Holy, the All-Peaceable,
the All-Faithful, the One who determines truth and falsehood,
the All-Mighty, the All-Compelling, the All-sublime.

Glory be to God, above what they associate with Him.

He is God, the Creator, the Maker, the Shaper.
To Him belong the Names Most Beautiful.
All that is in the heavens and the earth magnifies Him.
He is the All-mighty, the All-Wise.