Allah Is The Sovereign

[there] they found one of Our servants, namely, al-Khidr, to whom We had given mercy from Us — according to one opinion this [mercy] was prophethood; according to another it was authority, and this [latter] is the opinion of the majority of scholars — and We had taught him knowledge from Us (‘ilman is the second direct object), in other words, some knowledge of unseen things.”

Understanding Allah, His nature and reality, is another step in the process of seeing Him, in his book ‘Mulhat al-I’tiqad’ Shaykh ‘Izzud-Din Ibn ‘Abdi-Salam (died 660 AH), said: “Allah is not a body and thus Has no form, He is not an entity and thus Has no measured limits. He does not resemble anything and nothing resembles Him. The six directions do not surround Him, nor do the earths and skies enclose Him. He is eternally existent before creating the creations. He created time (change), and He still exists as He eternally was (without a place, or change)”.

When the universe was created that moment was the first lesson Allah began teaching about Himself, He then began populating the universe in the same order He created it, from the sub atomic part first to the Physical part last. Creatures whose bodies are made of subatomic particles came into existence one after the other, from the Angels first, to the Buraq then the Jinn last of all, we came to call them the spiritual creatures of the universe.

Ahmad Ibn Ya’qub al-Thaqafi narrated to us … from Ibn ‘Abbas [that] he said in regards to His (Exalted is He) statement “and of the earth the like thereof”: “Seven earths (Many earths): In every earth (its people were sent) a prophet like your Prophet, an Adam like your Adam, a Nuh like your Nuh, an Ibrahim like your Ibrahim and an ‘Isa like your ‘Isa.”(Mustadrak of Hafiz Abu ‘Abdullah al-Hakim)

Allah began teaching about Himself to the Angels who’s life span would last as long as the universe persisted, then as He populated the planets in space with spiritual creatures of varying kinds, He revealed more about Himself. The first subjects in the universe were about how things are created and the Qualities Allah used in doing this, such as His forbearance which is represented by the fundamental forces of the universe and His forgiveness that overshadows faults which is represented by Jahanam and Jannah, two forces that move and help evolve the universe and stop stagnation, both Qualities of Allah are needed to sustain the universe.

The next lessons to His creatures were about how life can come from lifeless matter a process the Angels would witness and help create for Allah, then as each new creature was created and Allah revealed himself to it the Angels learnt from what they witnessed, a process as old as the universe.

The spiritual creatures that began to appear after the Angels their bodies, one after the next were made of particles closer and closer to the physical world until we reach the Jinn who are made of “a smokeless fire”, one of the outer most particles of the subatomic world that make up the Atom and is responsible for electricity, the electron.

The Prophet said, “Verily, Satan (Jinn) flows through the human being like blood,” a reference to the nervous system they manipulate, it uses electrical impulses to regulate everything in the human body and its organs. Jinn are creatures that manipulate man through his faculties which relies on the nervous system and its electrical impulses.

Each of these creatures would be given a facet of what makes up the complete and perfect intellect because their bodies were limited in what they could experience, a bear doesn’t know what it is like to swim like a fish and a fish doesn’t know what it is like to fly like a bird, and so to are the spiritual creatures of the universe varied in their perspectives on life, each creature responsible for knowing the part of Allah it was capable of learning through its faculties.

The first spiritual creatures after the Angels are the strongest, later spiritual creatures were gradually less and less powerful than the Angels but received a more complete picture of life and the universe, we can see this from the types of Angels that exist, if one Angel is responsible for mercy in the universe and another for punishment, one quality of Allah, lesser spiritual creatures would experience a more complex combination of Allah’s qualities, and mankind was allowed to know all 99 and the combinations that exist by combining them, which as Imam Ibn Arabi explained is how Allah is infinite (the multiplication or combinations of qualities does not stop).

This was the case until we reach the jinn the least powerful of all the spiritual creatures and the most convoluted of them all, a product of seeing to much and not being able to handle knowledge with responsibility. Because of man they would witness what Allah gave Him and the best of them are counted by Allah among the Angels, like Iblis until He rebelled, their spiritual reality through mans existence on earth alongside them became diverse enough to encompass the spiritual reality of man, but most of them became twisted creatures early in life out of their jealousy of him and never developed their potential.

With each new creature, new moral lessons were taught and experienced, and Allah would reveal more about Himself to His creatures in the universe. Over time higher aspects of the perfect intellect where steadily revealed until man came into existence and Allah finally revealed in the universe every possible part of the intellect so it could know Allah completely.

The prophet (saws) said, “The first thing Allah created was the pen, then He created the ‘Nun’ (space) which is an inkwell (for particles). This is what Allah stated (in sura 68:1) ‘Nun and the Pen.’ And He said to it, ‘Write’. So the pen wrote all that will be until judgment day…Then Allah created the intellect and said, ‘By my Glory, I will establish you in those whom you love and I will take you away from those whom you despise.’” (Imam Qurtubi gave the following chain, Narrated by Al-Walid Ibn Muslim, narrated by Malik Ibn Ans, narrated by Sumay son of Abu Bakir, narrated by Abu Salih Al-Samaan, narrated by Abu Hurayrah who heard the prophet (saws))

After creating man Allah then declared nothing but the perfect man, Insan al Kamil, can properly know Him because in man is every facet of the universe and Allah’s qualities, both the physical and spiritual while everything Allah created before man was only an aspect of it and Him.

Imam Ibn Arabi explained that Man is a copy (nuskha) of both realities, the Divine Names and the Universe. “He is made according to two images: his exterior image, his body, is a copy of the cosmic realities, while his interior image, his powers, is the image of the Divine Names (Qualities).

The Messenger of Allah (saws) said: “When any one of you fights his brother, let him avoid the face, for Allah created Adam (mankind) in His image.”

Ibn Umar said: The Messenger of Allah (saws) said: “Do not say ‘May Allah deform your face’ [a form of cursing in Arabic], for the son of Adam (Mankind) was created in the image of the Most Merciful.”

Allah valued knowledge and wisdom over strength, His spiritual creatures had an abundance of intellectual strength and knowledge but a limited capacity to learn and gain wisdom from that, this is because wisdom requires having a more complete type of intellect and the perfect intellect requires having the perfect body and physiology to produce it so it can understand every kind of experience Allah created, a bird can’t understand the life of a fish and fish can’t understand the life of a bear but man could as he delved deeper through his study of each.

Allah gave man the capacity for infinite wisdom but less strength to do anything with that knowledge, unlike Allah’s spiritual creatures, and this was the crux of the problem for the Jinn when they first saw man. They have more mental strength but lesser capacity for wisdom, so their leader Ibliss in his folly and hubris rebelled against Allah as if the creator didn’t know what He created and made a mistake, all because he was stronger than man and could over power Him; “[Allah] said, “O Iblees, what prevented you from prostrating to that which I created with My two hands? (And not just one like you, this statement refers to spiritual and physical in a beings nature, man was the most complete creation of Allah) Were you arrogant [then], or were you [already] among the haughty?”(you never left your arrogance behind when we entered you into Jannah)(38:75).

The universe is change itself, different from the nothing that existed before it, designed to teach about Allah, it will continue to exist until the complete picture of Allah has come into existence, He is the complete span of time, not the snippet of it we see over a single lifetime. Man gets a snap shot of Allah whilst he is alive but the overall picture of who He is, is for the benefit of the Angels who existed from the start and will persist until its end;

Allah said about creatures knowing Him over the span of time; “Who can intercedeth (in the universe) with Him save by His leave? (No one has control over anything in the universe except through the things created in it) He knoweth that which is in front of them (death) and that which is behind them (this life they left) [He has complete knowledge of their lives, He is the Span of Time while man’s existence is limited to his lifespan], while they encompass nothing of His (total) knowledge save what He will” (2:255).

Such statements in the Quran as verse 35:41 are scientific arguments made to the Arabs of 1400 years ago, they are not hollow declarations, they instruct them to compare how they came to exist with what they know about Allah’s existence, and from that you will see How Allah is exalted above everything you know.

The word in the Quran Allah uses for Himself is Ta’aly and Tabaruk in Surah al Mulk (67:1), that verse reads “Exalted is He in whose Hand is the dominion” (universe), this is a scientific argument instructing you to do something, it is literally saying see how the universe (Dominion) works to understand His exaltedness.

What is beautiful about the phrase is that the word Tabaruk usually means to derive blessings from something and so the underlying knowledge in the verse is that barakah (blessings) are derived from the subatomic world and if you control it, you can derive blessings/benefit for your life (think things like nuclear fusion and fission, or healing the body through its natural systems). So Allah is telling us the origin of Baraka/blessings as well as what creates the miracles performed by the prophets and saintly men (as).

Imam Rumi said, “You and I will be together until the universe Dissolves”, when ‘Allah is no longer holding it all together’, in our terms this is when the forces holding every atom together no longer exist.

Imam Rumi also said “Look at every animal from the gnat to the elephant: they all are Allah’s family and dependent on Him for their nourishment (dependant on the way He created nature). What a nourisher is Allah! All these griefs within our hearts arise from the smoke and dust of our existence and vain desires (delusions).”

Understanding how Allah is the sustainer helps us understand how He is the sovereign because the one providing for you is sovereign over you, simply agreeing He is the sovereign of everything when we read the verse is not the same as understanding how if we want to understand what Allah is actually saying to us, and for this we need to know how the systems He created work.

If we say all life needs the sun to exist we understand quickly what this means but in scientific terms what we need from the sun is the photon particles (light) it sends to earth and from this we begin to see the deeper picture of what is going on, especially when we look at how our bodies rely on light.

In verse 23:116 Allah is telling us by pointing at His exaltedness to look at the subtle aspects of the universe. This is because what is exalted above the basic things we see around is everything that makes them work, and since we require knowledge and study to see them, all intellectual pursuits are also spiritually exalted;

The Messenger of Allah (saws) said, “He who follows a path in quest of knowledge, Allah will make the path of Jannah easy to him. The angels lower their wings over the seeker of knowledge, being pleased with what he does. The inhabitants of the heavens and the earth and even the fish in the depth of the oceans seek forgiveness for him. The superiority of the learned man over the devout worshipper is like that of the full moon to the rest of the stars. The learned are the heirs of the Prophets who bequeath neither dinar nor dirham but only that of knowledge; and he who acquires it, has in fact acquired an abundant portion.” (Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi)

Allah gave His prophet knowledge about everything in this universe and the learned scholar is the heir to what the prophet (saws) was given and left behind.

The Messenger of Allah (saws) said, “The world, with all that it contains, is accursed except for the remembrance of Allah, that which pleases Allah; and the religious scholars and seekers of knowledge.” (At- Tirmidhi).

The Prophet (saws) said, “Convey from me even an Ayah of the Qur’an; relate traditions from Banu Israel (Jews), and there is no restriction on that; but he who deliberately forges a lie against me let him have his abode in Hell.” (Bukhari)

Allah is the sovereign (Al Malik) who arranged the creation of His creatures from the depths of subatomic space to the life of this world and gave every creature according to its capacity, the English word sovereignty is derived from the Latin word ‘superaanus’ which means the supremacy of one over the other, Allah’s reality is the most supreme He gave each creature its own unique reality, but man’s reality encompasses them all.

Imam Ibn al Arabi elaborated saying: So if you have understood, I have explained to you what is meant by “man”. Look at his grandeur through the Most Beautiful Names (of Allah, he was given as qualities), and the fact that they seek him (Allah’s spiritual creatures, the Jinn and Angels) Through their seeking him (and their requiring his existence) you will come to understand his majesty, and through his appearance through them (as the Angels and Jinn support Him spiritually), you will understand his lowliness (His requiring them to develop spiritually). So understand!

From this, it is understood that he is a copy of the two forms, Allah, and the Universe. (Imam Ibn al Arabi’s own summary of his work al Fusus al Ahkam).