Beloved or ma ‘shuq, as the Sufis say, who is God in His inner reality, a reality to which Sufis often refer in the feminine. The Essence of God is called al-Dhat in Arabic, and it is grammatically feminine in gender. Seen as the Beloved, the inner dimension of the Divine is that feminine Beauty for which the male soul yearns. In His aspect as Creator and Sustainer of creation, however, God is seen as masculine. From the purely metaphysical point of view, the Divine is of course above the male-female distinction