In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, and peace and blessings be upon the most noble of prophets and messengers, our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and companions, the pure and righteous, and those who follow them with excellence until the Day of Judgement. As for what follows:
They say: “You liken your Creator to created things and measure His attributes by comparing the visible to the unseen.”
This is a very foolish claim, even if its outward appearance is embellished and deceives the common people.
The term “created things” is ambiguous. If you mean the created things we see in this world, then you lie because we say, “There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.”
But from where did we learn the meanings of hearing and seeing, we and all the Arabs? From created things, we understood the general meaning and said that Allah is truly characterised as All-Hearing and All-Seeing, as is the meaning of hearing and seeing in the Arabic language, but not like the hearing and seeing of the created beings. Just as you speak of existence and power, we speak of hearing, seeing, hand, and face.
If you say these attributes are only found in created beings as bodies of flesh and blood, we say to you, power in created beings also comes only from the strength of bodies of flesh and blood. So, how do you differentiate then? By saying this, you have contradicted yourself when you claim that we are anthropomorphists, whereas you are the one who negated and denied the attribute that Allah described Himself with because you claimed that you cannot comprehend it without likening! So, who amongst us is more deserving of the accusation of likening?
Secondly: The atheist objects in the same way you do when we say that every occurrence has a cause and every creation has a reason. He says you are comparing the visible to the unseen. So, with the same reasoning you respond to him, we respond to you. If you say this is a necessity we learn from the visible but the mind generalises it to the unseen because it knows the necessity of it, we say to you, we also say, like all rational people, that the mind generalises that anything real is either inside something else or separate from it, and that it either exists now, existed in the past, or will exist in the future. But to say that it cannot be described by any temporal meaning nor that it is “existing now,” what is this but pure non-existence?
Thirdly: Allah, if He wills, can make His believing servants see Him in the Hereafter and witness His beauty and perfection, which is far greater than likening Him to non-existence which cannot be seen. And if He wills, He can address us with His speech, and we can hear it as He called Musa. All this is crated. Is not hearing and seeing created? Allah can be seen if He wills and heard if He wills. Therefore, He is created in the Hereafter, not in this world. So how do you say He is not amongst the created things?
Existence that can be perceived and known is more complete than existence that can only be known in the heart like pure meanings and non-existences that can never be seen or felt, never be in any place, and never be described by any time like saying it is “existing now” or was existing before the world or before anything else! Rather, it is something imagined in the heart with no reality outside the mind, just like the god you claim to have this negative attribute of not being described as inside or outside.
Furthermore, common sense and the clear texts all indicate that He is above everything, having the attribute of being in the most noble place, which is the absolute height above all His creation and heavens, without His earth, and established on His throne, distinct from His creation, encompassing them, but nothing encompasses Him. He is greater than everything else, glorified be He. This is the absolute perfection, as all rational people acknowledge, and as is apparent from the texts and the acknowledgement of the Prophet, the companions, and the followers without opposition except from the Jahmiyyah, your ancestors.
Then isn’t it absurd to extend your principle and say just as you exclude Allah from being created so that He is not amongst created things, exclude Him from being known so that He is not amongst the known things, deny Him entirely and disbelieve in Him, and say I do not know anything about Him so that He is not amongst the known! If you see this suspicion as foolish as it deserves to be seen, then your speech is of the same nature if you reflect!
Imam Al-Bukhari said in his precious book, “The Creation of the Actions of the Servants,” quoting and inferring:
He says: “Yazid bin Harun warned against the Jahmiyyah and said: ‘Whoever claims that the Most Merciful is not established over the Throne as it is known in the hearts of the common people, he is a Jahmi, and Muhammad bin al-Shaibani is a Jahmi.’” [p. 37]. And Damrah bin Rabi’ah said, on the authority of Sadaqah, I heard Sulayman al-Taymi say: “If I were asked where Allah is, I would say in the heaven. If he said, where was His Throne before the heaven? I would say on the water. If he said, where was His Throne before the water? I would say I do not know.” Abu Abdullah (Imam Al-Bukhari) said: That is because of His saying: {and they encompass not a thing of His knowledge except for what He wills} [Al-Baqarah: 255] meaning except what He explained. And Ibn Uyaynah, Mu’adh bin Mu’adh, Al-Hajjaj bin Muhammad, Yazid bin Harun, Hashim bin Al-Qasim, Al-Rabi’ bin Nafi’ al-Halabi, Muhammad bin Yusuf, Asim bin Ali bin Asim, Yahya bin Yahya, and the people of knowledge said: “Whoever says the Qur’an is created is a disbeliever.” And Muhammad bin Yusuf said: “Whoever says that Allah is not on His Throne is a disbeliever.”
Translated from: https://srajarabic.com/?p=5043
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