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BOOK V: ALLAH AND HIS MESSENGER
Table of Contents:
v1.0 ALLAHv1.1 (Ghazali:) Praise be to Allah, who originates all and returns it, who does as He wills, He of the noble Throne and overwhelming force, the Guide of His elect servants to the wisest path and straightest way, who has blessed them, after having had them attest to His oneness, by preserving the tenets of their religion from the darknesses of doubt and misgivings, bringing them through His providence and guidance to follow His chosen Messenger and the example of his noble and honored Companions; He who manifests Himself and His acts to His servants through His sublime attributes, of which none possess knowledge save those who give heed with a present mind.
HIS ONENESSv1.2 He is one is being without partner, unique without peer, ultimate without opposite, alone without equal. He is one, preeternal, beginninglessly uncreate, everlastingly abiding, unceasingly existent, eternally limitless, the ever selfsubsisting through whom all else subsists, ever enduring, without end. He is, was and ever will be possessed of all attributes of majesty, unannihilated by dissolutiom or separtion through the passage of eons or terminus of interims. He is the First and Last, the Outward and Inward, and He has knowledge of everything.
HIS TRANSCENDENCEv1.3 He is not a body with a form, or a limitary, quantitative substance, not resembling bodies in quantifiability or divisibility, or in being a substance or equalified by substance, or being an accident or qualified by accidents. He does not resemble anything that exists, nor anything that exists resemble Him. There is nothing whatsoever like unto Him, nor is He like unto anything. He is not delimited by magnitude, contained by places, encompassed by directions, or bounded by heavens or earth. He is 'established on the Throne' (mustawin, Koran 20:5) in the way He says and the meaning He intends, 'established' in a manner transcending contact, settledness, fixity, indwelling, or movement. The Throne does not bear Him up, but is borne, up by the subtlety of His infinite power, as are the angels who carry it, and all are powerless in His grasp. He is above the Throne, the heavens, and all else to the farthest reaches of the stars, with an aboveness that does not increase His nearness to the Throne or heavens, or His distance from the earth and what lies beneath it. He is as exalted in degree above the Throne and the heavens as He is above the earth and its depths, though He is near to everything in existence, nearer to a servant than his own jugular vein, and is witness to everything. His nearness no more resembles the nearness of objects to one another than His entity resembles the entities of objects. He does not indwell in anything, nor anything indwell in 'Him. He is as exalted above containment in space as he is above confinement in time. He was, before creating time and space, and is not even as He was. He is distinguished from His creation by His attributes. There is nothing in His entity other that Him, nor is His entity in what is other than Him .He is beyond change and motion :events neither occurs with in Him nor changes befall Him .of majestly exalted above change, and in the attributes of His perfection beyond needing any increase in perfection. The existence of His entity is known by human reason, and in the after life is beheld by the eyesight of the reghteous as a beatitude and favor, to consummate their perfect joy with the sight of His Noble Countenance.
HIS LIFE AND ALMIGHTY POWERv1.4 He Most High is living, almighty, overmastering, triumphant, unaffected by inability or weakness; unsusceptible to drowsiness, sleep, annihilatin, or death; possessed of absolute soverignty and might, of irresistible power and force. His is the majesty and sway, the creation and command. The heavens are enfolded in His right hand and all beings are powerless in His grasp. He alone creates, begins, gives existence, and originates. He creates all beings and their acts, ordains their sustenance and terms. Nothing possible is out of His grasp, the disposal ofno matter is beyond His power. The number of things He can do is limitless, the amount He knows is infinite.
HIS KNOWLEDGEv1.5 He knows all things knowable, encompassing all that takes place from the depths of the earth to the highest heaven. He knows without an atom's weitht in the earth or heavens escaping His knowledge. He knows the creeping of a black ant across a great stone on a lightless night, and the motion in the air of a particle of dust on a windy day. He knows the concealed and the yet more hidden, the buried recesses of hearts, the movement of thought, and the opacities of the inmost soul; with preeternal, beginningless knowledge that He has always possessed from the limitless reaches of past eternity, not with awareness originating within Him through being imparted or conveyed.
HIS WILLv1.6 He Most High wills all that exits and directs all events. Nothing occrus in the physical or spiritual world, be it meager or much, little or great, good or evil, of benefit or detriment, faith or unbelief, knowledge or ignorance, triumph or ruin, increase or decrease, obedience or sin; save through His ordinance, apportionment, wisdom, and decision. What He wills is, and what He does not will is not. Neither sidelong glance nor passing thought is beyond His design. He originates all and returns it, does what He wills, and none can repulse His command. There is no rescinding His destiny, no flight for a servant from disobeying Him except through divinely given success therein and mercy, and no strength to obey Him save through His choice and decree. If all mankind, jinn, angels, and devils combined their efforts to move or to still a single particle of the universe without His will and choice, they would be unable to. His will, like His other attributes, exists in His entity and He ever possesses it. He has willed from preeternity the existence of all things at the times He has chosen. They occur at the times which He has destined from beginningless eternity, occurring neither before nor after, but taking place in accordance with His knowledge and will, without substitution or alternation. He directs events without successive throughts or waiting for time to elapse, which is why nothing divers Him from anything else.
HIS HEARING AND SIGHTv1.7 He Most High is all-hearing and allseeing. He hears and sees, no sound however slight eluding His hearing, and no sight however minute escaping His vision. Distance does not obscure His hearing nor darkness hinder His vision. He sees without pupil or eyelids, and hears without ear canal or ears, just as He knows without a heart, seizes without limb, and creates without implement. His attributes no more resemble the attributes of His creatures than His entity resembles the entity of His creatures.
HIS SPEECHv1.8 He Most High speaks, commands, forbids, promises, and warns, with beginninglessly eternal speech that is an attribute of His entity, not resembling the speech of creatures in being a sound generated by the passage of air or impact of bodies, nor in letters articulated by compressing the lips or moving the tongue. The Koran, Torah, Evangel, and Psalms are His Books, revealed to His messengers (upon whom be peace). The koran is recited with tongues, written in books, and memorized in hearts despite being beginninglessly eternal, an attribute of the entity of Allah Most High, unsubject to disseverance and separation by conveyance to hearts or pages. Moses (Allah bless him and give him peace) heard the speech of Allah without sound or letter, just as the righteous see the entity of Allah Most High in the afterlife without substance or accident. Since Allah possesses all of the above attributes, He is living, knowing, omnipotent, willing, hearing, seeing, and seeking by virtue of His life, power, knowledge, will, hearing, sight, and speech, not merely by virtue of His entity.
HIS ACTSv1.9 Everything besides Him Glorious and Exalted exists through His action, proceeding from His justice in the best, fullet, most perfect and equitable way. He is wise in His acts and just in His decrees. His justice is not comparable to the justice of His servants, since injustice mey only be imagined from a servant through his disposal of what belongs to another, while this is inconceiveable from Allah Most High, since nothing belongs to anyone besides Him that He should unjustly disclose of 'it. Everything besides Him, be it human, jinn, angel, devil, heaven, earth, animal, vegetable, mineral, substance, accident, intelligible, or senosory, is contingent, and was brought into existence through His power after not being, created by Him after it was nothing. He alone existed in preeternity, and nothing else. He then originated creation, that His omnipotence might be mainfest, His prior decree effected, and His eternal word realized; not from needing or requiring anything in creation. Our origination, beginning, and responsibility are of Allah's generosity, not because of their being obligatory for Him, and His blessings and benefaction exist because of His favor, not because of being due from Him. Everything that exists is indebted to Him for His generosity and goodness, His blessings and benevolence; for He is well able to pour all manner of torments upon His servants and try them with tevery variety of suffering and illness, and were He to do so, it would be just on His part and not wicked or unfair. He Mighty and Majestic rewards His servants, the believers, for their acts of obedience because of His generosity and in fulfillment of His word, not because of their deserving it or His owing it to them. He is not obliged to anyone to do anything, nor is injustice on His part conveivable, for He does not owe any rights to anyone. The obligation of men an jinn to perform acts of obedience is established by His having informed them of it upon the gongues of the prophets (upon whom be peace), and not by unaided human reason. He sent the prophets and manifested the truth of their messages by unmistakable, inimitable miracles. They have communicated His commands, prohibitions, promises and warnings, and it is obligatory for mankind and jinn to believe in what they have conveyed.
v2.0 HIS MESSENGERv2.1 Allah Most High sent Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), the Qurayshite unlettered prophet, to deliever His inspired message to the entire world, Arabs and non-Arabs, jinn and mankind, superseding and abrogatign all previous religious systems with the Prophet's Sacred Law, except for the provisions of them that the new revelation expicitly reconfirmed. Allah has favored him above all the other prophets and made him the hightest of mankind, rejecting anyone's attesting to the divine oneness by saying "There is no god but Allah," unless they also attest to the Prophet by saying "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah." He has obliged men and jinn to believe everything the Prophet (Allah bless him and giver him peace) has informed us concerning this world and the next, and does not accept anyone's faith unless they believe in what he has told us will happen after death.
THE TRIAL OF THE GRAVEv2.2 The first of these matters is the questioning of Mankar and Nakir, two tremendous, aweinspring personages who sit a servant upright in his grave, body and soul, and ask him about the unity of Allah and the messengerhood of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), saying, "Who is your Lord, what is y our religion, and who is your prophet?" It is they who try people in the grave, their questioning being the first ordal after death. It is also Obligatory to believe in the torment of the grave, that it is a fact, is just, and affects both body and soul, in the way Allah wills.
THE SCALEv2.3 It is obligatory to believe in the scale, which consists of two scalepans and a balance indicator between them and is as great in size as the thickness of the heavens and earth. It weighs a servant's deeds through the power of Allah Most High, and the weights placed on it are as fine as an atom or mustard seed, that justice may be perfectly done. The pages recording one's good deeds will be placed in a form pleasing to behold on the side of the scale for Light, weighing it down according to their rank with Allah through His generosity, while the pages recording one's bad deeds will be placed in an ugly form on the side of Darkness, diminishing the weight of the opposite side through Allah's justice.
THE BRIDGE OVER HELLv2.4 It is obligatory to believe in the bridge over hell (sirat), a bridge spanning the breadth of hell, sharper than a sword and finer than a hair, which unbelievers' feet shall slip from by Allah's decree and plunge them into hell, and the feet of believers shall be made fast upon by Allah's generosity, and from thence they shall be conducted to the Final Abode.
THE WATERING PLACEv2.5 It is Obligatory to believe in a watering place people will come to, the watering place of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), which believers will drink from before entering paradise, after having crossed the bridge over hell. Whoever drinks from it will never thirst again. Its width is month's journey across, its water whiter than milk and sweeter than honey, and there are as many pitchers around it as stars in the sky. Two aqueducts pour into t from Kawthar, a spring in paradise.
THE FINAL RECKONINGv2.6 It is obligatory to believe in the Final Recokoing and the disparity in the way various people are dealt with therein, some made to answer, others pardoned, and some admitted to paradise without reckoning, being the intimaters of Allah (muqurrabun). Allah Most High shall ask whomever He wills of the Prophets if they have conveyed their message, ask unbelievers why they denied the messengers, ask those of reprehensible innovation (bid'a) about the sunna, and ask Muslims about their works.
BELIEVERS SHALL DEPART FROM HELLv2.7 It is obligatory to hold that true believes in the oneness of Allah (N: who follow the prophet of their age (dis: w4.4)) will be taken out of hell after having paid for their sins, through the generosity of Allah Mighty and Majestic. No one who is a true monotheist will abide in the fire forever.
THE INTERCESSION OF THE PROPHETS AND RIGHTEOUSv2.8 It is obligatory to believe in the interecesion of first the prophets, then religious scholars, then martyrs, then other believers, the intercession of each one commensurate with his rank and position with Allah Most High. Any believer remaining in hell without intercessor shall be taken out of it by the favor of Allah, no one who believers remaining in it forevor, and anyone with an atom's weight of faith in his heart will eventually depart from it.
THE EXCELLENCE OF THE PROPHETIC COMPANIONS (SAHABA)v2.9 It is obligatory to believe in the excellence (dis: w56) of the prophetic Companions (Allah be well pleased with them). One must think the best of all of the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), and praise them just as Allah Mighty and Majestic (n: e.g., at Koran 3:110) and His messenger have praised them (Allah bless them all and give them peace).
v3.0 CONCLUSIONv3.1 Allah of the foregoing has been conveyed by prophetic hadith and attested to by the words of the early Muslims. Whoever believes it with deep conviction belongs to those of the truth, who follow the sun, and distinguishes himself from the faction who have strayed, the sect adhering to repehensible innovation (bid'a). We ask Allah through His mercy for perfect certainty and steadfastness in religion, for ourselves and all Muslim; He is the Most Merciful of the Merciful. May Allah bless our ligelord Muhammad, and every chosen serant (Ihya' 'ulum al-din (y39), 79-83).
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