Who Is Allah – Understanding Allah’s Names and Attributes #04

It's the time is right so we'll begin in sha Allah Bismillah Hawkman Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Ashraful, MBIA, almost serene maybe in our once in a Mohamed Ali he offered was so that was good to sleep on Lahoma even though we may Empower no and fat and I'd be tempted, I was eating yellow but I mean.

So today, in this version of the class on allows names, who is a lot, we finally get into the third and largest section of the book that we're studying, where we go through a lot of names, the ones that we are aware of one by one, and talk about what they mean,

what their relevance is to us, how we can kind of use them in our lives. And included in that project is how pondering upon those names should kind of shift our perspective and our experience of life as we move through it. So previous to this, we have covered the introduction, and we covered the part that was about general principles surrounding Allah's names. So we'll try to carry all of those lessons with us and apply it in sha Allah as we go. So without further ado, the first name that the author

begins with is a lot and he actually makes two names in one chapter, both Allah and l Illa.

l Illa.

Allah as the proper name of a law and Le law, which means literally the God or the divine, we could say even better.

Even Okay, in the famous scholar Rahim Allah, he said that three of Allah's names, gather together all of Allah's names and attributes. So not to imply that they're redundant, but that if you keep three particular names in mind, they at least,

are kind of the big umbrella names, under which all the names can kind of be categorized, or their meanings can kind of fit. And the other names may be have different shades of meaning, but they still kind of fall under these categories represented by these three names. These three names are all in Surah Al Fatiha. So the first one is a lot.

And the second is a ROB. And the third is a rough man.

Even though claim, he says what each of these names represents the first Allah, it represents a concept that's essential to tell hate, right, this term that we throw around quite a lot to hate, the uniqueness of Allah, the uniqueness of Allah, in his reality and existence, the uniqueness of a law in his activity and his qualities, and the uniqueness of Allah in his right and deserving to be worshipped. So Allah represents one aspects, a key aspect of Tawheed, which is called an Arabic, ooo here, which comes from the word Allah Allah, The God or the divine. So although here, we could perhaps translate it as divinity. Right, a quality of being divine. And it's a shame that in the

English idiom, these kinds of words like sacred and divine are kind of, you know, thrown around a lot, especially in advertising and marketing. You know,

I think most the most times that you hear divine in

common everyday kind of exposure on television and media is probably advertisements for chocolate and these sorts of things, which are actually kind of very counter intuitively the opposite of what we're talking about, because all of that advertising and marketing is kind of trying to push you to indulge and not trying to push you to think about something that is

otherworldly, something that

as permanent, so we're talking about here, maybe it would be beneficial to explain more what we mean by divinity. And what we mean by divine How is Allah divine, out of all of the things that we might in our casual language called divine? How is Allah's divinity?

Different, both in category and in degree from everything else that we might experience and use that word for.

The first way is that Allah's divinity is absolute. It's not conditional. Okay? So everything else that you might experience in this life that you might, again, in like colloquial idiom, called divine or say like is a divine experience, its quality of being divine is very conditional, you can imagine other situations where experience it would not be divine, if we take something, again, as trivial as a chocolate bar, which in some situations might really taste good, or really hit the spot or something like this, then we could easily imagine a situation in which you're sick of that thing, you've indulged already in too much. And so the experience you get diminishing returns on that

experience, the more and more and more you consume it, the less valuable it is to you. And it kind of become something, you know, not just cheap, but actually repulsive.

So Allah's Allah's divinity is absolute. It's not conditional upon certain circumstances, or certain needs, right, you can think about a person who's kind of like in the desert, no water, no food.

And then they finally they're on the brink of their death. And then they finally get some sort of water. And that experience of drinking the water might be something that would be described as, as divine or a spiritual experience, but it's conditional upon that person's upon that person's need. Right? Whereas a lot is the melody is not conditional upon anything, it's not conditional upon anybody's need is not conditional upon how much you have experienced a law before.

Or any of that. So allows divinity is, is absolute.

And the second is that Allah's divinity is primary, as opposed to secondary, which means that

if there's anything in the world, that we could, even in common parlance, called divine or sacred or something like that, anything that is truly sacred or divine, its source of divinity goes back to a lot, right, Allah is primarily divine. Whereas whatever else we might experience, whether it's a spiritual experience, or

a sensation of the body, or

a moment of enlightenment, right, these things that we might

associate with or imagine approach something like sacred or divine, they're not only conditional in the fact that in the aspect that they don't stand alone, they are only experienced by that, in that way, in certain contexts, but they're also secondary, they all are sourced back to Allah subhana wa Tada.

So because Allah has this absolute, and primary

divinity,

the conclusion from that reality is that Allah is the only entity that deserves to be worshipped.

So even if we could get away with describing some things, or some experiences on Earth, as divine, or as sacred, the fact that the divinity that you see there is conditional. And it secondary automatically disqualifies it from being an object of worship.

And if you think and if you look like let's think about like performers, think about like, musicians and actors and stuff like that, like some people who kind of have like, a life that's built around the performance or the pursue will have a certain experience that they might, that they might think is something like sacred or something like divine, they don't they feel liberated. When they do it, they feel free. They feel at the height of

their existence, and in secular society.

Music especially as often described with these kinds of religious terminology, sacred, divine, otherworldly spiritual experience, right? There's people that are caught pursuing or worshipping or chasing the experience of this kind of temporary, conditional, secondary divinity, and ignore the primary Divinity of Allah subhanaw taala altogether.

And so you'll find that I have some experience with this in my pre Muslim life, that the people that are caught up in worshiping, or pursuing these conditional divinities, they're never satisfied. They're always looking for something more, they actually fall into, like, you know, bouts of depression or listlessness, when they aren't having that experience. They're almost like a junkie, they're almost like an addict.

Whereas worshiping the the original, the absolute, the unconditional divine, that's something that satisfies. It's something that satisfies and at the same time, doesn't get diminishing returns. And so, only by worshipping that primary, absolute divinity, can the souls kind of thirst be quenched? And can we gain true tranquility and peace?

Let's concept of Budo here of divinity, it's all over the Koran. And if we just stick to sort of Fatiha, we have it several times Al hamdu lillah, the first mention of Allah in the Quran, unless, of course you count the Bismillah.

Praises due to Allah. Why is praised due to Allah? I'll hand All praise is due to Allah.

The answer is in the name, because it's Allah. All other things that deserve praise in the entire universe.

The reason that they should be praised goes back to Allah Himself.

He cannot do by ear kind of staring. It's only you that we worship, this is blue here, in practice, right in front of our eyes in a surah that we recite 17 times a day.

So that's the first one even on claim says the second one, he says, Rob, Rob kind of signifies for him this concept of Rubia. So we have photo here, which is about divinity.

And we have Rubia, which signifies dominion,

both control and ownership.

And similarly to the validity that we mentioned how there's a law of divinity, which is unconditional, it's absolute, its primary and everything else is secondary, same same principles apply when it comes to Rubia.

There might be individuals or nation states or empires that own things sort of, but all of that ownership and use and benefit is conditional. It's temporary. It's transient, and ultimately, deficient. And then finally, even on claim says, a rough man, so the third is, so he says a lot of rough and rough men, that these are the three big names that all other names kind of fit inside or underneath. And a rough man signifies a loss, sn, his excellence towards the creation and his goodwill. His wanting good for us that he's not out there to he's not trying to catch us slipping up. You know, like, oh, you moved your finger wrong and Leticia hood and prayer. Gotcha. You know,

or Oh, you said this thing by accident. Do you do this thing by accident? Caught, you know, Allah treats us with bouncy, he created the universe with bouncy and he treats us with accent with excellence and goodwill. And this is signified in a last name of Rockman. Those other names we're going to get to them and other lessons. But our real primary concern here is Allah and Allah Allah.

Many scholars, they said that Allah

is an SM alum.

There are Hadith that say that there is one name of Allah, that's superior to all other names, if you use it in your dua that Allah will answer that dot

and many scholars are of the opinion that

That name is a lot itself. Why? Why does it have a rank above other names? Why is it considered superior?

The first we kind of already mentioned,

because it's the basis of every single other name.

And second, because it represents most directly, the identity or the entity of Allah himself,

to which all the other names kind of refer back.

So if you want an illustration of what we're talking about here, we have an assault on Hashem. Who Allahu Allah de la ilaha illa who l Malika Lockwood do Salam, Al Haman, to the end of it, right? So Allah didn't pick a different name.

And then say, That's Hola. He picked hola First he said,

hola, hola. He is Hola, hola, he he who? La ilaha illa, who I'll make and then he describes other names that reference other attributes of Allah. So a law as a name is the basis and everything else is branches off of that name.

Another reason that many scholars identify a law as the most superior name is because most of the best victim remembrance uses the name of Allah, compared to or instead of other names. So we have the three things we're supposed to say 33 times after the prayer Subhan Allah Alhamdulillah

Allahu Akbar.

And then the last one, La ilaha illa Allah, right, they all use of all the names to pick, they use a laws the name Allah exclusively.

Another reason is that Allah is the most commonly used name in the Quran.

Allah appears as a name in the Quran over 2200 times.

And it's a principle, a principle of interpretation of the Koran. That whatever a law spends more time and more space talking about has more significance.

As a brief aside, if you're into apologetics, if you're every talk, you're ever talking to a Christian,

you can use this principle because so much of the Quran talks about how hate it's the fundamental aspect of our faith.

Whereas, so little, if any of the New Testament at all talks about the Trinity,

which really makes one wonder if it was an organic revealed doctrine or something that was kind of interpreted and inserted later that it's so central to jump to Christian doctrine, but it doesn't take up hardly any space. In the New Testament at all.

The scholars disagreed, classically, as to whether the name Allah

is derived from another Arabic word, or whether it's simply its own proper name.

One school of thought, Is that the name Allah is derived from this other name, that the author put in this chapter l ILA. The God.

So to them, they say that a lot, and alila is really the same thing.

That's throughout history, maybe a ILA kind of they wanted to shorten it into just something that was easier to say. And so it became a law instead of a ILA.

The other group of scholars says no, no, no, that's not true. That a law is a proper name.

And it has no it's not derived. Its original.

It's not taken from something else. No other things are taken from it.

And their evidence is that in the Arabic language, if you call upon one of Allah's names,

for example, a lot is

L Eileen. The all knowing if you call upon this name of a lot

it has

has two parts, right? L, which means that it's the definite article. And then the name itself. Ali Al Amin. So on the Arabic language if you call upon Allah using one of these names, that first part of the word with the definite article drops.

So you don't say, Yeah, Eileen, you say, Yeah, Eileen? Yeah as ease. You have a fall. Yeah. Ha ha.

Yeah, man. Right? You see the pattern.

So, the second group says that,

if Allah was derived from Allah,

Allah, Allah begins with this first definite article, and ILA

then calling upon Allah would sound different than just the name by itself. But this is not what we find. We don't change Allah at all. When we say yeah, Allah. We don't say, your Allah. Right? We don't run it together, though. In colloquial speech, and Arabic, yellow means like, hurry up, but it has nothing to do with Allah's Name. Right?

So we don't say yella,

we say yeah, hola.

And that's their evidence that No, Allah the name, Allah is not derived from anything. It doesn't come from a ILA. And it doesn't just mean the God or the divine, that it's its own proper name entirely.

Another point of this very small nugget. For those of you interested in apologetics, there are some orientalists that tried to claim that the name Allah is derived from the name of a idol. I let like Allah says in surah najem

I thought I'll eat someone last while Erza by Manasa fairly fell off rock a lot was a pagan idol, at the time of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam

and was one of the more common idols that was worshipped there.

So some of the orientalists they say that, Allah and remember way back when we talked about a theory of history.

I don't know if it was this class or another class.

The Orientalist say

that because our say some of them say that because

the worship of the idols was first and then monotheism kind of evolved later.

That's a law is derived from a lot.

I had mentioned in another class, and I think it's worth repeating that

Islam has a theory of history. And it's completely opposite. The theory of history that we encounter in

secular anthropology, or science, whatever have you.

The theory of history.

In secular society is an evolutionary one.

And now we're not talking about biological evolution. Forget that for a second, but what we're talking about is, people have taken the theory of evolution and applied it to religion

and spirituality.

So there's a theory of history, that's very prominent, it's probably the dominant theory that people began in caves, cavemen, you know, worshipping, crude, animalistic, multiple deities, idol worship, and then as people evolved, so did their religion. And therefore you find monotheism.

The implicit message of this theory of history is that all religion is produced by people, that it's not divine revelation, it's not true. It's not reality, that it's an invention,

or a creation or an artistic expression for the people who are a little bit more charitable, but that it ultimately is produced by men themselves.

Obviously, Islamic theory of history is completely the other way around. Say that Adam was created by a lot.

And he was revealed the true religion, the true monotheism.

And every so often, generation after generation,

people strayed away from that monotheism and began either separating a laws, multiple attributes into

individual independence gods and goddesses.

Or they took a profit from their history from their tribe. And they exaggerated their, their prayers and their qualities until he became a partner with a lot.

And so a lot of them would send another prophet to correct this deviance and bring it back to monotheism. So we have two theories of history one which is

steadily progressive, and therefore completely modernist, because it assumes that things are just getting better and better. And then we have the Islamic theory of history, which is more entropic, which is that the entropy that dominates within history is kind of people end up messing it up, and taking people away from the worship of just a lot, until a lot intervenes with a profit of book and brings it back to monotheism once again. So, if anybody knows Arabic, the question then is how do you disprove this doubt? Somebody says that Allah is derived from a lat. And that really, it was just a pagan god and Muhammad salallahu Salam just came along and changed the name and invented a

new God out of kind of the ashes of this title.

What would you say to such a person?

wait for an answer. You kind of have to know a bit about Arabic to to really

shoot down the argument entirely.

The thing is that all Arabic words can be traced back to a three letter root.

And Allah and alert, don't share a three letter roots at all. You hear that last letter to a lot? Where does it come from? It's not present in Allah. And so there's no linguistic even to a westerner who doesn't know Arabic, it might sound like similar names. But to anybody who knows anything about Arabic, these words don't share a common root at all. And so they have nothing, nothing to do with one another.

Anyway, that's just a little trivia, if you find yourself in a situation or conversation.

Both of these names Allah and alila are essential in transitive attributes, they are that Tia

and Lazar. So we talked about categorizing a lot of different names. They're essential, meaning that they're not related to they're not directly related to Allah's activity. They're always there, they're always present. They never go away. Allah is always Allah and Allah is always Allah.

And similarly, they don't necessitate that there be some sort of creative being,

which is the object of Allah's activity.

Allah is Allah and Al Isla,

whether there's a creation or not.

As opposed to celibacy, and for example, the all seeing, which necessitates that Allah is Seeing something and if he's seeing something that it has to be something created.

We talked about photo here, which both of these names turn around, or they turn on or they're based off of Allah and Al Isla, they have to do with who know here divinity, absolute primary divinity.

This brings us back to a very important question because the implication of Allah's Name ILA,

the divine

and who here divinity is that Allah alone deserves to be worshipped.

Why does Allah alone deserve to be worshipped?

If we answer this question,

we answer a whole list of other questions that are very important to answer. Basically, how do we differentiate between a true God and a false god? What makes something worth worshiping in the first place? And what automatically disqualifies something from being worshipped?

Some of these things we already talked about. The first is dominion, absolutes and primary Dominion not

A derivative Dominion or ownership, you get this thing because basically Allah has lent it to you, he's lent he's lent you, your body, he's lent to you your house, he's lent you your, your lawn or your car or anything that you have. Once you die, it's not yours anymore. Before you had it, it wasn't yours. So your ownership or your dominion, whatever small piece of it you have in this existence, it's very, very puny. And it's very kind of cute and quaint compared to a laws, absolutes and primary, Dominion.

Another thing is the Power to create.

And we're talking about truly create here, we're not talking about cloning, copying, we're not talking about rearranging atoms, to turn it into a different substance that we haven't known before. We're talking about to create in the first instance,

again, a creation that's absolute, and primary that's not contingent upon anyone else, or anything being present.

Allah has absolute will.

Meaning whatever He wills, it's going to happen, it's inevitable.

Whereas all other will,

is derived from a laws Well, first and second of all, it's, it's conditional, that might happen, it might not.

A law has the power of pardon.

And this gestures to the afterlife, where no one else has the power of pardon.

A law can size up the situation,

knowing the full context, and he can decide whether a person is going to be forgiven or not.

So nothing without this power of pardon, deserves to be worshipped.

Allah has absolute provision.

All provision comes from Allah, and as secondary to His provision.

We say after the prayer, that whatever Allah has given us, the no one can prevent it. And whatever Allah has prevented from us, then absolutely no one can give it. This is absolute permission. anyone or any thing that doesn't possess this absolute power to provide is not a true God and it's not worth worshiping.

Allah has ultimate wisdom, wisdom that pierces and sees through all circumstances, and all

situations.

And his wisdom is not contingent or conditional upon anything else. It's absolute, and it's primary. Anybody in this world that has any small piece of wisdom, it is small, and it is quaint compared to a laws? And it is.

It's conditional upon something else. It's secondary.

One day it's here, tomorrow, it's gone.

Allah has speech. And this is something that Allah mentions in the Quran, when Ibraheem Alehissalaam is arguing with his own people, the idol worshipers.

You can also sit down to rosin

Thank you.

Class.

Somebody,

oh.

So he has speech. Allah has speech he speaks. He spoke to Musa alayhis salam, he spoke to Muhammad salallahu Salam.

And he speaks whenever he wants, something that's not able to speak that doesn't have the potential or capacity to speak is not worthy of worship, because it's not worthy of communication. It's not worthy of guidance, it's not able to do those things.

Allah has absolute knowledge, is knowledge is primary and absolute. It's not based off of any it's not limited by anything. And anything without absolute knowledge is not worthy of worship and sights and hearing and all these things, we can make a huge list. But the point is, that all of these attributes that are tucked into the name Allah and Allah, Allah, what makes a lot divine, truly divine, divine in the sense that he deserves all worship. And the fact that he deserves all worship necessitates that nothing else deserves worship.

It all goes back to his attributes. He has these qualities and nothing else has them or if anything else has them. They have them in such a small minut temporary degree.

That it's laughable to think that we should be

worshiping that thing.

Oh, we have four minutes left. So, to finish the chapter we say okay, so we have established that Allah is worthy of worship, he is deserving of worship Him alone, uniquely.

We need to ask ourselves, what is it that we are worshiping?

This goes beyond the worship of the body. That's the easy question. Prostration, supplication, pilgrimage, charity, right, most of us do these things for a law that's, that's automatic. And it's scandalous to us if someone does it for any other reason. But there's also perhaps, just as importantly, the worship of the heart we have love. Love is worship.

People, some people are in love with this dunya.

Whether it's wealth, whether it's a spouse, whether it's romantic relationships, in general, anybody who's ever hummed the pop tune, or knows any lyrics to any pop songs, knows that in our society, love or romantic love is a cult. It's a religious cult.

I remember Stevie Wonder saying in one song, I was made to love her worship and adore her.

They're not even trying to hide the fact that for some people their entire lives, the aim, the goal, the direction is this kind of romantic relationship.

So we must ask ourselves the question, Who do we love?

There's an open ended question there. How do you recognize?

If someone loves something or not? What are the signs and then turn it on yourself? Do I demonstrate the signs with a law and His messenger?

Do I take the time to know who was a lot and know how Allah wants to be loved? So it's not just my own kind of quixotic, narcissistic, imagination?

And do I sacrifice? Is my love a love of sacrifice?

Or is it just based off of convenience? Are we? Is our relationship or our our love for a law a one night stand?

When it benefits us? Or is it something that is more like a committed marriage?

This isn't to say that one cannot also love their spouses and children. This they're not contradicting things. But Allah does say in the Koran, that your spouses and your children are a Pfitzner. Meaning that not that they're bad, but they will expose your priorities, that your priority should always be a law. And you love your children and your spouse through your love for Allah.

Not in competition, but through your love for a lot.

We could talk a lot about that.

Oh, boy, one minute on the clock. And we have so much more to talk about. There's fear, talking about what we fear.

There's hope, what we hope for. And there's priorities, but we're out of time. We don't have any more time. There's one minute left.

I'll take briefly any questions. After I announced that all classes starting next week are going to be moved to 7pm. This class will not be at 6pm. Next week, it will be at 7pm.

eastern standard time for Mohammed Salahi who's in Chicago Mashallah.

Anybody final questions, we will be kicked out of this room in less than a minute. So if it cuts out, it was nice sitting with you. But any other questions?

If you have any juicy questions, we can really get into it next time because we still have a lot of

these kinds of applications of these names to talk about. And so if you guys are thinking about okay, how do I love a lot? How do I fear him? How do I What's the right way? Then maybe next time it's Sharla Okay, thank you, everybody. unhandled allows a lot sociala I'll see you next time in sha Allah