Rahman’s dense account of the Qur’anic understanding of God places considerable stress on the relationship between God and human beings. Particularly, Rahman is concerned to emphasis the mercy of God in the Qur’an, over against polemical or misinformed Western portraits thereof. In the course of emphasizing this attribute, Rahman points to a number of ways that God is “with” the believer: creation is a primordial act of mercy, and the sending of messengers and revealing of books to guide humanity to do his will is its zenith (Rahman 7).
These apparently external forms of mercy are complemented by apparently internal, personal accounts of the human-divine relationship: God is nearer man than his jugular vein, abandons him when he commits a fault, and returns to him if he repents (Rahman 4). He is capable of “sealing up” the hearts of some to the truth, and described in starkly predestinarian language (Rahman 11).
This different accounts prompt me to wonder about the Islamic understanding of the medium of divine-human relationship. In most forms of Christian theology, the more personal elements described above — God’s nearness, predestination, hardening of hearts, returning to the penitent — are raised under the the heading grace. Is there an Islamic equivalent of such a category, broadly speaking? And if not, how is God’s personal, interior interaction within the individual understood?
Christian-Muslim relations blog 
Good questions, Claude. Here’s my best guess about grace. It would seem that Islam does not need a conception of grace because it does not have a conception of the fall/original sin (so no need for moral elevation of humanity), and Islam does not allow for participation in God, which it deems to be shirk (Rahman, 9) (so no need for grace’s ontological elevation of humanity to participate in God).
–Stephanie
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Thank you for raising the question of grace. I am still thinking of possible equivalent term/concept. Perhaps, the notion of faith (iman)? See you soon.
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