What Does the Euthyphro Dilemma Reveal about the Nature of Allah?

Abstract

In their book, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality, David Baggett & Jerry Walls discuss the nature of the God of Christianity by studying the Euthyphro dilemma. This paper shall follow Louise Antony, Walls, and Baggett’s model of the Euthyphro dilemma (Divine Command Theory) and uses it as an objective moral standard to study the nature of the theistic concept of divinity in Islam. After explaining the Euthyphro dilemma and making the distinction between voluntarism and extreme voluntarism. I shall argue that morality (what is good, right, bad, wrong, or evil) can easily be compromised on the extreme voluntarist view, unless it is constrained by the good nature of Allah. But, once the voluntarist nature of Allah is combined with some particular names/attributes (i.e., Ad-Ḍar and Al-Muḍil, Al-Mutakkabir, Al-Muntaqim, and Al-Qahar) and moral commands (i.e., Holy war, mutᶜa marriage, and adult breastfeeding), the morality of Allah is drastically compromised.