UPDATE: Just to clarify this is something I'm still researching and not a conclusive post or anything, so please don't use it as the basis for any arguments or opinions on the topics at hand.
Just a relatively quick one here (so could probably do with more refining and double-checking before publishing than usual), but something I’ve been wondering about since I was a kid: why do we refer to Allah as “He” in English, especially since one of the earliest things I was taught about Allah, as a child, is that “He” is singular and not like humans, including having no gender? Would it not be more accurate to use “They”?
The first and earliest explanation given to me was what I, with the blessing of learning and hindsight, believe to be an innocent yet misguided one - that “He” is masculine and indicates the might and grandeur of Allah (I’m paraphrasing here as I can’t remember word for word what was said about three decades ago, admittedly). In any case, it seemed odd to me that the Qur’an apparently uses the singular “He” for third-person referrals but the plural and ‘royal’ “We” for first-person referrals. Why isn’t/wasn’t “They” an option?
Fast-forward to recent years and to cut a long blog-post short: this is an apparent issue of translating Arabic into English as well as conflating grammatical gender with biological gender. Classical/”Qur’anic” Arabic doesn’t have gender-neutral pronouns, and so neutral terms default to “masculine” articles (like they do in Spanish, for example). That is to say that it’s not necessarily an ‘active’ or ‘conscious’ decision to use “He” in these cases and apply masculinity to them, whereas applying “She” often (but not always!) seems to be since it often seems to be done as a conscious reaction to the default.
This leads to questions and discussions about the default itself being masculine with the resultant “He”, and one of the conclusions of those is that, since English is a genderless language (i.e. we use the same articles for all nouns), gendered pronouns are regarded as an indication of biological gender and nothing to do with grammatical gender or artifacts of them from translation. This all may sound obvious to those used to ‘just’ English but it’s really important to consider when referring to translated texts that use grammatical gender (additionally, this may sound obvious to those used to translating between languages). This conflation - of grammatical gender with biological gender - can have massive implications and consequences in a social context, of course e.g. people may start incorrectly thinking of Allah as masculine in the biological human sense and then base incredibly incorrect opinions and arguments off of that, whether it’s “Allah is masculine therefore males are superior”, “How comes God in Islam is also masculine?”, or anything of the sort. And this conflation and consequences predominantly seem to come from issues in dealing with translations of the Qur’an and treating them - incorrectly - as comprehensive and complete reflections of the original language of the Qur’an. They very much aren’t and are subject to all the usual biases, errors, and misinterpretations found in translation, so we need to account for those before basing any strongly-held beliefs based on those translations alone (there’s always more learning to do, and that’s not a bad thing!).
Having said all of this, in today’s social climate where, especially in “the West”, switching to gender-neutral pronouns is a very sensitive, loaded, and seemingly trending topic, so any changes made around pronouns and articles used for Allah in English translations are likely to be perceived as reactionary to such social trends and consequently dismissed and rejected. Those changes need to be genuine, sincere, and ultimately clear, in there purpose and motivation so they can be regarded as such i.e. they need to be about presenting more authentic and accurate translations, rather than as a reaction to appease.
My point being, I think referring to Allah as “They” would be more accurate (and consistent with the royal “We”) to use rather than “He”, as it doesn’t suggest any biological gender associated with Allah to the audience, yet this also needs to be regarded and recognised as being independent from gender-identity and discussions surrounding that.
