Who Is Allah – Understanding Allah’s Names and Attributes #07

We'll get started shall Bismillah

Alhamdulillah wa Salatu was Salam, ala Ashraf, an MBR human was Sunni and be in an awkward Latina, Vivica Mohammed Ali. Awful sloth was good to Sneem Alejandra and him that'd be may in fact, when no one found I mean, I learned to there was no money out on the line. I mean,

it's Saturday night. It's cold and rainy outside.

Hope you have a warm drink I do.

It's time for a laws, names and attributes.

Last class we talked about a last name of ROB.

And the handful of meanings that it points to and suggests we talked about

allows generosity, which we'll talk about in more detail in a later lesson sha Allah talked about two worldviews are two frameworks for interacting with the world, the scarcity framework, right, and then the bounty framework, the abundance framework. And this is something that even

self help books and things like that have picked up on right, scarcity mindset, kind of stinginess, thinking that everything's out in competition with each other. Whereas Allah's Name Rob points to the fact that Allah created the world

with bounty.

And so there's this fundamental level of being taken care of

that we might have fears, we might have natural feeling fears and concerns and worries, but we should try to inculcate in ourselves this kind of base level of trust, that everything is going to be fundamentally okay. Because Allah has created this world with bounty, even if we go through hard things,

that we know that he's going to be bountiful towards us. And if not in the things that we would normally associate with that in this world. Then, in the next

we talked about how the devil himself

manipulates

manipulates the scarcity mindset to get us to sin. Allah says in surah Baqarah, That the devil threatens us with poverty. Law says

I believe in souls without off or and I'm one of the two. When it comes to how the pagan eye the idolaters of Arabia used to bury their children, particularly their daughters, it was the result, right of this kind of the devil threatening them with poverty, you're not going to be able to afford their upbringing, you're not going to be able to afford their dowry their this their that.

And so the devil leveraging that fear of the dunya the fear caused by not registering the fact that Allah is Rob

and

manipulating people into sinning because of their misunderstanding of Allah's attributes.

We talked about the other thing that the devil does, which is the opposite. So we have on one hand, manipulating your fear

via the kind of the scarcity mindset and then he also manipulates your yearnings your deepest desires, your most deep seated kind of unfulfilled once.

And if you're at the point where

you have kind of assumed the

for the rightness or the correctness of you having this thing, you don't even question anymore, as like, if a lot is just like you're making a laws, fairness and just this the pendant upon you getting something of this life.

Right. So if that's the level that your yearning has got to

where you are saying,

Why haven't you given me this thing of Allah, this is what I want, and it's right to want it. What's wrong,

you haven't even questioned or you've stopped questioning, that you wanting that thing in the first place, or you are blinded by your desire or your yearning to the potential wisdom behind you not having that thing. The devil will manipulate that to and will leverage that against you, to cause you to sin in order to obtain that

thing that you yearn for, that you have not submitted to Allah, the possibility that it would it could be a part of his wisdom and Willie

right this is we see this commonly with magic, spells, potions, fortune tellers.

Most people resort to such things because they want something very bad. And they've ceased to

question

the possibility of living without that thing that they want. They want a particular spouse or a child or a job or something of this world.

And they've ceased to question that desire. The desire is the absolute, whereas their obedience to a lot is the contingent, I'll obey if I get what I want.

And so they're driven to sin. The devil tricks them into sending because of their

exaggerated yearning. They've gone too far.

So that was all last class we got to discuss most of that. Today we have I'm going to try to cover a few names of Allah tonight in sha Allah we have a rough man, Rahim.

Obviously, a Rahman Al Rahim, are two of Allah's most important names. Allah chose to begin every single Surah of the Koran with these two names, except for one of them, which is the ninth Surah or chapter of the Quran a Toba.

Other than that every single

chapter of the Quran begins with these two names Bismillah R. Rahman. r Rahim. And as we said before, a principle of any textual interpretation, which is very intuitive, makes perfect sense is that whatever somebody spends the most time talking about, or the most volume talking about is the more important thing, right. So names that Allah brings up over and over and over and over again, are more important and more fundamental than names that only come up once or twice. Things that come up in the Koran over and over and over and over again, are more important than things that come up just once or twice,

which is kind of the oddity We've mentioned this before, but the oddity of kind of the Trinitarian doctrine and Christianity, which is really very absent, it's not a main point, if you read the New Testament, or read the Bible, you have to really, really look hard to find it.

Yet, theologically, for Christians, it takes up such a large part of their theology, yet it represents such a minute.

And implied at that not even explicit, but implicit part of their text.

It would be like someone giving a lecture in a college classroom.

And the lecture was about physics.

And then they give an example of their, their deck at home, and how they built their deck. And it was just a passing example, that the rest of the thing was all about physics.

And then they give you a test and the test is just about the deck.

You would think that that person is crazy, you would report them to the registrar complaint, file a complaint with the university and want to get your money back for the waste the waste of time.

Right. So this is reasonable, and it's intuitive.

And it's it's not unfair to hold laws to use the apply the same logic to the words of Allah.

Right? What Allah spends the most time talking about is the most important thing.

And so the fact that Allah brings up again and again and again 113 times, just in the beginning of the chapters, I found that Rahim tells you something about something I was trying to tell you is very important.

And that is to know that Allah is the Most Merciful. Absolutely.

The Mercy

of Allah is so categorically different from the mercy that we have.

In a authentic hadith province, all of a sudden, he said, that he Allah has kept exclusively for him 99 parts of mercy. And he has just given one small part of His mercy and spread it out, distributed it within the creation.

So every act of mercy that you see in this creation, from your own mothers, from your own family, from wherever you may have seen it

not only represents

100th 1% of the murders

So you have a lot.

One time that companions were with the Prophet, Allah, he sought to Sudan.

And they passed by a woman

who had found her, her, her child, and the child was dead, was laying there dead. That was like a young child, like, not quite an infant, but you know, definitely still suckling age.

And the mother in her

both her grief, and her desperation, but also her mercy, grabbed the the dead child and tried to put it to her breast to get it to nurse one last time. Of course, it was futile, this exercise, but what a profound expression of mercy.

And so the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam use this opportunity to teach his companions and he said, Look at this,

do you see the mercy that the woman has for her child? Allah is more merciful to you than that.

We talked in the hook for last week about how the whole process of the human being after they die, the souls being removed from the body and then returned to the body.

To be with the body in the grave until the day of judgment.

And then at the day of judgment, receiving your book of deeds.

And how Allah for the person who was sincere, and who tried

with an honest, earnest effort,

Allah wants to conceal that person's shame, and humiliation, he doesn't love that for his true servants. He doesn't want you to be exposed.

And so Allah will actually erase some of the things that you know that you did.

And you're not going to find them in your book.

Even though you're kind of dreading meeting a law with them.

This is part of a laws, infinite mercy.

The fact that a lot has kind of created the spiritual system that we've mentioned before, where

if you intend to do a good deed,

and you do it, you follow through

a lot will multiply the rewards of that deed spiritually

between 10 and 700 times

and if you intend to do a good deed, but you're prevented from doing it, you will still be rewarded, as if you had done it for one good deed.

And if you intended to do a bad deed, but you turned to back,

you will be rewarded for for a good deed.

And Allah is only going to write or have written against you a bad deed.

If you intended to do a bad deed, not by accident,

and then you went and follow through,

then a law will have it recorded. And even then, it will only be recorded as one single bad beat.

This whole calculus

is more merciful than anything that we can imagine.

How do we treat people?

Do we treat people based off their intentions? Or do we treat people based off of their

the results of their actions, the consequences?

If your spouse or your family member does something, maybe your child breaks something was an accident?

Maybe you scold them, maybe you raise your voice maybe you express your frustration

maybe you hold a grudge if it's somebody who's not within your nuclear family,

even if they didn't mean it, even if it was accidental.

You treat people by their what their actual actions do and not by their intentions whereas a law He treats us by our intentions even if someone's screwing up time and time again.

I was going to treat us by our intentions.

There's a connection between

a specific connection between motherhood and these names a ramen Rahim

because the root word in Arabic or ah ha meme is also the root word for the womb. Oh

racking

up ham plural

which describes the wounds because the womb is a place of fundamental mercy it's not even possible to go against it the child has completely taken care of the nutrients, the oxygen that everything that it needs is completely accounted for automatically taken from the mother

the mother doesn't have to sit down and say well okay, now I'm going to give 20% of my proteins to the child and now I'm going to give you know 30% of my calcium No, it's all automatic

that's how much of a powerful creator allies so there's this fundamental connection between the womb and mercy

we know from experience that women tend to be more merciful

than men, especially to the children

partly because of this womb that they have nurtured these children in for nine months and then often nurse them for a year or two years however long

which is why a great amount of the scholars say that in custody if there's a divorce that all else being equal a young child goes to the mother

because the mother is going to base level all else being equal tend to be more merciful

Is there a difference? I'll ask you guys a question. Is there a difference between rough man and rocky are they synonyms? Do they mean the same thing or do they mean something different? And if they mean something different, what's the difference?

I guess first question Do they mean the same thing are they different? I said okay. Yes or No question

all right now that him mean the same thing. Yes or no

Mohammed Mohamed

I don't mean I think that they mean

Rahman is

merciful and Rahim mean continue to continue I mean deeply merciful.

That's what I believe. Okay.

Not sure how the family says rocking for believers and rock Man for All Mankind, Masha? Allah, Masha, Allah. Yes.

Very good.

So

when the scholars look at these two names, part of how they decide is they look at the Koran. And they see is there any difference between how they're used these two names we know that they come together at the beginning of almost every chapter. But if you get into the text of the chapters, we find an interesting pattern

which is that Rockman

is mentioned both by itself

and paired with other names such as marketing

whereas Rahim is never mentioned by itself. It's always mentioned either as a

in a specific context, like a lot is Rahim like to the believers for example, or it's paired with another name like a rock man that Rahim.

So, this is an interest he had obviously, we don't have any 100% Certain proof,

but the scholars in performance

that

a rough man

refers to the fundamental

essential quality of Allah

of being merciful.

The one who is always an essentially and permanently merciful

whereas right

heme

more refers to an aspect of Allah's activity. Right? Remember, we in the very beginning of this class, in the first couple of lessons, we talked about different categories of Allah's names, and some of them are essential qualities and some of them are actions or activity. So they've kind of split it up into these two were rough man is more of the essential quality. And Rahim is the activity.

So the result of that is exactly what the shahada family said

that the result of Allah's fundamental existence as being one of Mercy results in it taking care of everybody, right?

The rain,

wealth, children, happiness,

fond memories,

all the things that make life sweet. Allah provides them

and that provision is merciful

and is the result that flows out of Allah as being this fundamental being of mercy

that he wouldn't prevent those things from from anybody.

Categorically.

Rahim however, because it is, it's a last activity.

It's tied to his will.

He doesn't when he wants to when he chooses to. And when he chooses not to he does.

And from this, the result is again what the shahada family says. So this is something that

Allah selectively give certain people

and withhold for others, depending on their sincerity, how they receive Allah's guidance and the choices that they make.

So the result of this is exactly what was said that Rahim is a sub section, a smaller part

of Allah's Mercy that's withheld or exclusive for the believers were a rough man refers to a lot of fundamental existence that encompasses everything that he does.

Because here's, here's something that Western culture gets backwards, sometimes

we assume

that mercy

is pacifist.

Right? We love these stories of you know, somebody who's wronged in a horrible way, kind of like, you know, forgiving, like, let's say, the killer of their child or something like this. And this is not to downplay that action, that's definitely a commendable thing. It's definitely a commendable thing in the city to forgive if you if you choose to.

However,

we can't say that there's not mercy in the punishments of Allah either.

Right? This is a mistake that is commonly made.

Where the assumption is that the only expression of mercy is just to forgive, unconditionally forgive forgive for given any sort of situation.

And punishment is sort of, by default, not merciful. It's not true. Because a lot punishes and Allah is a rough man.

Right? Allah is going to put people some people in hell eternally. And Allah is a rough man. And he tells you at the beginning of every single chapter, except for one of them, and he is a man over hate.

This isn't a contradiction.

Rather,

part of mercy is justice.

Right?

I always compare it because this happened sometimes in Medina,

where

sometimes we would study for a test. Right?

And Hamdulillah, I did very well, in my studies over there, and I've worked very hard. And you know, I was always prepared, you know. So there would have been some times where I'd be taking tests and Hamdulillah I felt like I did very well. But if there was a critical mass of students that kind of complained loud enough, that the test was too hard or wasn't fair or something like this.

And the teacher was kind of is one of those teachers that can be

that can be easily

swayed.

Then, even sometimes after the test was done or completed. Sometimes he would maybe either give everybody a certain grade or bump the grades up or something like this.

And all the students that hadn't prepared.

They felt happy about it. But the students that worked really

The Heartland were prepared. Was it fair to them was it was it a merciful act to them, they felt cheated. Because something that was initially going to distinguish them in rank was kind of taken away and kind of leveled off. It would be like, it would be like, you know,

seeing your worst enemy

get treated in the same

mercy and respect as you when you have never ever done anything heinous, or some sort of violent crime or anything like this. Right.

So punishment is a mercy for the victims.

It's a mercy for the victims, and it's a mercy for the society. Because society

has to have peace. And it has to have tranquility and the foundation of peace and tranquility is

its trust.

And if you can't trust that you can step out your door and return home safe, where you are, you can't trust that you can let your kids run on the street and play without being, you know, bothered,

then you have no tranquility and peace.

And so is it merciful, then, is it merciful to take

a person or a criminal that's demonstrated a pattern of behavior that's going to disrupt that piece? Take away that trust from the community and from the individuals

and treat them

like there any other person? Right? How merciful is that? Or who is it merciful to? It's not merciful to the victims. It's not merciful to the society.

Right. So even the laws punishments, there is mercy. Right, these names imbue everything all right man touches every single thing that Allah does. So even in his punishments, there's Rockman. Allah is a rough man.

Similar to tough love from a parent, I would say it depends on the situation. But yeah, possibly.

Possibly. Yeah, it's like it wouldn't be merciful to your child. Here we go, here we go. It wouldn't be merciful to your child, to let them eat candy for dinner every night.

Even though that your child would think it was merciful, right? Like, oh, you're the best. But when their teeth fall out of their face, and they have diabetes at the age of 18,

then they're going to find out that it wasn't really that merciful. Right? It's the same thing I mean, like, you know, certain things, certain things are a mercy but are experienced as other than that.

And certain things even in punishments, there is mercy to them.

Either mercy directly to that person or mercy to the broader society

and the victims.

So Allah is a rough, rough man, Allah is a rough man is fundamental to just everything. Even as punishments even though I do even the Yes.

Removing the hand for theft or for burglary, more specifically, right? Stoning all these things that Wesley oh my god, this is barbaric. This is backwards. No, this is there is mercy in it. There is mercy.

Imagine moving into a onto a block and you know, you have a registered sex offender on that block.

What kind of tranquillity Are you going to feel?

You're going to always be looking over your shoulder. You're always going to be looking out for your kids in a you're not going to have peace. Right? Where's the mercy there?

Right. So this is I know we can talk about this for a long time. But

people have a simplistic notion of mercy. That's what I want. The main point I want to say, people in our society, they have a simplistic notion of mercy. They think that mercy is just being mushy, gushy pacifist, forgiving everything and that's not true. Because Allah is the most merciful and Allah still punishes and Allah still forbids and there is mercy in that Allah's Name a rough man tells us that there is mercy and if we think a little bit harder, we can actually very very easily see the mercy of

the next two names that we have are l height, aka Yom.

Some of the scholars thought that these two names were the the greatest names of Allah SML album

because they happen to be in the greatest person before and so of course the

high

refers to life.

Allah lives on

Law is living.

And the law has the quality of life, He is not dead.

However, is that life like our life?

Our life requires respiration, our life requires

it

activity within the cell.

Right? The exchange of energy,

the consumption of nutrients, the conversion of those nutrients into energy, the expulsion of waste.

Because we have life and Allah has life, does that mean a laws life is like our life, or our lives? No, of course, not fundamentally, categorically different.

Laws, life is perfect. It's perfect in the three ways that we mentioned in the introduction for that class, first of all, that it's not preceded

by

absence, meaning that there was no period where Allah wasn't living, there was no time where Allah was not living, as opposed to us. Most of history was not living. Now we're alive for this very short period of time in the grand scheme of things.

Similarly, on the other end, our lives are very short, and they will be over very soon in the blink of an eye. If you're looking at things with a long historical perspective,

whereas a law has no end and will never die.

And then third,

the quality of that life as its existing, as it is, living,

is defined by perfection when it comes to a lot

and deficiency for us.

How many hours can you go without eating?

How many hours can you go without drinking? How many hours can you? How many minutes? Can you go without breathing?

Right? How many days can you go without sleeping? Oh, we're very weak. Our lives are very we spend a third of our lives. About roughly average person spends a third of their life sleeping.

What an imperfect life we have, right? A lot of us free from all of those deficiencies. His life is perfect. And this name refutes the possibility of incarnation incarnation, one of those fundamental

astray ideologies.

The devil has whispered into people for millennia, trying to get them to worship rather than a law, the idea of incarnation the idea that Allah can become incarnate within the creation

is refuted by the same categorically, as we said, not because of an inability of Allah's activity, but because of a consequence of a laws, fundamental, essential perfection.

If Allah is living, he cannot die. If Allah is the Ever Living or the everlasting, he can't become temporary. He can't put himself in a body that can be killed, whether on a cross or or otherwise. And that's not any sort of inability on his part. That's simply

the boundary of who he is and who he's not.

So

the quality of Allah's being and hate, his name, does away with all of that closes the door closes the doors of the possibility of incarnation.

The second half Elka Yoon,

has two principal meanings, the first of which is that he is established by himself meaning he is self sufficient, he doesn't rely or depend upon any other creature, or any other god or any other creator,

to live to exist to do to have any sort of activity. He is the truly self sufficient whereas everything else awaits his permission and his will.

This idea shuts the door to the possibility

of any dependency on intermediaries or middlemen, right, another ancient ancient trick of the devil, to lead us astray, that we are absolutely dependent on this particular person to save us from sin, this person to forgive us our sins, this grave of the saints or this or that

Allah is self sufficient and everything depends upon him.

Therefore, every single thing in the creation itself

depends upon Allah for forgiveness depends upon a love for mercy and for salvation.

And so due to that has no power

by themselves, no unconditional power, no absolute power, to grant forgiveness to grant salvation, no, all of that is the laws.

The second meaning of this name and volume

is that Allah

has perfect ability and control over his creation.

It's the flip side. So a lot doesn't depend on anybody. This is the second half everything depends upon Allah.

This aspect of the name stops us from exaggerating the qualities or the righteousness or the abilities of the living, including the prophets. On a Muslim.

We know that there are limits that even those that are the best of creation.

They depend upon Allah. As we said just a moment ago.

Some of the scholars, they said that these two names are higher than

all of the laws, names and attributes returned to these two in some way of height kind of symbolizes and represents a loss essential characteristics.

And Oklahoma represents a loss activity.

In that it

influences all of them, it's present in all of them.

So for example, a lot is the everlasting. And he is the he's able to speak.

And so that ability to speak is also everlasting. Right? Because it's a fundamental quality of who Allah is.

Some going to LPU let's say Allah hears

or Allah sees.

Because Allah is I will play human influences. These names are apt touches upon these names, because Allah doesn't depend on any other being to hear or to see.

He does it without permission from anything, he does have his own accord, whereas everything else has to seek permission or has to obtain permission from law first.

That is all we have time for.

For today, or two minutes before the

the session closes in on us. Does anybody have any comments concerns questions before we end the meeting for tonight?

Okay, then, I asked a lot to bless us in this knowledge and to make us live by it.

And to put it in our scale, on a day of judgment. Why doesn't sort of Toba start like the rest as a good question? That's a good question.

Most of the scholars say that it is a rhetorical technique.

Because a toga

came towards the end

of the prophets light. And it is kind of sending a message to the corporation and the idolaters. of Makkah.

And it has to do with

a declaration of war, essentially.

And because of that, it's supposed to shock and grab attention.

This is an issue of its jihad. There's no certain you know, 100% knowledge about this, but that's what most of the scholars say. And Allah knows best.

Very good question. Um, we're going to get shut down. So I'll bid you all farewell. Thank you very much again, and I'll see you next time in sha Allah.

Allah said on Monday money come after