Minute with a Muslim #301 – Do We Know Who Allah Is

Knowing who Allah subhanaw taala is, is absolutely essential to our ability to be a righteous person and an obedient person of faith. So there are some characteristics that Allah has that affect everything that he does that that influencer, we should say, you know, constitute every single thing that he does. So Allah is merciful, okay, we know that. That means everything that he does, has mercy in it even has punishment, yes, even his punishment has mercy in it.

A lot is wise, the most wise of Hakeem. And so every single thing that Allah does, has the wisdom in it. So by definition, the things that Allah is found to Allah tells us to do or tells us not to do, he's not just making us jump through hoops, right? It's not just giving us random, arbitrary tasks, and as wisdom behind it, every single thing, because Allah subhanaw taala is the the one who created us. And so he knows best what's in our interest and what's against our interest, we have a very, very narrow sense of what's in our best interest, we think we know. But our vision of that, or our understanding of that is compromised, it's compromised, because we only really have experience in

the dunya, we don't have experienced yet in the afterlife. And so we're prone to a bias about what's going to bring us goodness in this dunya and not necessarily what's going to affect us in the afterlife. Whereas Allah sees the whole thing, obviously, you know, Allah knows the whole picture. And he knows that our lives are more about our afterlife, than they actually are about our dunya.

But even beyond that, when it comes to the things within the dunya that might benefit us or not benefit us, we have a very partial knowledge, we have a very flawed understanding. We might how many times has it happened to you, you thought that you were going to get into something you thought it was going to be good. And then you get into it? It's like, okay, well, this isn't what I expect that, you know, we have a very, very short sighted vision. Whereas the law sees everything, he knows everything. And he is truly wise. So don't think if there's a particular sort of injunction or encouragement or a prohibition or a commandment in Islam, you know,

a lot of times we can get an anthropomorphic idea of what's going on, we can imagine like, it's like our boss at work, just telling us like jump through hoops. Did you file that report yet? Did you make this meeting? Well, I need you to do it in you know, a green folder, this time or whatever. And because we know we have experienced in the dunya. And people are ridiculous and make ridiculous requests of us and it's not for our benefit or their benefit or anyone's benefit. So we make a mistake. And we imagine that Allah is like that Allah is not like that. Allah is never going to ask you to do something, or tell you to not do something, except that there is profound wisdom behind

it. And that it is in your true long term best interest. Right? And Allah leaves it up to us to educate ourselves about who he is. And also realize the difference between say him and our boss in order so that we can trust him and get to the point where

we're asking questions to understand and not asking questions to get out of duty, that we're going to get to the point where we trust him enough where like, you know, okay, I don't necessarily see the wisdom behind that at this point. But I also acknowledged that I might not be able to understand the wisdom behind that until a later time. And so I'm going to do it anyway. And that's what I think faith is about