[lovespellszz]

al-Salamu 'Aleykum,

Imam abu al-Hassan 'Ali bin Isma'eel al-Ash'ari said:


إن اللّه تعالى عالم بعلم قادر بقدرة حي بحياة مريد بإرادة متكلم بكلام،سميع يسمع، بصير يبصر، وهذه الصفات أزلية قائمة بذات الله تعالى لا هي هو ولا هي غيره


How do you translate this?

"Allah is knowing with knowledge, is able with ability, is alive with life, is willing with will, is speaking with speech, is all-hearing he hears, is all-seeing he sees, and these descriptions are eternal and found in the being of Allah, they are not him or anything else."

please help.

[lovespellszz]

bump

[Druspills]

Assalamu alaikum,

There is a good explanation of this and why it is worded like this in Mufti Abdur Rahman's commentary on Fiqh al-Akbar. InshaAllah I will post it shortly.

[lovespellszz]

Salam 'Aleykum

The explanation would be great, the proper translation would be even better.

[Druspills]

Under the point "He is not like unto anything from among His creation" Mullah Ali al-Qari comments:

"His existence (wujud) is His essence (dhat), but His attributes are neigher His essence ('ayn dhatihi) itself - in opposition to the statement of the philosophers - nor are they other than His essence (ghayru dhatihi) as the Mu'tazila have said nor are they orginated (hadith) as the Karramiyya have said. This is in complete contrast to created beings, since their attributes are other than their essence according to everyone."

Mufti Abdur Rahman comments on Mullah Ali al-Qari's saying in two footnotes:

This statement is slightly confusing. In essence, The Mu'tazila and the philosophers negated His attributes since they said Allah is powerful and All-knowing through His essence and not through an attribute of power or knowledge, Taftazani says, "And thus it has been established that Allah possesses the attributes of knowledge, power, life, and so on. This is unlike the view of the Mu'tazila who assert that He is knowing without possessing knowledge; He is powerful without possessing power, and so on. But their view is self-evidently impossible, for it is analogous to our saying, 'A thing is black but there is no blackness in it.'...The philosophers and the Mu'tazilites denied this and asserted that the attributse ar ethe very essence itself. This means that His essence with respect to its connection with things known (ma'lumat) is described by the term "Knowing" and with respect to things over which He has power (maqdurat) is described by the term "Powerful," and so on (A Commentary on the Creed of Islam 49-50).

[In the next footnote] Thus, the correct belief according to the Ahl al-Sunna is that His attributes are neither His essence itself nor are they other than His essence. To elborate, it has been established the Qur'an and Sunna that Allah possesses many attributes (sifat). However, if His attributes are said to be His very essence [as the Mu'tazila and philosophers claim], it results in His essence being devoid of attributes, since they would be one and the same as His essence, whereas they are understood to be two different things. The meaning of the "entity" or "essence" (dhat) of Allah is something completely different from his "attributes" (sifat). On the other hand, saying they are totally other than His essence is also problematic since this means they exist separately or are accidents (a'rad) and thus possible in their nature. This also means that they can exist or not exist as is the case in created beings, whereas the attributes of Allah are eternal. So while people can lose their power, sight, or hearing, Allah Most High cannot. Also, their being eternal and separate from Him would also mean that there exists a multiplicity of eternal beings (see Al-Ta'liq al-Muyassar 63-64). A more simple way to understand this maybe through the following example about a human attribute. Upon entry of a knowledgeable person into a room we would not normally say, "knowledge entered the room." Instead we would either use the person's name or use an honorary title and say 'Shaykh so and so," or "Professor so and so" entered teh room. Although we acknowledge the face that the individual possesses the attribute of knowledge, the attribute is neigher a completely independent entity separate from the person such that we will say, "Knowledge itself entered," nor is it intrinsically part of the person's essence such that we not acknowledge it but deny it. We must comprehend a special associatoin between the two. The difference is that there is no doubt that the human attribute is acquired by the person and prone to loss in the future, whereas the attributes of Allah have always been associated with Him and will remain that way for eternity.

[lovespellszz]

Juzita Khayran, keep it up.

[Druspills]

I added one of the footnotes and started the second one. The second one is the main one. InshaAllah I should have it up by tomorrow. Sorry for taking so long. It may be frustrating for you.

[lovespellszz]

I want to ask, was al-Ash'ari the first to come up with the above saying? or did anyone else used to adopt this position before him?

[Druspills]

I want to ask, was al-Ash'ari the first to come up with the above saying? or did anyone else used to adopt this position before him?

Assalamu aliakum brother,

I have updated both the footnotes. If it is still unclear we can continue the discussion further.

I do not know whether or not Imam al-Ash'ari was the first to say this or not, but the concept based upon which this saying is founded upon is strongly pervasive throughout Aqida Tahawiyah.

In the two footnotes Mufti Abdur Rahman shows the problem we face if we say Allah is devoid of attributes but rather He is seeing without the attribute of seeing and so forth. On the other hand saying Allah has attributes like creation is also problematic as has been explained above.

The reason this statement sounds confusing is because the true nature of Allah is beyond our understanding as He is transcendent beyond space-time whereas we are absolutely limited to space-time. We can never fathom Allah. What Imam al-Ash'ari is merely doing is negating the impossibilities and establishing what we must believe in. Many other issues of aqidah are phrased in similar wordings - for example in Aqida Tahawiyyah where there are many statements along the lines of (more or less): Allah was the creator before He created the creation.