The Female Angels in the Qur’an and the Bible; Its Related Issues and Challenges

The concept of female angels in the Qur'an has caused many difficulties for the modern Qur'anic scholars. Mentioning this concept in a conversation with the polytheists in a Meccan surah (al-Najm) can only be justified if the polytheists were already familiar with it. However, no evidence for this femininity is found not only in the pre-Islamic literature of Arab people but also in Christian and Jewish texts. This issue confuses the perception of angels as the daughters of Allāh and also causes difficulties in their relation to Arabian goddesses. The main questions are as follow: what is the origin of the female angels? How did the polytheists perceive the angels as female beings and with what justification did they consider the angels as the daughters of Allāh? What connection is there between these angels and Arabian goddesses that are al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt? One of the views presented in this regard, whose sparks also go back to G. Howting, is that the concept of female-angels can only be rational based on the basis of a combined model, instead of one-component conformity. Especially in relation to a group of Mesopotamian Jews who identified the stars and other cosmic bodies with angels. According to this view, if the three aforesaid names in the Quran (al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt) are used to refer to the celestial objects, and if the polytheists associate them with the angels, the problem of the Quran's disputation with the polytheists seems understandable.