The Infinity Stones

In Marvel's films, six Infinity Stones (Space, Mind, Reality, Power, Time and Soul) are separate objects, each with one domain. Thanos gathers them into a gauntlet to act on the universe. The gathering costs him: the Soul Stone demands the sacrifice of someone he loves, and using the Stones nearly destroys him. It is a story about acquisition: infinite power collected, held, fought over and lost.

The 99 Names are not like that, and the difference is the point. They are not six or ninety-nine separate powers that could be gathered. Classical Muslim scholars said God's attributes are “not He, nor other than He”: real, but not parts. Nothing is acquired; nothing is spent.

In Endgame, putting the world back costs Tony Stark his life. al-Jabbār, the One who mends, mends and nothing is spent. And Thanos needed six stones and a gauntlet, and it nearly destroyed him; the Qur'an says of God: “But His command, when He intendeth a thing, is only that He saith unto it: Be! and it is.” (36:82, Pickthall).

A God who needs nothing

Each faith says, in its own words, that God gathers nothing because He lacks nothing.

One more detail, from inside the Marvel universe itself: in the series Loki, the Time Variance Authority keeps captured Infinity Stones in a drawer as paperweights. Even in the story, they are not ultimate. Every superpower story is a ladder that stops one rung short. The Names begin where the ladder ends.