All praise is due to Allaah, Lord of the Worlds and prayers and peace upon
His Messenger, Muhammad.
In this lesson we wil learn some of the principles which are linked to having
the correct belief in Allaah's Names and Attributes.
Why is this subject important? Quite obviously since it is a part of Tawheed
and it is also a part of Eemaan. (Remember the last lesson in which we mentioned
that 'the speech of the heart' and 'the speech of the tongue' were related to
knowledge). If the knowledge of Allaah is not correct then the actions of the
believer will not be correct either (meaning that what his heart feels, how he
uses his tongue and what he does with his limbs - all of this will not be
correct).
It is also important because a lot of people have gone astray in this
subject, and we shall also mention some things about them.
To proceed: Just like in the previous lesson on eemaan where we took a
statement which the Salaf used to say (i.e. Eemaan consists of speech and
action, it increases with acts of obedience and decreases with acts of
disobedience) then, similarly we will take the statement of Shaikh ul-Islaam Ibn
Taymiyyah for this lesson and expand upon it. He - may Allaah have mercy upon
him said, in his 'Aqeedataul-Waasitiyyah': "
"And it is from having faith (eemaan) in Allaah, to have eemaan in
whatever He has described Himself with in His Book and in whatever His
Messenger, Muhammad (sallallaahu alayhi wasallam) has described Him with - WITHOUT falling into any
of the following:
i) denying such attributes for Allaah (ta'teel)
ii) changing the original meaning of these descriptions/attributes
(tahreef)
iii) likening these attributes to those of the creation (tamtheel)
iv) enquiring into their true nature (takyeef)"
[Note: in the translation above the order of the four things that it is
necessary for us to avoid has been changed, for the purposes of this lesson - to
make the discussion follow...]
So this is the statement we will analyse and explain for this lesson because
it summarises everything we need to know. We will now take his statement step by
step and look into it:
"And it is from having faith in Allaah to have eemaan in whatever He
has described Himself with in His Book ..."
Here the Shaikh explains that to have faith/belief in Allaah (properly) then
one also needs to have faith/belief in certain things that He has said about
Himself in His Book. One cannot be believing in Allaah properly without knowing
Him through what He has said about Himself.
When we look in the Qur'aan we find that Allaah has mentioned lots of
different things about Himself. To summarise them, they can be put into three
categories.
a) His Names
b) His Attributes
c) His Actions
Examples of the Names by which He is known include,
ar-Rahmaan, al-Malik, as-Salaam, ar-Razzaaq. However we are not concerned with
His Names in this lesson.
Examples of His Actions: for example, He punishes and He
forgives, He sends down the rain and He splits the seed which is under the soil,
He makes the clouds gather together in a heap and then causes rain or hail to
fall, he gives honours someone and He humiliates someone or He guides someone
and misguides someone... so these are 'actions' which he mentions about himself.
But we are not concerned about this in this lesson.
Examples of His Attributes include, hands[1], shin[2],
eyes[3], istiwaa[4] face, anger, pleasure, (ascending) etc. This is what we will
discuss.
"...and in whatever His Messenger, Muhammad (sallallaahu alayhi wasallam) has described Him
with..."
We also find that in the Sunnah, the Messenger (sallallaahu alayhi wasallam) has described Allaah
with certain attributes. Examples include, laughter, amazement, descending,
etc...
Now this is what we are concerned with and we want to make sure that we are
believing in these things in such a way that we do not commit Shirk and other
great sins.
You can easily see how people can be mislead just by looking at what type of
attributes we have mentioned above. When someone reads them He might think 'No
this cannot be true how can these things befit Allaah?' so he will deny them.
Another person will think, 'Allaah has a hand like we do' and so he will make a
resemblance between Allaah and His creation. Another person will think, 'No, it
can't be the real meanings of these words, they must have different, hidden
meanings'. And in fact, in Islamic History this is exactly what happened. Many
individuals and groups were led astray because they did not submit to the texts
of the Book and the Sunnah in the proper way.
We want to follow in the way of the Companions and the Taabi'een and the
Salaf - the way they had in understanding these Attributes. So we will now look
at the principles we need to understand:
The First Principle:
Lesson 2: How to Believe in the Attributes of Allaah
