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1. TRANSCENDENCE (EXALTATION)
Allah is not a body possessing form, nor a substance restricted and limited: He does not resemble other bodies either in limitation or in accepting division.
He is not a substance and substances do not reside in Him; He is not a quality of substance, nor does a quality of substance occur in Him.
Rather, He resembles no existent and no existent resembles Him. Nothing is like Him and He is not like anything. Measure does not bind Him and boundaries do not contain Him. Directions do not surround Him and neither the earth nor the Heavens are on different sides of Him.
Truly, He is controlling the Throne in the manner in which He said and in the sense in which He willed - in a state of transcendence that is removed from parallel and touch, residence, fixity of location, stability, envelopment, and movement.
The Throne does not support Him, but the Throne and those who carry it are supported by the Subtleness of His Power and are constrained by His Firmness. He is above the Throne and Heavens and above everything to the limits of the earth with an aboveness which does not bring Him nearer to the Throne and the Heavens, just as it does not make Him further from the earth.
Rather, He is Highly Exalted above the Throne and the Heavens, just as He is Highly Exalted above the earth. Nevertheless, He is near to every entity and is "nearer to the worshiper than his juggler vein" and He witnesses everything since His nearness does not resemble the nearness of bodies, just as His Essence does not resemble the essence of bodies.
He does not exist in anything, just as nothing exists in Him: Exalted is He that a place could contain Him, just as sanctified is He that no time could limit Him.
For, He was as before He had created time and place, and just as He was, He is now. He is distinct from His creatures through His
attributes. There is not in His Essence any other than Him, nor does His Essence exist in any other than Him.
He is Exalted from change and movement. Substance does not reside in Him and the quality of substance do not befall Him. Rather, He is in the attributes of His Majesty beyond cessation. And He is in the attributes of His Perfection. He is not in need of an increase in perfection. In His Essence, His Existence is known by reason (in this life).
In the Everlasting Life, His Essence is seen by the eyes of the righteous as a favor from Him, and a subtlety as a completion of favors from Him through their beholding His Gracious Face.
2. LIFE AND POWER He is Living, Able, the Conqueror and All-subduing. Inadequacy and weakness do not befall Him; slumber does not overtake Him nor sleep; annihilation does not prevail over Him nor death. He is the Owner of the visible and invisible Kingdom, and of Power and Might. His are dominion, subjugation, creation, and command; the Heavens are rolled in His Right and created things are subjugated in His Firmness.
He is Single in creating and inventing. He is Alone in bringing into existence and innovating. He created all creatures and their deeds, and decreed their sustenance and their life span; nothing decreed escapes His Firmness and the mutations of the affairs does not slip from His Power. Whatever He decrees cannot be numbered neither does His Knowledge end.
3. KNOWLEDGE
He is Knowledgeable of all the known, encompassing all that happens in the depths of earth to the highest heavens. He is knowledgeable in which there is not an atom that escapes His Knowledge in heaven and earth.
Rather, He knows the stamping of the black ant upon the solid rock in the darkest night. He perceives the movement of a particle of dust in mid-air. He knows the secrets and that which is more hidden.
He is the Overseer of the whispering of the self and the flow of thoughts, and the most deepest concealment of the selves.
With a knowledge which is ancient from eternity and by which He has not ceased to be described through the ages.
Not by a knowledge which is subject to updating by occurring and circulating in His Essence.
4. WILL
He is the Willer of all existence and the Planner of all contingent things. There is nothing that occurs in His visible or invisible world except by His prior planning and His execution whether it is little or plenteous, small or large, good or evil, benefit or harm, belief or unbelief, gratitude or ingratitude, prosperity or loss, increase or decrease, obedience or disobedience all is according to His Wisdom and Will, what He wills occurs and what He does not will does not occur. There is not a glance of the onlooker nor a stray thought that is not subject to His Will.
He is the Creator at first, the Restorer, the Doer of whatsoever He wills. There is none that rescinds His command, and none that supplements His decrees, and there is no escape for a worshiper from disobeying Him, except by His Help and Mercy, and none has power to obey Him except by His Will. Even if mankind, jinn, angels, and devils were to unite to try to move the weight of an atom in the world or to render it still, without His Will they would fail.
His Will subsists in His Essence amongst His Attributes. He has not ceased to be described by it from eternity, willing, - in His Infinity - the existence of the things at their appointed time which He has decreed. So they come into existence at their appointed times as He has willed in His Infinity without precedence or delay. They come to pass in accordance with His Knowledge and His Will without variation or change.
He directs matters not through arrangement of thought and awaiting the passage of time, and so no affair occupies Him from another affair.
5. HEARING AND SEEING
He - the Most High - is the Hearer, the Seer. He hears and sees.
No audible thing, however faint, escapes His Hearing, and no visible thing, however minute, is hidden from His Sight.
Distance does not prevent His Hearing and darkness does not obstruct His Seeing. He sees without a pupil and eyelid, and hears without the meatus and ears, as He perceives without a heart, and seizes without limbs, and creates without an instrument, since His attributes do not resemble the attributes of the creation, and as His Essence does not resemble the essence of creation.
6. SPEECH He - the Most High - speaks, commanding, forbidding, promising, and threatening, with a speech from eternity, ancient, and self-existing.
Unlike the speech of the creation, it is not a sound which is caused through the passage of air or the friction of bodies; nor is it a letter
which is enunciated through the opening and closing of lips and the movement of the tongue.
And that the Koran, the original Torah, the original Gospel of Jesus, and the original Psalms are His Books sent down upon His Messengers, peace be upon them.
The Koran is read by tongues, written in books, and remembered in the heart, yet it is, nevertheless ancient, subsisting in the Essence
of Allah, not subject to division and or separation through its transmission to the heart and paper (by this he meant that the movement of the reciter's tongue and his management of the flow of air in his mouth and ear etc., or the writer's inscription upon paper, all of which are created. Whereas the logic of Ghazali addresses what is beyond this human quality and dimension of time and physic. Thereby he refers to the Koran before one's movement of the tongue or transcription onto paper. Most errors have come from our human dimensions, and that we try to describe Divine attributes through our own limited human attributes - Darwish.) Moses - Allah praised him and gave him peace - heard the Speech of Allah without sound and without letter, just as the righteous see the Essence of Allah - the High - in the Hereafter, without substance or its quality.
And since He has these qualities, He is Living, Knowing, Willing, Hearing, Seeing and Speaking with life, power, knowledge, will, hearing, sight, and speech, not solely through His Essence.
7. DEEDS
He, the Exalted, the High, there is no existence except Him, unless it occurs by His action and proceeds from His Justice, in the best, perfect, complete and just ways.
He is Wise in His verdicts. His justice is not to be compared with that of worshipers, because it is conceivable that the worshiper is unjust when he deals with properties of other than his own. But, harm is not conceivable from Allah - the High - because He does not encounter any ownership of other than Himself, in which His dealing could be described to be harmful.
Everything besides Him, children of Adam and jinn, angels and devils, heaven and earth, animals, plants, and inanimates, substance and its quality, as well as things perceived and things felt, are all originated things which He created by His Power and before they were nothing, since He existed in Eternity alone and there was nothing whatsoever with Him.
So He originated creation thereafter as a manifestation of His Power and a realization of that which had preceded of His Will and the
realization of His Word in eternity, not because He had any need or necessity for it.
He is magnanimous in creating and inventing and in imposing obligations, not doing it through necessity.
He is Gracious in beneficence and reform, though not through any need. Munificence and Kindness, Beneficence and Grace are His, since He is able to bring upon His creatures all manner of torture and to try them with all kinds of pain and affliction. Even if He should do this, it would be justice from Him, it would not be vile, it would not be tyrannous.
He - the Mighty, the Glorified - rewards His believing worshipers for their acts of obedience according to generosity and encouragement rather than according to their merit and obligation. For there is no obligation upon Him in any deed towards anyone and tyranny is inconceivable in Him. For there is no right upon Him towards anyone.
As for His right to be obeyed it is obligatory and binding upon all creatures because He made it obligatory upon them through the tongues of His prophets and not by reason. But He sent His prophets and showed their truthfulness through explicit miracles, and they conveyed His commands and prohibitions as well as His promises and threats. So it became obligatory upon all creatures to believe them and what they brought.
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