Tom Facchine – Who is Allah – Understanding Allah’s Names and Attributes #29
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the meaning of Islam's use of words like "will" and the holy spirit to describe actions and interests. They also touch on the cultural orientation of sacredity and the holy spirit's use in spiritual life. The speakers use negative emotions and actions to describe actions and moments in life, and discuss the importance of praise for intelligence and knowledge, as well as self sufficiency for praiseworthy experiences. They also mention the use of "has" and "hasn't" labels on a person's name and the significance of a "has" or "hasn't" label on a person's name.
AI: Summary ©
for Ramadan and we will pick up after Ramadan in sha Allah and so we continue the book
will announce if there's any schedule changes
when we resume
So, previously
we had talked about a law's name a sedan
and we said that a law's name a sedan had two primary meanings. Does anybody recall what those two primary meanings were
or at least one of the
anything
hola hola the La Ilaha illa
Allah medical do salon
what does that mean? Does that not mean anything?
That's one of the meanings Yes, peace. This is in the sense that we say us that I'm on equal, right? Peace be upon you. It's a wish. Right.
And it's not any type of piece. It's not simply a political piece.
It's an internal piece that is achieved through the submission to a loss of a job and living in harmony with his creative order.
So that was one of the meanings and but there's a different there's a different meaning to Salam as well.
Anybody remember what that was? Something is set up
now i Solana or Salim.
My first meeting was peace.
And the second meaning was wholeness
or completeness.
Something is Salam, the quality of Salaam
is
something being sound something being complete something being hold. When we say Ma said, Amma it's a common greed or
words of parting.
A salutation in Arabic, it means a go with Saddam like
safely.
And we can see the relationship between the two. There's a relationship between peace and wholeness or completeness.
So, the other meaning of Allah as being a sedan was his completeness in the sense of his perfection.
That Allah azza wa jal is Salam. From every imperfection or incompletion, he is perfect.
So we've seen before how this author likes to connect,
run a thread through the chapters and connect the different meanings in some sort of way.
So based off of that second meaning of a salon we have our next chapter, I will produce a Cebu because some together in one chapter, I will produce a Cebu.
As for El conduce, it occurs in the Koran twice, once in the eye that I just quoted and sort of Hashem Oh Allahu Allah de la ilaha illa who all medical could dues
but it also occurs in
sort of the Joomla you serve the holy Lahaina is 31 out of the military could do Scylla Aziz al Hakim.
I'll put those right
roughly translates to the holy.
We call the city of Jerusalem and Arabic eloquence.
We say that a hadith which
contains the words of Allah azza wa jal himself is a Hadith, but see
we have the Sacred Valley or the holy valley that Musa Adi he said on
entered
this Etowah
in the Quran
and so on and so forth. We have other examples in the Quran, all of them revolving around this three letter root off that scene which means holy or sacred.
So Allah azza wa jal is conduce. He is the holy, He is the sacred.
And in this day and age, this term holy and especially sacred,
is thrown around a lot.
It's been abused, to the point where it almost has no meaning anymore.
People have figured out that
a shortcut
to gaining validation
for their base desires, and once is to label them sacred.
We see today in the cult of the self, which the self is probably the biggest idol that we have in North America right now.
All these things being referred to as sacred,
My sacred traditions,
My sacred this my sacred that.
Books on New Age, spirituality,
spirituality, but not religious, all these sorts of things are filled with references to the sacred even, even in liberal arts colleges, such as the one I graduated from.
I'm sure Hamilton right down the road has a lot of work in which the term sacred is used. Something is sacred to of people. And inevitably, in this day and age, when we're talking about sacred, we're allowing human beings to define what is sacred.
If you allow human beings to define what is sacred, what are they going to define?
They're going to define as sacred, what the neffs wants.
If you want a certain lifestyle, or you want a certain career or you want a certain relationship, or a certain romantic experience,
these all become sacred.
If the self is holy in the self gets to define what is and what isn't sacred.
So,
from remembering that Allah azza wa jal is produced, that he is the sacred he is the holy
and as with all of our laws, names,
that means that all holiness and sacredness comes from him is derived from him, and given by his authority,
just like all knowledge,
not only pales in comparison to Allah's knowledge, but is given as a gift by Allah's permission.
And all sites and all hearing and all awareness and all wisdom and all success and all provision
is merely a secondary
sort of provision and etc, etc, which is derived from a laws provision, granted by his will.
So to, is anything that we would call sacred, in this world, must necessarily be given as a gift and by authority, by Allah isaa.
How has Allah azza wa jal and the prophets of Allah Allah He was salam given us any evidence to tell us that something in this world is sacred?
Other than a law?
Has Allah azza wa jal told us that the self is sacred, or that what the self yearns for and desires is sacred?
Or our romantic feelings? No
matter who they are for our sacred, or our cultural traditions, our sacred.
Allah has given no such authority.
In fact, we find the opposite the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said, everything in this world is melted, rune is cursed, is cursed, except for two things.
The remembrance of Allah. And I believe the second thing was knowledge, beneficial knowledge.
So we see that we're very much at odds here with a certain prevailing cultural orientation
that swings around the term sacred carelessly. And
in reality in a way that's just trying to justify things that people want,
so that they don't have to be challenged.
Why do you worship this thing? This idol? Well, that's my sacred tradition.
Why are you attracted to this person or you let yourself have relationships with this type of person. All that's my sacred feelings are my sacred kind of lived experience.
This is an exercise in Vanity.
And this is a cheapening of what sacred really means Allah subhanaw. Taala is a liquid Deus. He is the Holy and he's the authority on what is holy and what's not holy.
And the source of everything that is actually holy. Where does this holiness stem from?
If we're going to critique not just the source, but the content of all these claims, this is sacred, that sacred everything sacred.
Then there's a critique not just to where it comes from, but also to its content, what makes a lot of produce what makes Allah the holy holiness, just like a Salam is in the Completion.
Completion
of produce
means perfection.
And that perfection is divided or can be categorized into two aspects of this perfection
and nothing.
I should say anything
that does not have perfection. Are these two aspects of perfection is simply not holy.
The first aspect as we just said is completeness.
Produce means that Allah azza wa jal is complete, and it frees his name. It clears his name from any allegation or claim
of imperfection or incompleteness more specifically,
Allah azza wa jal does not forget, because his knowledge is complete.
Allah azza wa jal experiences no fatigue
or tiredness, because the laws put them up his ability is complete.
Allah azza wa jal has no inability.
Because his ability is complete, he does not oppress because his justice is complete.
And so on and so forth.
So, anything
any anything
that does not have this quality of completeness, perfect completeness, cannot be called wholly someone's romantic feelings towards someone else is a need in and of itself. It expresses a deficiency or a lack that seeks to be fulfilled. How can such a thing be called sacred?
When Allah azza wa jal is Avani, he is free from need
and he is to produce the perfect the complete.
Know we find that everything is able to be challenged except Allah azza wa jal
Wallah use al Allah says no Quran he is not asked because He is the true eloquent us He is the real sacred. He is not asked about what he does.
Well home use alone and they will be asked because they are not sacred. Their desires are not sacred
their sense of identity is not sacred, who they think that they are is not sacred. What they want from this world is not sacred, it's all able to be challenged and questioned and judged, yes, judged.
The second component
of Allah's perfection
or the second aspect
of the fact that he is Oakwood Deus
is that it is free from any likeness or similitude or comparison. What we mean to say is that it is unique.
Allah is perfect, because he is unique, he is kudos, he is sacred, because he is unique.
He is unique in His entity in his being there is no being like a law. And he is unique in everything that he is, the knowing his knowledge is unique. His seeing his sight is unique, his hearing is unique, his power is unique, His justice and wisdom is unique, His love is unique.
Can we say that the South
is unique.
There might be degrees or ways in which the self is unique.
But there are certainly ways in which the human self
is very similar to other human selves,
in what it yearns for, in what it desires, in how those desires are plastic, in the sense that they are flexible, they can be molded,
they can be manipulated, they can be shaped, they can be implanted, human beings can
accumulate desires that they never knew they were capable of before.
This is the job of marketing and advertisement and who's the best marketer.
But the devil
literally their job is to create the demand if the economy is dependent on supply and demand and there's not enough demand, the job of the marketer or the advertiser is to create that demand he wants to create the desire inside of you.
So that he can sell his product.
The devil does the same thing.
More commonalities than uniqueness,
we could say maybe unique in the details perhaps at best unique in the details,
but at the level of category, at the level of type the same thing.
And so can we stand here and say that
the human self or a human identity
or a human
sexuality or a human
desire, romantic feelings anything else?
is sacred.
Unique, complete.
This is an abuse of this word. A lot is Oakland Deus. He is sacred. His sacredness comes from the fact that he is complete and he is unique. There is nothing like him.
And there is no imperfection.
The second name in this chapter
that's right. 100%. Once the word sacred is used, the excuses use that it cannot be wrong. Exactly. It's the biggest rubber stamp that we have. Probably
Probably in our culture, our culture right now. We've relativized truth, your truth, my truth.
You're just living your truth. You're living your best life.
All these kinds of slogans that have come up in our in our culture.
Many of them even if they weren't intended at the outset, many of them are wielded and used to merely
affirm them.
What the self wants,
which is what makes us Now
honestly, the last hope
for humanity.
Islam is the last man standing,
when it comes to being willing to challenge the self and challenge desires, and say, Wait a second, no, you are not your desires, they are two separate things.
And we know this because right now you have desires that you never had before. And a future version of you will have desires that you don't have now.
These desires that pass through you that you experience they are
temporary guests may come and go.
And in fact, your role and your responsibility and your job in this world is to react and manage and responsibly handle. Of course, sometimes winning and sometimes losing that's we're all imperfect.
But to deal with these desires, not to just say that they're all essentially who we are, that we are nothing but our desires, and our identity, who we are this identity that we've constructed for ourselves.
So Islam is one of the last things that stands in the way of this sort of thought.
Very, very radical philosophically for the time that we live in. You are not yourself.
You are not your desires. You don't even own yourself, Allah azza wa jal owns you.
My body my choice, right? This is one of the calling cards of today.
And look at how it's used to justify certain things that are morally reprehensible.
And it stems from a prop, a premise that is completely on a Slavic it's not your body.
Yes, it is your choice and so you can be judged according to your choice. But it's not your body, it's a law's body. He's merely lent it to you for a short period of time. Anyway, that's Cebu, Cebu. The second name in this chapter is very similar to Oakland Deus in meaning however, a Cebu does not exist in the Quran never occurred in the Quran. We find it in the Hadith. The prophets of Aloha USA sallam said, and this is a Hadith in Sahih Muslim when he was in his sujood Cebu produce Rapala Mala, Rubble Mala at what row
this is the occurrence of the name as Cebu asked for the verb. It's all over the Koran.
In imperative form, as a command was suddenly behind the Arabica was still fit who said b.
This is the root from which we get the word Subhana. Allah Subhan Allah means to
affirm the perfection of ALLAH SubhanA wa Tada
by clearing his name from any imperfections, or any incomplete, any incompleteness it's very, very similar to other produce.
And it's significant that our faith
is not complete.
Without without this dual kind of action,
it's not enough to merely affirm that Allah is perfect.
We're also called upon to deny that Allah is imperfect.
Right? This is the what we're doing with tests be SubhanAllah.
We're not merely saying that a loss is perfect, or saying that
Allah has no imperfection, we're rejecting denying categorically the possibility that a lot could be incomplete
in any way, or imperfect in any way or like, or similar to the creation in any way.
And if we were only to choose one of these two activities, affirming the positive and denying the negative, we would fall into an extreme somewhere as others have in times past.
If we content ourselves or suffice ourselves or stop at merely denying what Allah is not
we can get carried away to the point of denying even things that a lot is and some people have fallen into this sort of doubt where they think
that
even the things that Allah subhanaw taala described himself with
must not mean anything really.
So if Allah has power to Allah says that he is above the heavens of the Earth, I consider it to be summer
or that he is established above his throne.
Some people running away from making any comparisons can fall into this extreme of just negating everything to the point where that you can say, oh, no, we can't say that a law has knowledge or has existence or has anything, because we have knowledge and we have existence and you see the ECB, the problem they've made for themselves. This is going too far with the with the negation.
And the other extreme going too far with affirmation to the point where we're making comparisons and similitude.
Imagining that Allah has sites with eyes like our eyes, that require lights and things like that. This is taking that too far. And so the right way as is.
The normal case is right in the middle.
We have both the affirmation of Allah what He told us about himself, and the negation of all that Allah told us that he's not
and clearing his name from any sort of imperfection or incompleteness.
And this is summarized in
a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad Ali Salam said,
a very important formula for remembering a lot for vicar.
The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, two words that are lights upon the tongue and heavy on the scales and the day of judgment.
And the loved two Rockman Subhan Allah he will be handy he
also handle was Subhana Allah He la vie. And this is both in Sahih al Bukhari and sahih, Muslim.
Both of them have Subhan Allah and both of them have positive affirmative aspects of Allah's perfection Subhan Allah, which clears a lot from any incompletion or imperfection, while we humbly
and his praise,
which is positive or affirmative Subhana lahi
which is again clearing him from any imperfection at all the the Great, the majestic, the mighty,
again, affirming
the greatness of Allah azza wa jal
one of the benefits that the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu sallam said about Subhanallah and this is not as well known
is that it is a source of provision in this world.
It is a source of risk.
The promise of Aloha he was sudden
he said while Behat euroset will help
he said he was commenting about was Subhan Allah he will be handing ephah in the hat, Salah quilici What we had years ago
by saying this formula
with of course understanding what it means and applying it in your life, it's not going to do good if it's just empty sounds
then
it will be a source of provision for you
both in this life and in the next
let's try to get in one more name. Okay. So the next chapter is a Hemi
Allah azza wa jal, he says that he has al Hamid 17 times in the Quran that Hamid translates to the praiseworthy
and we could spend a lot of time
enumerating all of the things that make Allah the most praiseworthy.
It suffices us though to mention the simple Beginning of Sorrows of Fatiha Alhamdulillah
the fact that I lost that l hand with Ellie flam, making it definitely means that all praise.
Praise is an entire category
belongs to Allah is due to Allah and Allah deserves it.
This is for two reasons first of all, the perfection of Allah azza wa jal, as we said in the previous chapter,
and second, because any capacity in which any
The other creature or any part of Allah's creation, is praiseworthy is merely derived from allows praise worthiness. If one of us is merciful, and so we deserve praise for that. Allah is more merciful than us and Allah has gifted us our mercy.
If any one of us is intelligent and so deserves praise for that intelligence, Allah is more intelligent and more knowing and further has gifted us that intelligence and knowledge
all of this makes a lot as well Hamid
like Allah says in the poor area Yohannes
and Tamil for Quran, Allah Allahu Allah Ghani will help me as an Surah out there
and so lots of hajj what we'll do in a tiny tube, mineral hole, Oahu in surat al Hamid
while Mo and aloha Ghanian Hamid and salsa Bachata
Oh my yes go for in nama yes Quran enough so he woman careful of it in the light of Anil Hamid and so Look, man, we noticed that
often, often a law's name is paired with
a last name, Hamid is paired with money.
And other money, as you can recall us mentioning means the self sufficient
what's the relationship between being self sufficient and being praiseworthy? Let's hear somebody's reflection
Why does Lonnie and Hamid appear as a pair so often?
Yes, very good.
That's definitely part of it. If you are self sufficient, then we can say that you are sincere.
Right but
you do not have an ulterior motive. You don't want anything else you're not doing it in a transactional nature.
And so isn't such a person praiseworthy?
Allah azza wa jal teaches us something very, very subtle.
Yes, and you don't need for anything you don't have to ask.
Allah azza wa jal teaches us something very, very subtle. When he constantly and consistently pairs Avani and Hamid
he teaches us that praise worthiness comes from self sufficiency.
This is summarized in the Hadith of the companion who asked the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam
Tell me one thing that I can do that will make a law love me and to make the people love me.
And interestingly enough, the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam didn't correct him say why do you want to make the people love you?
You shouldn't be concerned about making the people love you. People are fickle people are this people are that these things that we tell each other which might be true. But the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam did not respond that way.
He gave him a very concrete answer.
He gave him a way that people could love him in a pure way that everybody should want to achieve. The Prophet sallallahu Sallam he said his head for dunya you have book Allah was had female and the nasty hippo calmness.
He said refrain
from what is in this world and Allah azza wa jal will love you.
And then he said refrain from what belongs to people.
And people will love you too.
However much we want to be differently
if someone asks of us,
especially if they do it more than once, so
part inside of us that doesn't like it.
It's a trial for us. You
To test, it's something we need to struggle against. Yes, that little part of us
is always there.
And so when somebody does not ask anybody
for that for anything, and on top of that, even when they're given or offered something takes very little.
It makes people naturally love that person.
That person is liked, we used to say in slang, so he's like us, he can come to your house and crash on your couch and he's not going to clean out your fridge or your cupboards. He doesn't need much,
this is something praiseworthy. This is something that gets the love of the people and the love of Allah azza wa jal.
So, being self sufficient, as much as possible leads to praise worthiness and who is more self sufficient than Eliza with
of course, nothing and no one which is part of the reason why he is supremely praised with
Al Hamid.
Anyone have any questions? That takes us to the end of our time?
Okay, everybody, have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you next time Insha Allah, I said I'm ready for us.