How do I answer my five-year old daughter when she asks, “Where is Allah?”

15-year olds in my Why Islam is True class learn how to answer this question. They learn that God is not in a space because space is a property of things in the created universe. Since God created the universe and is not something inside it, He exists without needing any space to exist in. The question is thus a loaded question that mistakenly assumes that God exists in a space. The correct way to answer a loaded question is to deny the mistaken assumption. The answer to this question is therefore, “God does not exist in a space.”

But five-year olds have simpler minds than 15-year olds. Your five-year old isn’t confused about whether or not God exists in a space. She is confused about something else.

When she asks you where her sister is, you point somewhere and say, “There she is,” when she asks where her father is, you point somewhere and say, “There he is,” and when she asks where her pet hamster is, you point somewhere and say, “There it is.”

When she asks, “Where is Allah,” she wants you to point somewhere and say, “There He is.”

Your job is to explain in simple language that: (a) God is not like the things that she sees around her, (b) that God’s relation to those things is a relation of creation, not a relation of location, and that therefore (c) God is “with” everything in the sense that He sustains it and keeps it in existence.

Based on that, here’s an answer you could give: “God is not like anything else. He created everything. He is with you wherever you are.”

Every week, Hamza Karamali will select one of your questions to answer in this space. If you’ve any questions that you’d like to ask, please submit them here.