A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

“Verily in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the varying of night and day, and the ships that course upon the sea laden with what is profitable to mankind, and the water that God hath sent down from heaven, quickening the earth thereby after its death, and scattering about it all kinds of beasts; and in the changing of the winds, and the clouds that are compelled to do service between heaven and earth, are signs unto a people who understand.

“God! There is no God but He, the Ever-Living, the Ever-Subsisting. Slumber seizeth Him not, nor sleep. To Him belongeth whatsoever is in the Heavens and whatsoever is in the Earth. Who is he that shall intercede with Him, unless by His permission? He knoweth what [hath been] before them and what [shall be] after them, and they shall not compass aught of His knowledge save what He willeth. His Throne comprehendeth the Heavens and the Earth, and the care of them burdeneth Him not. And He is the High, the Great.”

“Say, O God, to whom belongeth dominion, Thou givest dominion to whom Thou wilt, and from whom Thou wilt Thou takest it away; Thou exaltest whom Thou wilt, and whom Thou wilt Thou humblest. In Thy hand is good. Verily Thou art all-powerful.

“Thou causest the night to pass into the day, and Thou causest the day to pass into the night; and Thou bringest forth the living from the dead, and Thou bringest forth the dead from the living; and Thou givest sustenance to whom Thou wilt without measure.”

“And the thunder proclaimeth His perfection with His praise; and [likewise] the angels, in fear of Him. And He sendeth the thunderbolts, and striketh with them whom He pleaseth, whilst they dispute concerning God; for He is mighty in power.”

The following is an interpretation of the Muslim belief in the existence and nature of God, by the famous scholastic divine, the Imām al-G͟hazzālī, in his book entitled al-Maqṣadu ʾl-asnā, an extract from which Ockley has translated from Pocock’s Specimen Historiæ Arabum:—

“Praise be to God the Creator and Restorer of all things; who does whatsoever He pleases, who is master of the glorious throne and mighty force, and directs His sincere servants into the right way and the straight path; who favoureth them, who have once borne testimony to the unity, by preserving their confessions from the darkness of doubt and hesitation; who directs them to follow His chosen apostle, upon whom be the blessing and peace of God; and to go after His most honourable companions, to whom he hath vouchsafed His assistance and direction which is revealed to them in His essence and operations by the excellencies of His attributes, to the knowledge whereof no man attains but he that hath been taught by hearing. To these, as touching His essence, He maketh known that He is one, and hath no partner; singular, without anything like Him; uniform, having no contrary; separate, having no equal. He is ancient, having no first; eternal, having no beginning; remaining for ever, having no end; continuing to eternity, without any termination. He persists, without ceasing to be; remains without failing, and never did cease, nor ever shall cease to be described by glorious attributes, nor is subject to any decree so as to be determined by any precise limits or set times, but is the First and the Last, and is within and without.

“(What God is not.) He, glorified be His name, is not a body endued with form, nor a substance circumscribed with limits or determined by measure; neither does He resemble bodies, as they are capable of being measured or divided. Neither is He a substance, neither do substances exist in Him; neither is He an accident, nor do accidents exist in Him. Neither is he like to anything that exists, neither is anything like to Him; nor is he determinate in quantity nor comprehended by bounds, nor circumscribed by the differences of situation, nor contained in the heavens. He sits upon the throne, after that manner which He Himself hath described, and in that same sense which He Himself means, which is a sitting far removed from any notion of contact, or resting upon, or local situation; but both the throne itself, and whatsoever is upon it, are sustained by the goodness of his power, and are subject to the grasp of His hand. But He is above the throne, and above all things, even to the utmost ends of the earth; but so above as at the same time not to be a whit nearer the throne and the heaven; since He is exalted by (infinite) degrees above the throne no less than He is exalted above the earth, and at the same time is near to everything that hath a being; nay, ‘nearer to man than their jugular veins, and is witness to everything’: though His nearness is not like the nearness of bodies, as neither is His essence like the essence of bodies.

Neither doth He exist in anything, neither doth anything exist in Him; but He is too high to be contained in any place, and too holy to be determined by time; for He was before time and place were created, and is now after the same manner as He always was. He is also distinct from the creatures by His attributes, neither is there anything besides Himself in His essence, nor is His essence in any other besides Him. He is too holy to be subject to change, or any local motion; neither do any accidents dwell in Him, nor any contingencies befall Him; but He abides through all generations with His glorious attributes, free from all danger of dissolution. As to the attribute of perfection, He wants no addition of His perfection. As to being, He is known to exist by the apprehension of the understanding; and He is seen as He is by an ocular intuition, which will be vouchsafed out of His mercy and grace to the holy in the eternal mansion, completing their joy by the vision of His glorious presence.

“(His power.) He, praised be His name, is living, powerful, mighty, omnipotent, not liable to any defect or impotence; neither slumbering nor sleeping, nor being obnoxious to decay or death. To Him belongs the kingdom, and the power, and the might. His is the dominion, and the excellency, and the creation, and the command thereof. The heavens are folded up in His right hand, and all creatures are couched within His grasp. His excellency consists in His creating and producing, and His unity in communicating existence and a beginning of being. He created men and their works, and measured out their maintenance and their determined times. Nothing that is possible can escape His grasp, nor can the vicissitudes of things elude his power. The effects of his might are innumerable, and the objects of his knowledge infinite.

“(His knowledge.) He, praised be His name, knows all things that can be understood, and comprehends whatsoever comes to pass, from the extremities of the earth to the highest heavens. Even the weight of a pismire could not escape Him either in earth or heaven; but He would perceive the creeping of the black pismire in the dark night upon the hard stone, and discern the motion of an atom in the open air. He knows what is secret and conceals it, and views the conceptions of the minds, and the motions of the thoughts, and the inmost recesses of secrets, by a knowledge ancient and eternal, that never ceased to be His attribute from eternal eternity, and not by any new knowledge, superadded to His essence, either inhering or adventitious.

“(His will.) He, praised be His name, doth will those things to be that are, and disposes of all accidents. Nothing passes in the empire, nor the kingdom, neither little nor much, nor small nor great, nor good nor evil, nor profitable nor hurtful, nor faith nor infidelity, nor knowledge nor ignorance, nor prosperity nor adversity, nor increase nor decrease, nor obedience nor rebellion, but by His determinate counsel and decree, and His definite sentence and will. Nor doth the wink of him that seeth, nor the subtlety of him that thinketh, exceed the bounds of His will; but it is He who gave all things their beginning; He is the creator and restorer, the sole operator of what He pleases; there is no reversing His decree nor delaying what He hath determined, nor is there any refuge to man from his rebellion against Him, but only His help and mercy; nor hath any man any power to perform any duty towards Him, but through His love and will. Though men, genii, angels and devils, should conspire together either to put one single atom in motion, or cause it to cease its motion, without His will and approbation, they would not be able to do it.

His will subsists in His essence amongst the rest of His attributes, and was from eternity one of His eternal attributes, by which He willed from eternity the existence of those things that He had decreed, which were produced in their proper seasons according to His eternal will, without any before or after, and in agreement both with His knowledge and will, and not by methodising of thoughts, nor waiting for a proper time, for which reason no one thing is in Him a hindrance from another.

“(His hearing and sight.) And He, praised be His name, is hearing and seeing, and heareth and seeth. No audible object, how still soever, escapeth His hearing; nor is any thing visible so small as to escape his sight; for distance is no hindrance to His hearing, nor darkness to His sight. He sees without pupil or eye-lid, and hears without any passage or ear, even as He knoweth without a heart, and performs His actions without the assistance of any corporeal limb, and creates without any instrument, for His attributes (or properties) are not like those of men, any more than His essence is like theirs.

“(His word.) Furthermore, He doth speak, command, forbid, promise, and threaten by an eternal, ancient word, subsisting in His essence. Neither is it like to the word of the creatures, nor doth it consist in a voice arising from the commotion of the air and the collision of bodies, nor letters which are separated by the joining together of the lips or the motion of the tongue. The Qurʾān, the Law, the Gospel, and the Psalter, are books sent down by Him to His apostles, and the Qurʾān, indeed, is read with tongues, written in books, and kept in hearts: yet as subsisting in the essence of God, it doth not become liable to separation and division whilst it is transferred into the hearts and the papers. Thus Moses also heard the Word of God without voice or letter, even as the saints behold the essence of God without substance or accident. And since these are His attributes, He liveth and knoweth, is powerful and willeth and operateth, and seeth and speaketh, by life and knowledge, and will and hearing, and sight and word, not by His simple essence.

“(His works.) He, praised be His name, exists after such a manner that nothing besides Him hath any being but what is produced by His operation, and floweth from His justice after the best, most excellent, most perfect, and most just model. He is, moreover, wise in His works, and just in His decrees. But His justice is not to be compared with the justice of men. For a man may be supposed to act unjustly by invading the possession of another; but no injustice can be conceived by God, inasmuch as there is nothing that belongs to any other besides Himself, so that wrong is not imputable to Him as meddling with things not appertaining to Him. All things, Himself only excepted, genii, men, the devil, angels, heaven, earth, animals, plants, substance, accident, intelligible, sensible, were all created originally by Him. He created them by His power out of mere privation, and brought them into light, when as yet they were nothing at all, but He alone existing from eternity, neither was there any other with Him. Now He created all things in the beginning for the manifestation of His power, and His will, and the confirmation of His word, which was true from all eternity. Not that He stood in need of them, nor wanted them; but He manifestly declared His glory in creating and producing, and commanding, without being under any obligation, nor out of necessity.

Loving kindness, the showing favour and grace, and beneficence, belong to Him; whereas it is in His power to pour forth upon men a variety of torments, and afflict them with various kinds of sorrows and diseases, which, if He were to do, His justice could not be arraigned, nor would He be chargeable with injustice. Yet He rewards those that worship Him for their obedience on account of his promise and beneficence, not of their merit nor of necessity, since there is nothing which He can be tied to perform; nor can any injustice be supposed in Him, nor can He be under any obligation to any person whatsoever. That His creatures, however, should be bound to serve Him, ariseth from His having declared by the tongues of the prophets that it was due to Him from them. The worship of Him is not simply the dictate of the understanding, but He sent messengers to carry to men His commands, and promises, and threats, whose veracity He proved by manifest miracles, whereby men are obliged to give credit to them in those things that they relate.”

(1) Ḥayāt, or Life. God Most High is alone to be adored. He has neither associate nor equal. He is free from the imperfections of humanity. He is neither begotten nor does He beget. He is invisible. He is without figure, form, colour or parts. His existence has neither beginning nor end. He is immutable. If He so wills, He can annihilate the world in a moment of time and, if it seem good to Him, recreate it in an instant. Nothing is difficult to Him, whether it be the creation of a fly or that of the seven heavens. He receives neither profit nor loss from whatever may happen. If all the Infidels became believers and all the irreligious pious, He would gain no advantage. On the other hand, if all Believers became infidels, He would suffer no loss.

(2) ʿIlm, or Knowledge. He has knowledge of all things hidden or manifest, whether in heaven or on earth. He knows the number of the leaves of the trees, of the grains of wheat and of sand. Events past and future are known to Him. He knows what enters into the heart of man and what he utters with his mouth. He alone, except those to whom He has revealed them, knows the invisible things. He is free from forgetfulness, negligence and error. His knowledge is eternal: it is not posterior to His essence.

(3) Qudrah, or Power. He is Almighty. If He wills, He can raise the dead, make stones talk, trees walk, annihilate the heavens and the earth, and recreate of gold or of silver thousands similar to those destroyed. He can transport a man in a moment of time from the east to the west, or from the west to the east, or to the seventh heaven. His power is eternal a priori and a posteriori. It is not posterior to His essence.

(4) Irādah, or Will. He can do what He wills, and whatever He wills comes to pass. He is not obliged to act. Everything, good or evil, in this world exists by His will. He wills the faith of the believer and the piety of the religious. If He were to change His will there would be neither a true believer nor a pious man. He willeth also the unbelief of the unbeliever and the irreligion of the wicked and, without that will, there would neither be unbelief nor irreligion. All we do we do by His will: what He willeth not does not come to pass. If one should ask why God does not will that all men should believe, we answer: “We have no right to enquire about what God wills and does. He is perfectly free to will and to do what He pleases.” In creating unbelievers, in willing that they should remain in that state; in making serpents, scorpions and pigs: in willing, in short, all that is evil, God has wise ends in view which it is not necessary that we should know. We must acknowledge that the will of God is eternal and that it is not posterior to His essence.

(7) Kalām, or Speech. He speaks, but not with a tongue as men do. He speaks to some of His servants without the intervention of another, even as He spoke to Moses, and to Muḥammad on the night of the ascension to heaven. He speaks to others by the instrumentality of Gabriel, and this is the usual way in which He communicates His will to the prophets. It follows from this that the Qurʾān is the word of God, and is eternal and uncreated. (Sale’s Faith of Islam.)

“ ‘There is no god but God,’ are words simply tantamount in English to the negation of any deity save one alone; and thus much they certainly mean in Arabic, but they imply much more also. Their full sense is, not only to deny absolutely and unreservedly all plurality, whether of nature or of person, in the Supreme Being, not only to establish the unity of the Unbegetting and Unbegot, in all its simple and uncommunicable Oneness; but besides this, the words in Arabic and among Arabs imply that this one Supreme Being is also the only Agent, the only Force, the only Act existing throughout the universe, and leave to all beings else, matter or spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, and deed, is God; the rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this one sentence, is summed up a system which, for want of a better name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force, or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to God, Who absorbs it all, exercises it all, and to Whom alone it can be ascribed, whether for preserving or for destroying, for relative evil or for equally relative good.