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16. In the same way that He is the "Bringer to life of the dead," after He has brought them to life a first time, and deserves this name before bringing them to life, so too He deserves the name of "Creator" before He has created them.

17. This is because He has the power to do everything, everything is dependent on Him, everything is easy for Him, and He does not need anything. "There is nothing like Him and He is the Hearer, the Seer." (al-Shura 42:11)

18. He created creation with His knowledge.

19. He appointed destinies for those He created.

20. He allotted to them fixed life spans.

21. Nothing about them was hidden from Him before He created them, and He knew everything that they would do before He created them.

22. He ordered them to obey Him and forbade them to disobey Him.

23. Everything happens according to His degree and will, and His will is accomplished. The only will that people have is what He wills for them. What He wills for them occurs and what He does not will does not occur.

24. He gives guidance to whomever He wills, and protects them, and keeps them safe from harm, out of His generosity; and He leads astray whomever He wills, and abases them, and afflicts them, out of His justice.

25. All of them are subject to His will either through His generosity or His justice.

26. He is exalted beyond having opposites or equals.

27. No one can ward off His decree or delay His command or overpower His affairs.

28. We believe in all of this and are certain that everything comes from Him.

29. And we are certain that Muhammad sallallahu ‘alayhi wa aalihi wa sallam is His chosen ‘Abd (servant) and elect Nabi and His Rasuul with whom He is well pleased,

30. And that he is the Seal of the Prophets and the Imam of the God fearing and the most honored of all the messengers and the Beloved of the Lord of all the worlds.

31. Every claim to prophet hood after Him is falsehood and deceit.

32. He is the one who has been sent to all the jinn and all mankind with truth and guidance and with light and illumination.

33. The Qur'an is the word of Allah. It came from Him as speech without it being possible to say how. He sent it down on His Messenger as revelation. The believers accept it, as absolute truth. They are certain that it is, in truth, the word of Allah. It is not created, as is the speech of human beings, and anyone who hears it and claims that it is human speech has become an unbeliever. Allah warns him and censures him and threatens him with Jahannam when He says, Exalted is He: "I will burn him in the Fire." (al-Muddaththir 74:26)

When Allah threatens with the Jahannam those who say, "This is just human speech" (74:25) we know for certain that it is the speech of the Creator of mankind and that it is totally unlike the speech of mankind.

34. Anyone who describes Allah as being in any way the same as a human being has become an unbeliever. All those who grasp this will take heed and refrain from saying things such as the unbelievers say, and they will know that He, in His attributes, is not like human beings.

35. The Seeing of Allah by the People of the Jannah is true, without their vision being all-encompassing and without the manner of their vision being known. As the Book of our Lord has expressed it: "Faces on that Day radiant, looking at their Lord." (al-Qiyamah 75:22-3) The explanation of this is as Allah knows and wills. Everything that has come down to us about this from the Messenger, sallallahu ‘alayhi WA aalihi WA sallam, in authentic traditions, is as he said and means what he intended. We do not delve into that, trying to interpret it according to our own opinions or letting our imaginations have free rein.

No one is safe in his religion unless he surrenders himself completely to Allah, the Exalted and Glorified and to His Messenger, sallallahu ‘alayhi WA aalihi WA sallam, and leaves the knowledge of things that are ambiguous to the one who knows them.

36. A man's Islam is not secure unless it is based on submission and surrender. Anyone who desires to know things which it is beyond his capacity to know, and whose intellect is not content with surrender, will find that his desire veils him from a pure understanding of Allah's true unity, clear knowledge and correct belief, and that he veers between kufr and belief, confirmation and denial and acceptance and rejection. He will be subject to whisperings and find himself confused and full of doubt, being neither an accepting believer nor a denying rejecter.

37. Belief of a man in the seeing of Allah by the People of the Jannah is not correct if he imagines what it is like or interprets it according to his own understanding, since the interpretation of this seeing or indeed, the meaning of any of the subtle phenomena which are in the realm of Lordship, is by avoiding its interpretation and strictly adhering to the submission. This is the religion of Muslims. Anyone who does not guard himself against negating the attributes of Allah, or likening Allah to something else, has gone astray and has failed to understand Allah's glory, because our Lord, the Glorified and the Exalted, can only possibly be described in terms of oneness and absolute singularity and no creation is in any way like Him.

38. He is beyond having limits placed on Him, or being restricted, or having parts or limbs. Nor is He contained by the six directions as all created things are.

 

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