The Attributes of Allah:
by Soner Uguz

Praise, Glory, Greatness and Honour be to Allah the One and only true Living, Eternal GOD of the Universe, I start in His blessed Name which is Unique and Supreme and He is surely the Most Compassionate and the Most merciful, And May Peace and Blessings be to the prophet of Mercy and Grace, The Beloved of God, The last and final Prophet Hazrat Muhammad Mustafa, the son of Abdullah and Amina and the grandson of Abdul Mut’talib of the tribe of Quraish and the clan of Hashim. May Allah exalt His rank and give him peace. May Allah also bless his family and Companions also. May Allah also bless the Promised Messiah and Mahdi, the Reformer of the 14^th of Hijra. He (Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib) is an Imam par excellence of the people of sincerity; he carries the secret of sainthood; he revived the true teachings of Islam from conservative and fanatical views near the end of the 19^th Century, with Heavenly guidance and Prophetic ethics. He has infused into the Community and the Planet, love of God and love of the lovers of God, after it has been darkened with the smoke and fire of tribulation and terror, anger and grief.

He is the Scholar of Saints and the Saint of Scholars. He is the Hidden Treasure of the Prophecy. He is the Qutb of the Seekers. He is the Ghawth of Humankind. He has revived the dead hearts. He is the Inheritor of the Prophetic Characteristics. He is wearing the Cloak of the Light of the Divine Presence. He is unique in the external knowledge and the internal knowledge. He is One in his time. He is the Orchid Tree planted in the earth of Divine Love. Allah give Him peace. Ameen.

I have written this article with deep reference into the Sufi works of the Naqshbandi Order and I hope this article will be of great benefit for all who read it and May Allah bless all those who seek the truth.

He is not a substance and substances do not reside in Him; He is not a quality of substance, nor does a quality of substance occur in Him.

Rather, He resembles no existent and no existent resembles Him. Nothing is like Him and He is not like anything. Measure does not bind Him and boundaries do not contain Him. Directions do not surround Him and neither the earth nor the Heavens are on different sides of Him.

Truly, He is controlling the Throne in the manner in which He said and in the sense in which He willed - in a state of transcendence that is removed from parallel and touch, residence, fixity of location, stability, envelopment, and movement.

The Throne does not support Him, but the Throne and those who carry it are supported by the Subtleness of His Power and are constrained by His Firmness. He is above the Throne and Heavens and above everything to the limits of the earth with an aboveness which does not bring Him nearer to the Throne and the Heavens, just as it does not make Him further from the earth.

Rather, He is Highly Exalted above the Throne and the Heavens, just as He is Highly Exalted above the earth. Nevertheless, He is near to every entity and is "nearer to the worshipper than his jugular vein" and He witnesses everything since His nearness does not resemble the nearness of bodies, just as His Essence does not resemble the essence of bodies.

He does not exist in anything, just as nothing exists in Him: Exalted is He that a place could contain Him, just as sanctified is He that no time could limit Him.

For, He was as before He had created time and place, and just as He was, He is now. He is distinct from His creatures through His Attributes. There is not in His Essence any other than Him, nor does His Essence exist in any other than Him.

He is Exalted from change and movement. Substance does not reside in Him and the quality of substance do not befall Him. Rather, He is in the attributes of His Majesty beyond cessation. And He is in the attributes of His Perfection. He is not in need of an increase in perfection. In His Essence, His Existence is known by reason (in this life).

In the Everlasting Life, His Essence is seen by the eyes of the righteous as a favour from Him, and a subtlety as a completion of favours from Him through their beholding His Gracious Countenance.

He is Single in creating and inventing. He is Alone in bringing into existence and innovating. He created all creatures and their deeds, and decreed their sustenance and their life span; nothing decreed escapes His Firmness and the mutations of the affairs does not slip from His Power.

Whatever He decrees cannot be numbered neither does His Knowledge end.

Rather, He knows the stamping of the black ant upon the solid rock in the darkest night. He perceives the movement of a particle of dust in mid-air. He knows the secrets and that which is more hidden. [There is not a sub-atomic particle nor the most vast universe but that He is fully Aware of every infinite knowledge concerning it, He is controlling each and every one of its component parts in every infinitesimal instant, while at the same having the knowledge of the whole of them altogether.]

He is the Overseer of the whispering of the self and the flow of thoughts, and the most deepest concealment of the selves, with a knowledge which is ancient from pre-eternity and by which He has not ceased to be described through the ages, not by a knowledge which is subject to updating by occurring and circulating in His Essence.

He is the Creator at first, the Restorer, the Doer of whatsoever He wills. There is none that rescinds His command, and none that supplements His decrees, and there is no escape for a worshipper from disobeying Him, except by His Help and Mercy, and none has power to obey Him except by His Will. Even if mankind, spiritual beings, angels, and demons were to unite to try to move the weight of an atom in the world or to render it still, without His Will they would fail.

His Will subsists in His Essence amongst His Attributes. He has not ceased to be described by it from eternity, willing, - in His Infinity - the existence of the things at their appointed time which He has decreed. So they come into existence at their appointed times, as He has willed in His Infinity, without precedence or delay. They come to pass in accordance with His Knowledge and His Will without variation or change.

He directs matters not through arrangement of thought and awaiting the passage of time, and so no affair occupies Him from another affair.

No audible thing, however faint, escapes His Hearing, and no visible thing, however minute, is hidden from His Sight.

Distance does not prevent His Hearing and darkness does not obstruct His Seeing. He sees without a pupil and eyelid, and hears without the meatus [ear canal] and ears, as He perceives without a heart, and seizes without limbs, and creates without an instrument, since His Attributes do not resemble the attributes of the creation, and as His Essence does not resemble the essence of creation.

Unlike the speech of the creation, it is not a sound which is caused through the passage of air or the friction of bodies; nor is it a letter which is enunciated through the opening and closing of lips and the movement of the tongue.

And that the Koran [Quran], the original Torah, the original Gospel of Jesus, and the original Psalms are His Books sent down to His Messengers, peace be upon them.

The Koran is read by tongues, written in books, and remembered in the heart, yet it is, nevertheless ancient, subsisting in the Essence of God, not subject to division and or separation through its transmission to the heart and paper. Moses - God praised him and gave him peace - heard the Speech of God without sound and without letter, just as the righteous see the Essence of God - the High - in the Hereafter, without substance or its quality.

And since He has these qualities, He is Living, Knowing, Willing, Hearing, Seeing and Speaking with life, power, knowledge, will, hearing, sight, and speech, not solely through His Essence.

He is Wise in His verdicts. His justice is not to be compared with that of worshippers, because it is conceivable that the worshipper is unjust when he deals with properties of other than his own. But, harm is not conceivable from God - the High - because He does not encounter any ownership of other than Himself, in which His dealing could be described to be harmful.

Everything besides Him, children of Adam, spiritual beings, angels and devils, heaven and earth, animals, plants, and inanimates, substance and its quality, as well as things perceived and things felt, are all originated things which He created by His Power and before they were nothing, since He existed in Eternity alone and there was nothing whatsoever with Him.

So He originated creation thereafter as a manifestation of His Power and a realisation of that which had preceded of His Will and the realisation of His Word in eternity, not because He had any need or necessity for it.

He is magnanimous in creating and inventing and in imposing obligations, not doing it through necessity.

He is Gracious in beneficence and reform, though not through any need. Munificence and Kindness, Beneficence and Grace are His, since He is able to bring upon His creatures all manner of torture and to try them with all kinds of pain and affliction. Even if He should do this, it would be justice from Him, it would not be vile, it would not be tyrannous.

He - the Mighty, the Glorified - rewards His believing worshippers for their acts of obedience according to generosity and encouragement rather than according to their merit and obligation. For there is no obligation upon Him in any deed towards anyone and tyranny is inconceivable in Him. For there is no right upon Him towards anyone.

As for His right to be obeyed it is obligatory and binding upon all creatures because He made it obligatory upon them through the tongues of His prophets and not by reason. But He sent His prophets and showed their truthfulness through explicit miracles, and they conveyed His commands and prohibitions as well as His promises and threats. So it became obligatory upon all creatures to believe them and what they brought. The prophets and saints are a true grace and reassurance of hope for all of us since the very beginning of time, but since Prophethood has ended with the Holy Prophet Muhammad we only have the saints who are the successors to the Prophets and who come in the like-ness of prophets. We should seek those good saints and follow them because they are precious jewels of wisdom and guidance. Their guidance is not of their own invention, but of the inspiration of God which continues forever. And Allah has sent us a great saint over 90 years ago who’s abiding example is as the example of the very prophets of God and we should follow him for all he speaks is not a lie but truth, for Allah is his guide, for Allah chose him as the Mujaddid of the 14^th century. And this goes to show that the Grace and Love of Allah is still continuing, for He sends these Mujaddid’s as a sign of His Love, Grace and Compassion. So take heed and don’t go astray. Peace be with you!