Is God a role model for most people? A friend forwarded an article to me about Humanizing Religion. It made me wonder that in order to humanize religion do we need to humanize God. In most religions God has a human form: Jesus,  Ram, Vishnu, Shiva,  Laxmi, Parvati, Radha, Krishna,  Buddha, Zeus.

As I think about it, religions which idealize God and emulate him/her seem to create better societies. Maybe it is because by making God a role model, we make perfection our  bench mark . Where as in Islam in an effort to avoid any form of idolatry, we cannot create any image of God. We cannot visualize him, or emulate his qualities, even though the Quran says that God created us in his image, yet we have made him unattainable and incomprehensible.

But in doing so we have not been able to take away the human need for a role model. The human need to humanize. Instead our role model has become the Prophet. Muslims  idealize him, adore him and aspire to be like him. Ironically though as much as Islam wanted to steer away from creating any image of God or the Prophet, with the sole fear that people would start worshiping them, that is exactly what it has created. We have become the biggest idol worshipers of the Prophet.

Muslims want to dress, eat, live, marry, pray,  go to war,  do everything like the Prophet did……we in essence worship him.  Instead of emulating perfection in spirit we are trying to perfect human routines. Religions which humanize God, try and emulate God’s eternal and ethereal qualities. Christians don’t want to look like Jesus they aspire to be like him. Hindus do not dress like Vishnu or Shiva  they try and emulate their virtues, Buddhists do not spend their lives under a tree but try and attain peace and happiness.

I wonder if some of the problems we see in Islamic societies today are because of how Muslims perceive God.  Are we  missing our role model, or do we have the wrong role model?