Allahs Beautiful Names #17 How to Master Any Subject – Al Aleem

When Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told the angels

that he was gonna create a Khalifa on

earth, the angels asked, are you gonna create

on the earth those who will create mischief

and spill blood while we exalt you and

sanctify you? What you may not have noticed

is that what the angels are actually posing

is what would be called the problem of

evil.

Why do bad things happen? Why is there

murder, war, all sorts of violent crimes, theft,

abuse? Why is there disease pain? These are

questions that are asked on university campuses and

debates all over the world and have been

asked for 1000 of years.

What people don't realize though is that this

was a question that the angels preceded them

in. And Allah

answered them and answered everyone who had come

and asked after them. He said,

I know what you do not know. A

sheikh of mine was once talking to a

Christian pastor who had read the translation of

the Quran from cover to cover. And he

asked him and he said, what stood out

to you the most about the Quran? And

he said, how much God knows. So it

should be no surprise then that this is

the name after Allah

that appears the most in the Quran.

Al-'Alim appears some

157 times. Think of some of the other

names and how frequently they appear. Alatif 7

times, Al Hayy 5 times, Al Razaq and

all once. So when a name appears a

157

times, this is an overwhelming mention throughout the

Quran. So when we look at the knowledge

of Allah versus the knowledge of creation, there's

a lot of differences. Right? The first is

the knowledge of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is

not preceded by ignorance, and ours is Allah

subhanahu wa ta'ala says,

Allah says Allah is the one who brought

you out of the wombs of your mothers

not knowing anything. We all started

with no information.

And he made for you the instruments of

knowledge. Right? He made for you your hearing

and your vision and your intellect that perhaps

you would be grateful.

Number 2, the knowledge of Allah is complete

and nothing is hidden from him. Allah

Allah says, Allah says to him belongs the

knowledge, the keys of the unseen. No one

knows them except for him.

And he knows what is in the land

and he knows what is in the sea.

And there's no leaf that falls except that

he knows

it. And no grain moves within the darkness

of the earth.

And there's nothing moist or dry, except that

it's all recorded with Allah

So Allah nothing is hidden from him. Also,

Allah

knowledge is not followed by forgetfulness.

Our knowledge,

after we learn something, we forget it afterwards.

If you were to take an exam that

you took in middle school right now, the

same exact exam, you might have gotten a

100 back in the day, but right now

you might only get a 75 because that

information you've forgotten over the years. Allah

My lord is never in error nor does

my lord ever forget. Allah

doesn't forget. And then in between the knowledge

and the forgetfulness that we have, we also

make mistakes. Our knowledge is incorrect. And Allah

says

my lord is never ever wrong. He's never

mistaken. He's never misguided. So what are some

of the ways that we can interact with

this name Al Arab? Number 1 is to

ask Allah

for knowledge.

Allah says, and say, my lord, increase me

in knowledge. And as you might have heard

before, there's nothing in the Quran that Allah

subhanahu wa ta'ala tells you to ask him

for more of except for knowledge. You know,

there's this question that I've heard many times

over the years presented by budding students of

knowledge all over, which is where is the

best place to go study? Where is the

best program? What's the best methodology? Who are

the best scholars to study under? I think

everyone who's been in the realm of studying

Islam has either asked this question or witnessed

it being asked again and again and again.

And I've heard many different answers over the

years, but I'll tell you the best answer

that I've ever heard

is the one that was given by Sheikh

Mohammed Mukhtar Shankiti,

May Allah preserve him. He said, take all

of the programs,

all of the books, all of the teachers,

and put them all to the side.

And make your concern that you ask Allah

for

knowledge.

And if Allah decrees for you to have

knowledge, he will guide you to the best

programs, the best books, the best teachers.

The resources themselves

are not what grant a person success in

their endeavors of seeking knowledge.

But if Allah

wills for you to have knowledge and about

the resources,

Alwaleed ibn Abdi Mirik is the son of

the Umayyad Khalifa, Abdi Mirikir bin Marwan. And

his father loved him very much, but he

was very severely attached to him. And so

he didn't send him out when he was

a young boy, when he was very small.

He didn't send him out into the desert

to absorb the Arabic language natively from the

Bedouins. And that was the custom of the

Arabs that they would send their kids into

the desert so that they could absorb

and become native speakers of the Arabic language

by learning directly from the Bedouins so that

their language wasn't broken by learning amongst the

city folk. And

his father loved him very much, so his

father didn't actually send him to do that.

And so he he learned or he grew

up speaking actually broken Arabic.

And his father, Ibn Asakir mentions the

he comes to the Khalifa.

Abdel Mehtic says to him,

who should I make the Khalifa after me?

And he says, what do you mean? Amirul

Mumineen? Al Walid?

Your son Alwirid, of course. And Abdul Malik

says Alwirid.

Alwirid doesn't speak Arabic correctly. Like, he doesn't

speak Arabic well. His grammar is all over

the place.

And so Abdul Malik tells Rorih and he

says to him, come back later in the

evening when I have my when I have

my court, when everybody's here, and ask me

that same question. And so he does. And

Al Waleed is there, and he hears his

father say,

I can't make Al Waleed the emir after

me. Like, I can't make him the khalif

after me. He doesn't speak Arabic well. So

what do you think Al Waleed is gonna

do when he finds out that his lack

of command over Arabic is going to be

a reason for him to not become the

khalifa? Of course, he's gonna learn Arabic. He's

gonna learn Arabic in a weekend. Right? So

what he does is he gathers

all of the scholars of grammar, rhetoric, literature,

poetry. He gathers them all. And he does

a 6 month intensive summit. Him, the prince,

and all of these scholars.

And after 6 months, he finally emerges, and

they said he was even worse than before.

After 6 months, he ended up being even

worse than before. After all of that,

all of this to show you what?

That it's not about the resources. There are

people I'm sure who you know who graduated

from the same university that you graduated, the

same program that you graduated from, and you

wouldn't trust the knowledge that they had. Knowledge

is a gift that Allah

gives people, and so you have to ask

Allah

for knowledge. The second way that we interact

with his name is to be humble. So

Fianna Thodi said, knowledge is 3 handspans.

The first handspans

inspires arrogance.

The second

breeds humility.

And in the 3rd, you realize you know

nothing. When a person first studies a topic,

it's very easy for them to be convinced

that that one argument that they learned is

the truth, and then they become arrogant. They

think that everybody else is upon innovation or

everybody else is wrong or everybody else is

this is the correct position because I studied

it. But then over time, you learn that

you know what? The people hold another position,

it's not like they got it from the

from Mars.

They are following great scholars too. They have

evidences as well. So then you become humbled.

And then by the 3rd hand span, you

realize that even if you were to spend

your entire life in learning,

as the saying goes, if you give all

of yourself to knowledge,

it will only give you a part of

itself. So the more you learn, the more

humble you actually become. When Musa and Al

Khidr were on the boat that Allah

tells us the story of in Surat Al

Kahf, the prophet

tells us a detail that's reported by Al

Bukhari and others. And that is that while

they were on the boat,

a sparrow came

and it just took from the sea that

they were on. Just dipped its beak into

the water, and then it flew off. And

then Al Khidr looked at Musa, and he

said, oh Musa,

my knowledge and your knowledge

have not decreased Allah's

knowledge

except as much as the sparrow has decreased

the water of the sea with its beak.

This is a very, very humbling statement

made by a person whom Allah

had given unique knowledge to, to one of

the people who knew the most about Allah

and one of the greatest messengers.

Should we not then be humble with the

little that Allah

has taught us?

And so this name, Al Aleem,

inspires us to ask Allah

for knowledge and to be humble with the

knowledge that Allah

has given us, and we ask Allah in

conclusion

beneficial for us.

beneficial for us.