No one created God. In Islamic belief, and in classical philosophy, God is by definition the uncreated First Cause. Everything that comes into existence needs a cause, but that chain of causes cannot run backward forever, so it must begin with a being that never came into existence and depends on nothing. That being is what Muslims mean by God.
"Who created God?" is one of the most searched questions about religion, and a fair one. Children ask it, and so do philosophers. Islam does not treat it as forbidden: the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) predicted people would ask it. This short guide explains the answer, the Quran's description of God as "the First," some everyday analogies, and the main objection from critics such as Richard Dawkins.
Key takeaways
- The Prophet said people would keep questioning until they ask, "Allah created all things but who created Allah?", as recorded in Sahih Muslim 134 and Sahih al-Bukhari 3276.
- Surah al-Ikhlas describes God as One who "neither begets nor is born" (Quran 112:3), meaning He has no origin.
- The Quran names God "the First and the Last" (Quran 57:3); a prophetic dua in Sahih Muslim 2713 explains this as "there is naught before Thee."
- Philosophers from Ibn Sina to modern defenders of the cosmological argument hold that an infinite regress of dependent causes cannot explain anything, so it must end in a necessary, uncaused being.
- Richard Dawkins objected in The God Delusion (2006) that a designer would itself need explaining; theists reply that the argument concerns things that begin or depend, which God by definition does not.
Who created God? The short answer
The question assumes that God is the kind of thing that needs a creator. But the arguments for God never say "everything has a cause." They say that whatever begins to exist has a cause, or that whatever is dependent needs something to depend on. A created god would just be one more link in the chain, and the question would move back a step.
So the answer is logical, not evasive. If anything exists at all, something must exist without having been caused. The only question is whether that uncaused reality is the physical universe or something beyond it. Islam's answer, set out in Does God Exist?, is that the universe shows every sign of being dependent and having a beginning, so the uncaused reality is God.
Why can't the chain of causes go on forever?
Muslim theologians called this problem tasalsul, an endless chain. Their point was that a chain of causes in which each link depends on the one before it never gets started unless something outside the chain supplies existence.
Two analogies make this concrete.
A line of dominoes. If you see dominoes falling, you know something tipped the first one. Adding more dominoes, even infinitely many, does not explain the movement. It only pushes the question further back.
Borrowed money. Imagine someone asks to borrow money, and the person they ask has to borrow it from someone else, who has to borrow it from someone else, and so on forever. If no one in the chain actually has money of their own, nobody ever gets paid. For anyone to receive the money, someone must own it outright.
God, in this picture, is the one who "owns" existence outright. Everything else has existence on loan. Ibn Sina called this being the Necessary Existent (wajib al-wujud): a reality that exists by its own nature and cannot fail to exist.
The hadith that predicted the question
The Prophet anticipated that people would reach this question, and he addressed it directly. In Sahih Muslim 134, Abu Hurayrah reports him saying:
"Men will continue to question one another till this is propounded: Allah created all things but who created Allah? He who found himself confronted with such a situation should say: I affirm my faith in Allah."
A related report in Sahih al-Bukhari 3276 says that Satan comes to a person asking "who created this, who created that," until he asks, "Who has created your Lord?" The Prophet advised seeking refuge with God and stopping that line of thought.
Some readers take this as a refusal to think. Scholars read it differently. The question is self-defeating, so following it leads only into an endless loop. The hadith does not forbid reasoning about God's existence; the Quran invites that constantly. It recognizes a specific trap: a question that, if God had a creator, would simply be repeated forever. The Prophet's advice is to step out of the loop and hold to what reason already shows.
What does Surah al-Ikhlas say about God's origin?
Surah al-Ikhlas, one of the shortest chapters of the Quran, reads like a direct answer:
Say, "He is Allah, [who is] One, Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is born, Nor is there to Him any equivalent."
"He neither begets nor is born" closes off both directions: God has no offspring and no source. "The Eternal Refuge" translates as-Samad, a name meaning the One everyone and everything depends on, while He depends on nothing. You can read more about this name at as-Samad, and about the surah in our guide to the four Quls.
What was before God? Al-Awwal, the First
The Quran describes God with four names in a single verse:
He is the First and the Last, the Ascendant and the Intimate, and He is, of all things, Knowing.
The Prophet explained these names in a dua recorded in Sahih Muslim 2713: "Thou art the First, there is naught before Thee, and Thou art the Last and there is naught after Thee." That is the Islamic answer to "what was before God?": nothing was. God is al-Awwal, the First, and al-Akhir, the Last.
There is also a deeper point. "Before" is a word about time, and time is part of creation. In Islamic theology, God is not inside time waiting for a starting moment. He brought time itself into being, along with space and matter. Asking what came before God is like asking what is north of the North Pole: the question uses a direction that runs out.
How can God exist without a creator?
Everything in our experience has a cause, so an uncaused being can feel impossible to imagine. But imagining and reasoning are different things. We also cannot picture a four-dimensional object or the inside of a black hole, yet we can reason about them.
The contrast between created things and the Creator is set out in the table below. The point is that God is not a very large created thing. He belongs to a different category altogether.
| Created things | God in Islamic belief |
|---|---|
| Begin to exist | Has no beginning: "the First" (Quran 57:3) |
| Depend on causes outside themselves | Depends on nothing: "the Eternal Refuge" (Quran 112:2) |
| Exist in time and space | Created time and space |
| Could fail to exist | Exists necessarily (Ibn Sina's wajib al-wujud) |
| Made of parts | One and indivisible (Quran 112:1) |
| Resemble one another | "Nor is there to Him any equivalent" (Quran 112:4) |
The Quran makes the same point: "There is nothing like unto Him" (Quran 42:11). Questions that fit created things, such as "who made it?" or "when did it start?", do not fit the Creator.
The objection: "Who designed the designer?"
The best-known modern version of the question comes from Richard Dawkins. In The God Delusion (2006), he argued that explaining the complexity of the universe by a designer gets nowhere, because a designer capable of making a universe would be even more complex and would itself need explaining.
Theists, Muslim and Christian, have offered three main replies.
- The cosmological arguments don't depend on complexity. The kalam and contingency arguments say that things which begin or depend need a cause. An eternal, necessary being falls outside that rule by definition.
- God is simple, not complex. Classical Islamic theology, like classical Christian theology, holds that God has no parts. Dawkins's argument treats God as a physical system, which is exactly what the tradition denies.
- Explanations don't need their own explanations to be valid. Archaeologists who find carved arrowheads can conclude that people made them without first explaining where those people came from.
Critics respond that "necessary being" is unclear, or that the universe itself might be the uncaused reality. That debate is real and ongoing. But the claim that "who created God?" refutes belief in God misunderstands what believers claim.
Read Surah al-Ikhlas on Quran Universe
You can read Surah al-Ikhlas on Quran Universe with Arabic text, word-by-word meaning and Tafsir Ibn Kathir, and Quran 57:3, where God is called the First and the Last. To go deeper, see our guides to who Allah is and what tawheed means, and browse all of the Names of Allah.
Frequently asked questions
Who created Allah?
No one created Allah. In Islamic belief, Allah is eternal and uncreated: "He neither begets nor is born" (Quran 112:3) and He is "the First," with nothing before Him (Quran 57:3). Anything created would need a creator of its own, leading to an endless chain. The chain must begin with a being that was never created, and that is God.
What was before God?
Nothing was before God. A prophetic dua in Sahih Muslim 2713 addresses God as "the First, there is naught before Thee." Islamic theology also holds that time itself is created, so "before" does not apply to God. Asking what came before God is like asking what lies north of the North Pole.
How does God exist without a creator?
Something must exist without a creator, or nothing would exist at all, because an endless chain of borrowed existence never gets started. Islam holds that God is that uncaused reality: He depends on nothing while everything depends on Him. Ibn Sina called this the Necessary Existent, a being that exists by its own nature.
Is it wrong to ask who created God in Islam?
No. The Prophet predicted people would ask it (Sahih Muslim 134), and he gave guidance on how to respond: affirm faith in God and stop following a question that loops forever. Muslims are encouraged to think about God's existence; the hadith addresses a specific doubt that, once answered by reason, should not be allowed to spiral.
If God created everything, who created God?
The premise is "God created everything that was created," not "everything has a creator." God is not part of creation. The arguments for God say that whatever begins to exist or depends on something else needs a cause. God neither begins nor depends, so the question does not apply to Him, as Surah al-Ikhlas says.