Tom Facchine – Who Is Allah – Understanding Allah’s Names and Attributes #13
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the names of Allah and its potential implications for one's behavior and the world. They emphasize the importance of considering the meaning of Allah's names when making decisions and reflect upon them, as well as the importance of considering the meaning of his name when making decisions. The speakers also discuss the negative impact of being run out of town and the importance of knowing the process of one's actions to avoid hesitation from the future. They emphasize the need for people to see what they have done and not be afraid of them, as well as the importance of letting people know their actions and avoiding negative consequences. The speakers also touch on the concept of evil and how it relates to one's behavior.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah Al Rahman Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa Salatu was Salam ala Ashoka MBI Ansari. Now being in our post Wartsila Muhammad Ali of follow Salah was good to sleep Allahumma Arlin NaVi Bay on foreign oil and fat and I mean that Ireland and ours even their element. Yeah, I mean,
so they we have, it's Saturday night. So we're talking about who is a lot understanding laws, beautiful names, excellent names, perfect names. And we have made it to
L Bosley. Last class we talked about a Semia. The all hearing
and this class we have, we will cover in sha Allah, its complement,
l bossley. The one who sees everything just like a semi
l elbow See, occurs in the Qur'an over 40 times. And so as we've said, one of the, it's not just the principle of a core and it's a principle of textual interpretation, no matter what you're reading, which is that the more volume and the more space something takes up, the more important it is. Right? That Allah is a rough man and off him
is much more important than that he's got him
because Allah chose to begin
every Surah except for one of them with Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.
So that should tell you that when it comes to the names of Allah, some of them are more important than others, some of them are more central than others. Allah's mercy and compassion is more central than his ability is irresistible ability to conquer, and overcome and subdue.
Right. And so SME will see very common names, each of them occurring over 40 times shouldn't tell you that this is a very, very important quality of Allah, that he wants you to think about and ponder
and connect with.
So I will say it is the one who has complete vision, who observes everything, no matter how small, no matter how hidden, no matter how secretive.
Now, similarly to SMU, and to many of the names of Allah.
It refers to an activity that we also partake in ourselves. We also here, we also see,
right? So just as a little exercise, we'll ask the students present.
What if you were explaining these names of a lot to somebody, a semi or a lawsuit, they are seeing or hearing.
And they say wait a second.
A lot can't be like
the creation,
he can't see in the same way that I see I need light to see. I need eyes to see I need certain conditions. To see site requires location, right? Because I'm looking out at something that is observed.
Therefore,
since this name seems to
communicate, or imply
some sort of limitation of Allah
and lightness with the creation, a semi anonymous, rather, instead of taking them upon their apparent meanings, we have to say that these are just secret code names of a lot that we don't really know what they mean at all.
How does that sound?
How would you respond to such a person?
Soviet embassy there just sounds. We don't know. We can't know what they mean.
They might mean something but it's completely
it's completely out of our ability to know
because the only seeing that we know
requires location. It requires direction.
requires certain muscles
implies physical, physical limitations.
You need lights.
Anybody want to take a crack at it?
Okay.
One participant says,
If pertaining to Allah, the same rules won't apply like they would for humans.
Why not?
If someone says this is what site means, this is what hearing is. This is a logical necessity. It's not anything other than that
well, we could ask such a person
do you exist? Okay? Our seeing is very limited, but I love seeing and hearing is a whole other sense. He can see your heart, okay?
Good.
We can end the conversation very quickly we can say, do you exist?
He has to say yes.
Does Allah exist?
He has to say yes.
Is your existence like Allah's existence?
If he says no,
then that's it. If he says yes, then he's gotten bigger issue.
So no, allows existence is not like my existence.
My existence is deficient. It's full of weakness.
It's full of tragedy and loss and shortcomings and frustrations,
limitations
unfulfilled
projects and hopes, things like that.
I mean, that's not all my life. But I mean, like, it's there in life, right, which wouldn't be there
in the life of a perfect being right. And so
that's my life. That's not a law's life. That's not Allah's existence. Let's say that's, that's my existence. Allah's existence is not comprised or doesn't have anything of those types of limitations or frustrations or unfulfilled hopes or setbacks, mistakes, those sorts of things. So if Allah's existence is not like my existence, but yet we must affirm that Allah exists, as we must affirm that I exist, then why should we treat any of Allah's names and characteristics any different than that?
Yes,
exactly. Very good. Shake family has put their finger on something important. The assumption that is made
the assumption that is made,
whereby someone wants to say no, it can't mean that, because it would logically necessitate X, Y, or Z.
The assumptions that they're making are incorrect. They're assuming likeness between a law and the creation.
If you assume the likeness between Allah and the creation, then you must reject it by going to the opposite extreme, which is to negate meaning from any of the laws, names or attributes, say, No, Allah must not here with ears with sound waves with these sorts of things. And therefore, semi must not mean anything like what we know.
Hearing means, right. So it's because of the assumption
of similitude, or similarity that then necessitates that they go to the other extreme and deny and vacate the name of any meaning whatsoever.
And that can depending on the sorts of things, as you said, can lead can lead people to get into some hot water?
So no, we don't need to do all that. We don't need to
throw out
the meaning of Allah's names that he took, that he put in the Quran purposefully, and told us to reflect upon them. How are we supposed to reflect upon them if they don't mean anything? If they're just secret code words, sounds?
No, they're placed there. They have an apparent meaning. We accept the meaning.
And we say that it's not like anything else that we know.
Yes, it's hearing, but it's not like hearing. It's not like our hearing. Yes, it's seeing but it's not like our sheet
And if we go further than that, to say that Allah sees with eyes, or that he grasps with hands and fingers, then we don't do it because of logical necessity. We don't do it because we're thinking or saying to ourselves, well, the only type of grasping that we know of happens with hands in there. So therefore it has to happen like that with Allah. No, we do it because there's other revelation that either affirms that or establishes that.
For example, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam who said that the jaws one eyed and Allah is not one is
right, or Allah says in the Quran says you need be at uni now
referring to his eyes. So this is something that we're not making up
due to logical necessity due to our assumption that Allah is like the creation.
But it's something that epistemologically right we're talking about, how do we know what we know? When it comes to Allah, and his attributes, His essence and his activity? This is something that is not based off of
observation, though it might be confirmed by observation. It's not something that's based off of logical deduction, though it might be
backed up by logical deduction. It's something that is primarily and fundamentally in the text and the revelation. If Allah says that he is this thing, who are we then to say, Well, no, not really, he didn't really mean that.
When he says that he is that he repeats it over 40 times, he tells you to ponder upon it.
He puts it in contexts which imply the apparent meaning that we're aware of
that Allah is able to observe and see everything.
Who are we then to vacate
that name from its meaning, and its purpose and its its characteristic.
So Allah site is not dependent,
in the same way in which our site is dependent, his site's just like his existence, and his knowledge and everything else is absolute. And its primary. It's not conditional. It's not secondary, it's not derived, it doesn't have to wait for permission, it doesn't have to overcome some limitation. whereas ours does. Our sight and our hearing. It happens through physical means, through organs. It's because it happens through physical organs. It's limited in what it can observe.
And therefore, it is quite limited. Both in the timespan that we experienced that sense, which is just a mere 50 6070 years, some of us not more less than that.
And during the time that we do it, there's only certain amount of frequencies that we can hear we depend upon frequencies to hear in the first place. All these sorts of things that talk about the material world and our being situated within the material world that structures our dependency upon it.
A lot is outside of the material world, not part of the material creation. And therefore, the rules that apply here, as mache family said does not apply to Allah.
What are the implications of Allah's Name and Basu? We all see.
One of them is that we are always under a laws watch.
And that has two
moods to it two flavors.
One of them is encouragement.
Actually, it's encouragement. If the first thing that you thought was oh, you know, here it comes again, the email, he's gonna talk about how Allah is always watching and so you better be nice. Yes, that's fair to that's there too. But it doesn't have to be just that.
It can also be that Allah
sees your pain.
Allah sees you making dua, Allah sees the stuff that you don't get any recognition for.
Allah sees your struggles. Allah sees your your deeds, whether you've done them completely alone. No one else knows about them or whether other people saw them. If other people saw them and thought that you were just showing off oh, here's this Mottola. This is pious guy. He's just showing off.
Everybody in the world could think that you're showing off but Allah sees
and Allah sees what they don't see.
So understanding that Allah is Allah will see you in the encouraging way, should free us and liberate us
from having any expectation
that the creation is going to give us validation,
appreciation,
or compensation.
And that is one of the purest forms of freedom and liberation that there is.
Because most of what we do, let's be honest, is not for a lot. It's for other people. Even the nice things we do for other people often is really just kind of business, I'm doing something nice for you, because I hope that you would do something nice for me. In the future, even if it's not a guaranteed thing. It's not a premade arrangement, you're kind of banking on it, you're like putting
pennies in your piggy bank, saving up for a rainy day when you might need that sort of help. That's business.
As business that's not doing business with a law. That's not sincerity or sincere intention.
sincere intention is doing something with the expectation or the export or the realization that no one's going to ever do anything for you in return.
People might even have completely misinterpreted you and got you wrong.
You might have been run out of town on a rail.
And people talking about you and bad mouthing you and gossip and everybody's.
But you know that Allah's LLC you,
if you know that Allah is on Basia, then it doesn't care, you don't care, it doesn't bother you,
you know that Allah has observed it, he's your witness.
And it's all gonna get sorted out at the end of the day.
If you're going through hardship, sometimes coming to places like the messy can be the hardest thing to do when you're going through hardship. Because a lot of times people don't.
People are in cliques, right, they don't kind of reach out and talk to people across
bound boundaries of either ethnicity, or social class or friends or whatever. Or if they do that, it's really light, like, Hi, how you doing, you know, how's everything, but the person is shy as someone could be really going through something, and they're not going to take that opportunity to be like, actually, things are really hard. Actually, I could really use help, or I could really use some advice. Very, very few people. Very few people will do that. And the people that do do that, we kind of try to socialize them to not do that because it's uncomfortable.
Right? It's true.
But Allah has embassy and he sees everything. So even if you keep coming back to the mission, you're hoping you're just begging a love to send you someone that will just take this problem away from you.
Or relieve your hardship, and it doesn't come you know, at the end of the day that Allah sees you.
And if Allah sees you, and the laws are Rockman
and he's Allah, dude,
then you know that you are in good hands, as we say,
even if the creation gives you nothing.
Knowing that Allah sees everything also should liberate us from
the ambiguity of the unknown.
Not knowing what's going to happen next, especially in North America, we love to plan. We love to know, what is the next three, four or five steps ahead. And this is good, this is a subnet to think like that.
Right? But if you go someplace
else in the world,
things are a lot more haphazard. You don't know what's going to happen. You don't even know the process. All you know is you have to show up to this office and you wait around with everybody else. And then you kind of are gonna figure it out through osmosis. What's the next step? You can't plan? Three, four or five steps ahead. That's one of the hardest things that North American students in Medina has to adjust to. Because that over there, there's there's, you don't know the process. You just have to go along for the ride.
So knowing that Allah is on Basu, and reflecting upon that, that Allah sees, Allah knows all the steps that are in front of you, he knows what's going to happen.
And it's already written, it's basically already secured.
So if it's already willed, it's already written, it's already secured. How much should you worry about?
How much should you stay up at night tossing and turning?
Per separating?
about what's going to happen.
If a law sees a law knows, and the law is out of hand, and he told you in 113 chapters
out of 114, then
maybe we don't have so much to worry about.
Of course, as we said, this is the encouraging sign of LLC, but there is also the warning sign
that Allah is watching.
And much of sin, if not most of it happens when the devil
temporarily deceives us or makes us forget that Allah is watching.
You've probably seen in your time on social media, these kinds of videos that are like security cameras, right? where somebody's about to do something bad.
But then they realize in the process, or just after they did that bad thing, they realized that they're on a security camera. I saw this one video of a guy that was he was a pickpocket. Are you standing in line, he was like sizing your guy up. He slowly reaches out. He plugs his wallet from his back pocket, and he's putting it into his own pocket. And then he and then he turns around, and he sees he sees a security camera.
And then he just like he knows that he's caught, he's turned, he's she's saw his face everything.
So he tosses he throws the wall on the ground.
And then he taps the guy in front of him and he points down to the wallet. He said, Hey, you dropped your wallet.
And then he turns back to the camera and he kind of gives like a thumbs up.
Because he realized that he was under surveillance.
How pious would people be if they realized that they were always under surveillance, we are always under surveillance, are always under a law of surveillance, which is much more,
which is much greater and much more comprehensive and much more merciful, but also much more scary than being under the surveillance of a machine or a store, even the government a lot. Those sorts of entities can only punish you a little bit in this life, a law can punish you for eternity, if he sees fit.
Right. So we are under surveillance, but we don't we don't act like it. Right? We act like when we're alone with ourselves. When we're at our most sincere.
Right, we act like we are truly alone.
Even though we intellectually know that we're not
how do we bridge the gap?
How do we bridge the gap of our intellectual understanding and our poor performance?
That's why Allah gave us thicker,
the remembrance that's why the vicar is so important. That's why the vicar is something that the pious people have trained themselves to be their default.
And I wish I could count myself among them, but I can't, honestly, it's something I aspire to. And I hope you do too, to be constantly making liquor so that if you are dragged away, if you are deluded for a second, you've trained yourself to come back to that.
And you won't forget a lot as easily. You won't forget the surveillance that you're under nearly as easily.
It's good that
Allah is Allah Basu.
And this is another aspect of encouragement that I forgot to mention, which is that
we can trust in true justice.
eternal justice, because a lot has elbow seal.
When it comes to this life, think about your childhood. Did you ever get smacked by one of your siblings? And then when your parents were turned around,
right? And then they turn around and you're crying, and you're like, Oh, my God, like they hit me. And then like, I didn't see it?
Well, that's a quaint example. What about all of the atrocities that go on throughout the world, especially the Muslim world?
And they're not witnessed?
Or the people who are witnessing those atrocities
aren't saying
and think about Allah who sees everything and witnesses everything and think about the punishment that he has in store
for people who thought that they got away with something in this world
Last reflection on overseer is that it is one of the
names and attributes that Allah has told us
is a criteria for diabetic for divinity.
So during our clip those the last month or so we've been talking about sources of thought upon, and how in the beginning of swords were broken, Allah lays out these criteria for being able to judge what is and is not divine.
And one of these criteria
is the ability to see
that in order to be divine, you have to be able to see and observe and all of the things that we just talked about,
flesh out why that is. Because if you're going to establish justice, you have to be able to see and observe the wrong
if you're going to give the people of good that people have faith in their come up and see their true reward at the end, you need to be able to see what they have done all along the way.
If you are going to inspire or scare people into acting, right, not oppressing each other in this world, you have to be able to observe what's going on.
So anything which is not just blind, but limited
conditional in its vision and its sight,
dependence upon light dependent upon direction, not having an opaque object in between you and the thing to be seen. All of these limitations, exposes
exposes false gods
right away.
Just like we said in the flipbook, the kurush kind of intuitiveness they kind of felt that their idols that they had in front of them, even if they claimed that they were really like
metal metaphorical representations of something that was greater, something more spiritual, the fact that they put it into an idol made them conceive of the idols of having the same limitations as they did, when it comes to seeing when it came to hearing. And so sometimes the coronation they would kind of whisper behind their backs about something that was even against the item, or do something out of the sight of the idol.
And imagine that that thing which they worshipped didn't see it, they were worshiping something which they admitted,
couldn't see were observed them in all situations. What kind of God is that? What kind of divinity is that? That's not divinity? It's a false idol. It's a false god.
Good. So, we will try to get away with can we get through one more name, inshallah. I mean, the next name is Al Amin, the All Knowing even more so than LLC, or SME, Allah mentioned earlier, 150 over 150 times in the Quran, it refers to perfect knowledge, we go back to how do we reconcile the fact that we have knowledge and Allah has knowledge is the same exact thing as the existence, Allah exists? I exist? Is my existence like a laws existence? No, it is not. Is my knowledge like a law is knowledge? No, it is not. A law has perfect knowledge. It has no beginning. It has no end. And it has no deficiency. Nothing is outside of the purview is outside of the sphere, of Allah's knowledge.
Allah isn't surprised by anything.
He knew everything
that was going to happen
long before from the very beginning, before it even occurred, or was written down even
understanding a laws, knowledge is the solution to what's known in Western philosophy as the Free Will problem, right? So the question goes, or the dilemma supposedly goes,
if Allah knows that evil is going to happen,
and doesn't stop that evil from happening,
is a law responsible? Has he in fact, then committed that evil?
For the sake of time, there are three different responses to this. Two of them go to extremes that we don't want to get into kind of like our previous situation. So one response is that people get scared of that situation and say, no, no, he doesn't know what's going to happen until it happens.
Right? And I think it should be obvious the problematic nature of that response. If you're saying that Allah doesn't know that it happened until it happens that his knowledge is very, very
Are you very limited, he doesn't have for knowledge. According to that perspective, he only has knowledge as things are happening, which is a weakness, which is a limitation. Because that means that a lot didn't know and now he knew.
Right?
Which means that if he didn't know something was about to happen, that means He's incapable
of stopping that thing from happening. What kind of God is that?
The second response is to go to the other extreme and say, well, then there's no free will. A lot a new, it's going to happen, and it's happening that way. And so therefore,
that's it.
There's no choice.
And some people do that actually happy, because then they're justified for whatever they do. And some people do that as a criticism of the idea of God in the first place.
They say that, what's this, if God has perfect knowledge, then everybody
they're just playing out roles, like in a play, he's written the script, and he wrote the script. So if I do something bad, then that's his fault.
So what is the just response to the situation adjust responses that knowing about something is not the same, is not the same as doing something.
That's simply the fact, if you have your child,
for example,
you know, what your child
likes and what they don't like,
you know, what motivates them and doesn't motivate them. Even if as a parent, you struggle to motivate them sometimes, you know, there's a couple shore fire things to get them to do what what you want.
They might not be things that you want to give them.
Right? But you know that those things are there break glass in case of emergency.
So if you ask your child and you say,
if you do this, I'll give you this, then you pretty much know you pretty much know what they're going to respond with. Just like you know, what doesn't motivate them.
It's probably easier in that situation, especially if you have teenagers, you know that if you offer them this thing that they don't care about, they're going to reject you and not going to take up your offer.
Does that mean that you have rejected your offer? No, of course it doesn't.
They're the one that had the choice, the free will.
And they exercise that freewill. And your knowledge with maybe 99% certainty of what they're going to choose does not negate that freewill at all. Well, all you're doing in the situation with a lot is you're eliminating that 1% of uncertainty.
A lot knows with 100% certainty what you're going to choose, he's still going to present you the choice, he will will the whole situation to happen.
But from your perspective, you don't know what you're going to choose.
And because of that, that creates the moral moment, the moral accountability, you are making a decision.
And you have to live with the results and the consequences of that decision.
Just because a law knew what you were going to choose doesn't mean you're not any worse for choosing, you didn't know what you were going to choose.
So that is the decision is still on you.
I think that puts us
at a good stopping point for today. Anybody have any final questions, comments, concerns? Before we dismiss
for this evening?
It's already returned, like long before the Earth was created, what we were destined to do what we were going to watch in our destiny, stuff like that. So how do we explain that with this
concept?
How do we reconcile?
We will? Yeah.
It's the same. It's the same issue. So from even if,
like, Well, imagine the loss perspective.
He knows.
You don't know.
Right? So there's an asymmetry of knowledge going on.
Since a law knows
and you don't know.
When you're in that situation,
from your perspective,
is the decision already made?
Are you simply like, like, if we're going to like, do the reading a roll analogy, like, because somebody who is saying that predestination, it's all figured out ahead of time, which is figured out.
But it doesn't mean that Allah is doing our actions for us, and therefore, we're not responsible for them. So like, the doubt comes in, if you imagine it like a play, you imagine that all of us are actors, and we have a script, and we're reading off of the script.
Okay, the script is written by Allah.
Then, in that situation, you could think, well, I'm going to blame the screenwriter, if I say something that's messed up.
But we don't have a script in our hand that we're reading off of. Allah has the script with him.
As far as we know, we're choosing what we get to say and what we don't get to say.
It feels authentic, it feels real in the moment.
And it is real in the sense that we are choosing our words.
So just because Allah knows that we're going, what words we're going to choose, Allah knows what decision we're going to make, doesn't negate the fact
doesn't negate the fact that it's still our choice.
Especially from our perspective,
if we knew what Allah knew, then it would be different, then there would be no free will.
Right? Then we will be like, well, I know that I'm going to die in this way in this time in this place. And I know that I'm going to have this and that and the other but Allah has purposely hidden that from us, creating the moral moment creating moments of moral choice.
So even if it was written down, what's going to happen, that knowledge that's written with knowledge, it's written with a knowing of what's going to be decided.
But the thing still has to be decided and it still is a decision because of the asymmetry of information. Does that make sense?
Yes, exactly.
Okay, that's all the time we have for today.
This patient along with that long