Why does the Qur'an never say God “thinks”? Does God not think?

The question/claim: "In the Qur'an human beings are constantly called to 'think, reflect (tafakkur)'; yet not once is God said to 'think / reflect' about Himself. Does God not think at all — isn't that a deficiency?"

The observation is correct: the text really is like this

The root of "thinking" (tafakkur) is f-k-r, which occurs 18 times in the Qur'an, and its subject is always human: "do they not reflect?" (afalā yatafakkarūn), "for a people who reflect" (li-qawmin yatafakkarūn, 3:191). Even in the single exceptional form at 74:18 (innahū fakkara wa qaddara — "he thought and measured") the subject is a human being. Likewise tadabbur (deep pondering), ta'aqqul (reasoning) and nazar in the sense of inference are used only of the created. So the Qur'an genuinely never attributes the verb "to think" to God. The observation is not wrong.

But is this a deficiency?

(interpretation) The answer turns on what "thinking" is. In classical kalam, fikr/tafakkur is reasoning from known premises to an unknown conclusion; that is, it presupposes prior not-knowing, a process, and time. A human thinks because he does not know and is trying to know — which is why, for humans, reflection is a virtue.

God's knowledge, by contrast, is described in the Qur'an as eternal, absolute and complete:

The keys of the unseen are with Him; none but He knows them (6:59).
His knowledge and throne encompass the heavens and the earth (2:255).
If three converse secretly He is the fourth, if five the sixth (58:7).
He is nearer to a person than the jugular vein; He knows what his soul whispers to him (50:16).
"Does He who created not know?" (67:14).

(interpretation) To attribute "thinking" to a being who already-and-always knows would be to portray Him as a subject moving from ignorance to knowledge. So the Qur'an's not attributing thought to God is not a gap; it is the linguistic consequence of the absoluteness of His knowledge.

The Qur'an's avoidance of anthropomorphism

This choice is consistent with the Qur'an's general line: "There is nothing whatever like Him." (42:11) The Qur'an says God wills (yurīd), decrees, speaks, knows — He is an agent with will; but it does not load onto Him the human knowledge-acquiring processes of "reasoning to a conclusion / learning and recalling."

Different readings

Classical kalam (Ash'ari / Maturidi): Knowledge is an eternal attribute of God; thinking (inference) is a creature's method of acquiring knowledge. By tanzih (transcendence) God is free of acts requiring process and time (interpretation).
Linguistic reading: All conjugations of the roots f-k-r, '-q-l (reason) and d-b-r in the Qur'an take a human/community as subject; this is a consistent pattern, not chance.
Philosophical theism: God's knowledge is not "inferential" (premise-to-conclusion) but direct and complete; hence "absolute knowledge," not "reasoning," is ascribed to Him. This conclusion is similar in classical theism outside Islam too (interpretation).

An honest limit

Certain in the text: The Qur'an attributes "thinking/reflection" only to humans, never to God. This is verifiable linguistic data (Quranic Arabic Corpus).
In the domain of interpretation: The answer to "why is it so?" (not a deficiency but a perfection) is a theological inference — strong, yet ultimately an interpretation; a different reader may reject the framing altogether, which is a separate debate.
Not to be confused: "God does not think" does not mean "God has no will or decree"; the Qur'an ascribes will and judgement to Him — it only declines to ascribe thinking as a process of acquiring knowledge.

Conclusion: The observation holds: the Qur'an does not say God "thinks." But this is not a weakness; it is the natural consequence of the absoluteness of divine knowledge and of the Qur'an's language of transcendence. Thinking is the road to knowing; God already knows absolutely. For humans reflection is a virtue; for God it is needless — because He knows without lack.

Source: Qur'anic verses (M. Okuyan meal) + Quranic Arabic Corpus (root data). Presented soberly and respectfully, with a text/interpretation distinction.