13) Prophets

The four Necessary Attributes we need to believe about Prophets are as follows

1) Truthfulness. They are immaculately truthful and has always been truthful and honest his whole life.
2) Sincerity. Prophets are immensely sincere and devout their entire life.
3) Spread Truth. The speak the truth and spreads the message when/if told to.
4) Powerful minds. Prophets have a very strong intellect, they are extremely smart.

We believe that Prophets have those four attributes and that it is inconceivable for them to be anything that isn't the above.

The 2 attributes that are "Possible" for Prophets are
All human attributes such as: eating, drinking, sleep, marriage, sickness (so long as the sickness is not something that makes people flee from them, such a sickness is impossible for Prophets), etc

The 4 attributes that are Impossible for Prophets are

1) Lying. It is impossible for a Prophet to lie, a prophet simply cannot do it.
2) Treachery. It is impossible for a Prophet to be treacherous.
3) Silent. It is impossible for a Prophet to be silent when he is ordered not to speak (ie Impossible not to spread the message)
4) Stupidity. It is impossible for a Prophet to be stupid or have weak intellect.


If there any of the above are missing in person's understanding and belief in Prophets it would affect their practice of religion, since the link between creation and Creator's Speech are the Prophets. And we can only gain deeper understanding about the Divine through learning what He has revealed. If we believe that the person receiving the message can commit major mistakes or lacks certain attributes then there shall always remain uncertainty as to what God really said. That defeats the entire purpose behind God sharing with creation His Divine Speech. The medium that transmits God's Speech needs to be completely pure and immaculate.

12) The Link

[New readers should start reading from the 1st post]

The link between Creator and creation from the Creators side is His Divine attribute of Speech.  The link between Creator and creation from creations side is those who made to hear Divine Speech.

Due to the fact that God is far too vast for humans to comprehend and for our facilities to be exposed to directly, God made amongst us certain humans who are given the gift of hearing Divine Speech and higher understanding. The method by which those special humans hear Divine Speech is called revelation because of the way Divine Speech connects with creation (which will be discussed in more detail in a later post).

These special humans are of two kinds:
1- Prophets
2- Messengers

Prophets far out number Messengers is number, throughout history there have been hundreds of Prophets. Both the Prophet and the Messenger receive revelation from God, however the Prophet is not necessarily commanded to teach this revelation to others while the Messenger is.

Messengers are a higher degree than Prophets since they are given a Divine "book" that they spread and teach to others. However, both Prophets and Messengers share the exact same attributes in what they are as humans.

The attributes that we must believe in about Prophets in order to fully believe and adhere to religion are 9 attributes

These 9 Attributes for Prophets can be split into 3 different categories
1- Necessary Attributes, which are 4.
2- Possible Attributes, which are 1.
3- Impossible Attributes, which are 4.

When we get to a proper understanding of what those Prophets are about, the same way we came to a proper understanding of what God is, we can then start to get a clearer picture of what it is these Prophets came with and told the rest of creation.

The Attributes we need to believe in regarding Prophets will be mentioned in the next post, God willing.

11) Divine Attributes Through Revelation

New readers need to start reading from here: ( What is God)

God is perfection and beyond what any created mind can fathom. God is infinite and our minds are finite. However God has not deprived us of deepening our knowledge of Him.

Before we move on to any further understandings about God we first have to stick to a certain principle which is that, "we attribute to God any and all complete perfection and we exclude from God any and all imperfections." It is only when we believe in that principle that further doors are made clear to us and it is only through Divine revelation that we can properly see and understanding that principle.

God has many exalted attributes beyond the 8 Essentials but they can only be properly understood through Divine revelation and there's a reason why that is. For those of us who really want to know God and connect with Him we need to know what He has to say to us. What does God say to creation? What does He expect from creation? How does God say things to creation? etc Without Divine revelation the only attributes we'd know about God are 7 Essential attributes without the 8th attribute of Speech.

If God did not communicate with creation we would have no way of proving God's essential attribute of Divine Speech. Yet, just as God hears us speak to Him, He also speaks to us. His Divine speech reaches us through revelation, and it is this special relationship between Creator and creation that the doors to knowing more about God are opened.

As great as the intellect is, it's capacity to know God is miniscule in comparison to the heart and spirit. There are aspects of God that only the heart can understand without the mind properly comprehending. However, there aren't aspects of God that the mind can comprehend that the heart cannot. The heart is far wider is scope, that is why spiritual knowledge is directed to the heart.

So in order for us to know God on a deeper level we need to read what He has revealed to us, that by itself opens a door to a better understanding of God. However, the depth and breadth of our understanding of God is contingent upon our acceptance and implementation of God's commands to us. The relationship is simple and clear if we are sincere. Sincere in the exchange taking place, which is, through obeying Divine commands we are given spiritual enlightenment.
The more we submit to Divine commands the more He reveals to us. The more He reveals to us the more we submit and implement. The more we submit and implement the more we love, understanding, and appreciate God. The more we appreciate the more He gives us. So on and so forth to no end.

Know this:
There comes a point where the heart yearns to know more about the Divine, and that point is never passed except on God's terms.
And God's terms are not made clear to us except through revelation.

Revelation is not made clear to us unless we come to believe and understand two things:

1) Belief in God and all the 8 Essential attributes mentioned earlier.

2) Belief in the one who is receiving revelation, which we will get into next, God willing.

It is only when on believes in God,(namely His 8 Essential attributes) and believes in those who have received revelation, that one can believe in that which was revealed. Before the above 2 are met, proper faith in revelation will be frail and lacking.

Note:
A prayer worth saying daily that would take any one of to great places is to constantly ask God to "Show us the path of Truth as Truth and guide us on it, and to show us the false path as false and protect us from it."
Amen


Note 2:
Some people misunderstand the usage of masculine terminology of God as He. When "He" is used to refer to God, it does not refer to God being a male. The masculine form is used due to its Majestic, All-Powerful, and All-Mighty connotations. God is neither male nor female. God has no gender. "He" is a linguistic expression.

10) Final Negating Attributes

The last two "Negating Attributes" of the 5 are:

God's existence being upheld by no one other than Himself (القيام بالنفس al-Qiyam bil-Nafs). 

Unlike everything we see around us, God is not upheld by anything. He does not need something to make Him exist. He does not need a place to hold Him nor a form to exist in. He does not need matter in order to be known the way descriptions need objects to be described by. (i.e. Colors aren't described by themselves, they are descriptions of something. Taking a blue bottle as an example, the blue cannot exist without the bottle and the bottle cannot exist without the blue (or a description of whatever the bottle's matter is made up of.) God is not need of any of that.

and

God being completely different from creation. (المخالفة للحوادث al-Mukhalafa lil-Hawadith)

There is nothing in creation that resembles God. God is completely different from anything that exists and from anything we'd ever imagine. He is what we cannot every fully imagine.
This means that God is not like humans. God is not composed of limbs, blood, flesh. Nor is God in need of movement or stasis. God is not in need of a place to exist in nor is He in need of time.


Whoever understands the 5 Negating Attributes has gotten to a deeper and more accurate understanding of the Divine. These attributes are known only after we understand and believe in the 8 Essential Attributes.

9) The Negating Attributes

There are 5 attributes known as the "Negating Attributes" (الصفات السلبية  al-Siffat al-Salbiya) which creation has come to know about God through revelation.  These attributes are called "Negating attributes" because they negate the false images of God that we put in our minds.

These false images we have in our minds are a result of us being created beings that are used to seeing certain rules/laws apply to everything that exists. Although these laws we see around us are completely true with regards to creation, they are completely false with regards to the Divine.


The 1st Negating Attribute is God being "Beginlessly Eternal" (القدم al-Qidam).

God has no beginning since God has always existed.  This attribute negates the understandings we have in our minds regarding God having a beginning.  Everything we have ever seen in our life has always had a beginning, everything around us did not exist but then was brought into existence.  This attribute is about the exact opposite. God has no beginning and was never preceded by non-existence.

The 2nd Negating Attribute is God being "Eternal"(بقاء  baqa') 

God has no end, even though everything around us has an end. God shall always exist.

The 3rd Negating Attribute is God's "Oneness" (الوحدانية al-wahdaniyah)

Everything around us in creation is composed of different pieces put together, while God is not. God is not composed of limbs put together, He is indivisible and He is not made up of various parts.  This attribute negates what our minds have gotten used to seeing, it puts an end to us using our imagination to visualizing God in terms of sizes and dimensions.

Everything that is composed of parts needs space in order for the parts to exist. These parts have a beginning and an end. Both of those descriptions contradict the Divine. God has no needs and has no beginning or end.

God is only one, there are no multiple Gods. God is unique and His attributes are unique, no thing shares God in His attributes and essence.

God is only one in His actions and effects. Nothing has any effect in and of itself. This is something that most people do not reflect on properly enough. Many people think that food is what satiates hunger, and drinking quenches thirst, and knives cut by an ability God has given each of these things. This is false, nothing has any effect on it's own. The Divine is the only One that makes causes and effects. Causes and effects are by God and God alone. 

God is one in every meaning of the word.


The last 2 Negating Attributes will be mentioned in the next post, God willing.

8) Speech

(Note: New readers, refer back to this post [link]for the explanation of Essential Attributes.)

Divine Speech.

Divine Speech is the final essential attribute of God that we need to believe in before properly following religion. It is the 8th attribute and the key to knowing any other Divine attributes after it. The 8 attributes can all be reached by the intellect alone, however all the other attributes that come later can only be made clear to us through Divine revelation.

We know that God has Knowledge, that God Has Might and Will power, is All-Seeing, All-Hearing, and is Alive. But none of those attributes give us any means of properly knowing what God wants or expects from us. The relation between creation and Creator would be lacking if not for the Divine attribute of Speech ( Kalam الكلام in Arabic). Divine Speech is what connects our understanding and actions to God.


God communicates with His creation in various ways, however His speech isn't transmitted by sound waves as our speech is with one another. That is because sound waves are created and everything that is created needs something to exist by. God's speech is not created and therefore it cannot be in need of something else such as sound waves. What we read in the Holy books are symbols that are taught to us in order to access God's words.

It is through God's speech that Prophets know what they know.
It is through God's speech that the Prophetic messages are spread.
It is through God's speech that we know what God expects from His creation, what He accepts and what He does not accept.
It is through God's speech that we believe in His Majestic revelations.
It is through God's speech that we know how to show our love to God.

God's Speech, like His Knowledge, relates to all 3 categories of reality that which is Possible, Impossible, and the Necessary.

7) Hear and See

Note: New readers should start reading from Categorizing Reality onwards before reading this post.

Humans have will power, they have strength, they have knowledge, they have sight, they can hear, and they are alive.

We don't have any of the above by ourselves, we are given the above (in different amounts) by the Divine, who has Absolute Will power, Might, Knowledge, Sight, Hearing, and Life.


We have some traces of Divine attributes given to us to help us better understand the Divine. God has sight, but His sight is not like ours. We are a miniscule scope of the attribute of sight, while God has absolute Sight. God's sight includes within it things our minds would never comprehend. God sees our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sees sounds.

God is All-Seeing. (al-baseer البصير)
He sees everything that ever was, that is, and that ever will be. He sees what we did, what we are doing, what we want to do, and what we will do.
There is no such thing as distance with God. 

God's Seeing is related to that which exists  not the Impossible.

God is also All-Hearing. (al-samea السميع)
He hears everything that ever was, that is, and that ever will be. God can hear us when we talk to Him, He hears us when we think thoughts to ourselves, He hears us when we can't even hear ourselves. God hears the entire universe, even the foot steps of ants in caves with just as much ease as He hears a massive explosion. No sound is too low nor too loud for God to Hear.
God Hears the sounds of colors, thoughts, feelings, expressions. His Hearing is far beyond what any mind may fathom or understand.

God's Hearing is related to that which exists not the Impossible.

Believing in God's All-Hearing and All-Seeing attributes is the key which leads us to make sense of one of the most essential understandings in the relationship between God and His creation.

The essential attribute through which we believe what we believe and disbelieve what we disbelieve.

I'll tell you what that attribute is in the next post if God Wills it.

Note 1:
It is important to understand that our human attributes are given to us by God. As such, God can increase us or decrease us as He pleases in any of them. It has been mentioned that the more praiseworthy things we hear and the less sinful things we hear, the more God increases us in spiritual hearing. Our spiritual hearing can hear the angels, understand the animals, and hear from far distances.

Likewise with sight. If we keep our eyes focused on that which God loves and away from that which He warns us against, our eyes would be able to see through physical matter. We would be able to see angels, distant horizons, and many other hidden realities.

Note 2:
When we perform ablution (وضوء  wudu'), we are told to ask God to make us see all that is good when we wash over our eyes, and we ask God to let us hear all that is good upon washing our ears.

6) Life Is Not Life As We Know It

Note: New readers should start reading from Categorizing Reality onwards before reading this post.

Life.

Life is not as we know it.
We know life from the perspective of created beings that aren't really alive. Our life and our death are both things that are created.
We are only alive through the attributes of God's Knowledge, Power, and Will, but unlike God we aren't really alive. We have no Life of our own.

True Life is an attribute that cannot be taken away and cannot be given. True Life is an attribute that only God has, because God's existence is Necessary and that means it is Necessary that God is alive not dead.

As such, Life is neither given nor taken it is eternal. It has always been and will always be, whoever has Absolute Life has always lived and shall always live.

There are those Divine attributes that connect to us by which we live, and there are Divine attributes that do not connect to us. God's strength is connected to us, it is what creates us.  God's life however is not connected to anything in creation, it's an attribute that doesn't connect and affect creation.

We are alive, we exist rather, through God's Strength and Will power, not by His Life.
Our life is not connected to God's life the same way our will is connected to God's Will. Our life is connected to God's Knowledge, Power and Will but not His 'Life.

So yes, we are alive, but not in the true absolute meaning of the word the way God is. We're merely being created every moment from "something that is possible that does not exist"to "something that is possible that does exist." What we know of life is merely God bringing into existence something that is Possible yet doesn't exist into something that is Possible that does exist. That's all we are. Nothing more, nothing less.


If God decides not to take us into existence we become nonexistent, not dead because we were never alive in the first place. Our life and death are created states both contingent upon God's Knowledge, Power, and Will.

Life is the 5th essential attribute of God.

5) God's Knowledge, Power, & Will

Revised on April 14 2011

We now know that everything in the entire universe falls under the category of 'that which is possible.'
We also know that everything that is possible requires something that it necessary so that it can exist as a possibility.

We know that God is the Necessary Existent. Without God there would be no existence. Nothing would exist.

God's Knowledge

God's Knowledge, the 2nd essential attribute, encompasses all 3 categories: the Impossible, the Possible, and the Necessary.

God's knowledge, unlike ours, is not learned. God does not learn new things, God already knows everything. He knows things before they happen, as they happen, and after they happen. In fact, in order for something to exist God needs to have full knowledge of it; how can God create something He doesn't know? He doesn't. Creating something He doesn't know is an "Impossibility."

God's knowledge spans everything, the Possible, Impossible, and Necessary.

God's Might/Power

Along with having knowledge of what He will create, God has to have the Power to create it. This Divine Power is the 3rd essential attribute. All Possible things, everything that is created, is contingent upon the Knowledge and the Power of God.

God's Power is only related to that which is Possible, not with the Impossible or Necessary.

God's Will
There is a 4th essential attribute that God has to have in order for us and the entire universe to exist.  That attribute is the 'Will'.

God's Will is only related to that which is Possible, not with the Impossible or Necessary.

The 4 essential attributes we mentioned thus far are:

1- Existence
2- Absolute Knowledge
3- Absolute Power
4- The Will to create or not create
 

Only through those 4 attributes can existence exist. As such, nothing exists in the entire universe except that God wills it to happen. Nothing can happen without God willing it.

Know that God's Knowledge is not what makes things happen. God's knowledge is an attribute that Knows-All, but does not affect anything.
God's Power is an attribute that affects everything but is not the attribute through which things are known.
It is through God's Will that something God knows is brought into existence by His Divine Might and Power.

Note: 
 God has tied our intentions to His Will and Power. When we intend to do something, we "summon" it. Our intentions are connecting to God's Will and Power in that, when we want to do something He creates that thing we intend to do.

God knows what we want to do, but He doesn't create it until we take the decision ourselves to do it. That is why we are held to account for our actions, because God does not force upon us our good or bad deeds, He creates that which we decide we want even though He has prior knowledge of what we will decide to do.

That is where the aspect of 'Success' (توفيق tawfeeq) comes in. God gives some people more success than others in this life and the next. What that means is that God creates that which the human intends to do with varying degrees, He creates and facilitates somethings for some more than others.  If God does not Will something to happen He won't create the thing that the human intends to do.

[I'll post more on 'success' later God willing.]


Note: New readers should start reading from Categorizing Reality onwards before reading this post.

4) We Are Possible

The Possible

All of creation falls under the category of 'The Possible.' (mumkin / ja'iz الممكن / الجاءز )

Creation: us humans, earth, planets, the stars, the ocean, ideas, thoughts, feelings, colors, and understandings, angels, and demons,  everything that is created is something that may exist or may not exist. The Possibly Existent (ممكن الوجود  mumkin al-wujood )

Our existence falls under that which is possible. We are neither Necessary ( wajib واجب ) nor are we Impossible ( mustaheel مستحيل). Everything around us is possible.

However, the Possible is far wider in scope than that which actually exists around us.  For instance, it is possible for a phoenix to exist, but it does not. There is nothing about a phoenix that makes its existence impossible. Our minds are capable of imagining it.

So Possibles are:
- Something that is possible and does exist.
- Something that is possible but does not exist
- Something that is possible but has yet to exist
- Something that is possible that will never exist.

As stated in an earlier post, everything that is Possible is within the Knowledge of God. God has knowledge over all things possible. Our existence depends on the fact that God knows everything about our existence, because if God doesn't know something about our existence He would not be able to make it exist.

Therefore, our existence and the existence of all of creation is dependent upon God's knowledge.
Therefore, God's knowledge is something that is Necessary, while our existence is not necessary.

God can choose to make anything that is possible exist.

3) God and neediness

The Necessarily Existent cannot be something that exists by the existence of something else, it is something that exists on it's own otherwise it would be impossible for the Necessarily Existent to exist.

If the Necessarily Existent needed something else to make it exist then that which it needs would in fact be the Necessarily Existent.

Therefore, anything that is necessarily existent must exist on it's own, free of any need.

The Necessarily Existent has no needs.

God has no needs.

2) The Necessarily Existant *is* God

Revised on April 14 2011
What is a God?

In the universe around us everything that exists has been brought into existence by something else. Every thing we see around us came from something else that came from something that came from another thing. This chain goes on and on for what may seem like an eternity except that an eternity of effects created by causes created by effects created by causes cannot be created by effects.

Logically there has to be a first cause that creates everything that comes afterwards. This first cause is the necessary cause that brings about all future effects. And since the universe obviously exists there must be a necessary cause that made all these effects exist around us, that necessary cause is what we call the Necessarily Existent (واجب الوجود  wajib al-wujood).

That which reality cannot exist without is the Necessarily Existent or in other words God.

In reality, God is the only real Necessity. It is necessary for God to exist so that anything else can.

Everything other than God is therefore either 1) Possible or 2) Impossible.



So what is a God? There are 8 essential attributes that we need to believe in about God. These attributes can be known through the intellect if one contemplates reality closely enough. God being the Necessarily Existent (واجب الوجود  wajib al-wujood) is the the 1st essential attribute that we need to believe in.
It is only when we have a proper understanding of what a God is that we can properly and fully understand how to practice religion. It is people's lack of reflection and proper understanding of the Divine that make them have a hard time following Divine revelation. These 8 essential attributes can be known and understood in the basic form by the intellect alone.

A person has to reach an understanding by the intellect that God exists before proving that God exists by revelation, otherwise one falls into a cycle.

1) Categorizing Reality

Updated on April 14 2011
The reality of the universe around us is divided into three categories:
1- The Necessary    (واحب wajib)
2- The Impossible   (مستحيل mustaheel)
3- The Possible       (الممكن / الجاءز mumkin / ja'iz)




1- The Necessary is that which cannot not exist
2- The Impossible is that which cannot exist
3- The Possible is that which can or cannot exist.

Everything falls under 1 of the above.
Everything, so reflect on that.