Shia Islamic Belief System 10/46

'Audhu bi Llah min al-Shaytan al-Rajim, Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim al-Hamdulillah Rabb al-Alamin wa salatu wa salam 'ala Sayyidina wa nabiyyina Abu 'l-Qasim al-Mustafa Muhammad wa 'ala Ahli Bayti, at-tayabin, at-taharin. “Rabbi shrah li sadri" (20:25), "wa yassirli amri" (20:26), "wa-hlul 'uqdatan min lisani" (20:27), "yafqahu qawli” (20:28). Al-Hamdilillah, we, after one week off, we are InshaAllah picking up where we left off. Last week, I had to take a week off, and so this is our session, our session after two weeks.

Last session, we went through articles number 32 and 33 of this book of the Shia, Doctrines of Shia Islam. Articles 32 and 33. Let me just go over those very quickly, one second here, go over those very quickly before we get into the new articles that we need to cover InshaAllahu Ta'ala.

So Article 32 was about the other branch of tawheed when it came to tadbeer of God, God running the show, God being in charge of things. And so there when we talked about God being in charge of things, sometimes God is in charge of things meaning the natural world and all the laws that are governing and things that happen in this natural world and so on and so forth. Sometimes what is meant is no, God is in charge when it comes to legislation, when it comes to laws, when it comes to who He forgives, who He does not forgive, when it comes to who He allows to do shafa'a, intersession, who He does not allow to do intercession on the Day of Judgment.

At the end of the day He is the one who calls shots, even when it comes to these things, this was called tadbeer, which means management. Tadbeer tashri'ee, legislative let us call it tadbeer and management of affairs. So you had the takweenee that we talked about before, which was how God governs this world, how He is in charge of everything when it comes to the natural universe. He is the one who's calling the shots. That was the takweenee tadbeer of God. Then we had the tashree'ee in article 32. Where God is the one who calls shots when it comes to making laws, allowing intercession and forgiveness of sin and all those things. So these were covered. And there are some verses and some interesting verses as well regarding this authority, this authority of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. Wa alaykum as-alam to all the brothers and sisters who have joined so far and have said salam, thank you for tuning in.

Now we had the verse, for example, "wa man lam yahkum bima anzal Allah fa ula'ika huma al-kafeerun" (5:44). He started bringing verses and bringing statements to show that not only is He in charge of all of the above, He is also, when it comes to us judging and basing judgments on certain things, He is the one that we base our judgments, on His will, His satisfaction. We can not judge people except with that which Allah has or uses to judge people. So he brought this verse for that, for example. He also brought a verse for shafa'a, "man dhal ladhe yashfa'u 'indahu illa bi idhnih" (2:255), and so on and so forth. So these are all things that we covered last session.

Then we went to Article 33, where it spoke about tawheed in 'ibadah. He is the only one when it comes to existence, He is the only one when it comes to His attributes. It is not like there is a many different entities out there with different agendas. No, He is the only one really, with all the good qualities that anyone can have. He is the only one who call the shots when the natural universe. He is the only one who calls shots when it comes to legislation, all these things, and He is the only one - this is Article 33 now - the only one who is to be worshiped, yes. Tawheed fil 'ibadah it was called.

This required first and foremost for us to define what 'ibadah and worship is. Without a clear definition of worship, you will not be able to tell where you are breaking this rule or not. So the first thing that we need to talk about, we talked about worship and what the definition is.

What is the definition? The definition of worship was to show humility before something or somebody with this mindset, with this understanding that that thing, that worshiped being entity is worthy of worship because they are the ones who have independent tadbeer of the natural world. They have a say, an independent say of things, or God has given them some form of divinity and deity, or they have some form of divinity and deity, and that is why we are expressing humility and tawadhu' to that thing. Yes, that was worship.

Or else if someone does it, does such a thing without such an intention, not necessarily will it be compromising tawheed fil 'ibadah and will be shirk. No. I discussed this last time in depth, that sometimes something might even be haram. Right. But if someone does not have that bad intention, that wrong intention when they are doing a certain act before something else, then it does not turn, does not make it shirk, necessarily. This is super important to tell the difference between these two. So this idea of, oh, anyone who does anything that does not read with our understanding, the way we look at things. Because we have this, unfortunately, the Shia school is looked at sometimes in the wrong way and is misrepresented, of course, by people as well out there who do certain things they might not be supposed to be doing.

But at the end of the day, does that mean it is shirk now? Not necessarily. Not necessarily, it is going to be labeled as shirk, even if sometimes that act is going to be haram. So that is something you can look into. I discussed it more in depth in our previous session. Let us move on, though. That was a summary of what we had last session. Now, moving on, we move into the third part of the book which has to do with the qualities of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala.

So Bismillah al-Rahman, al-Rahim. Those of you just tuning in, we just started where we had left off last time. Article number 32 or excuse me, 34 speaks about and introduces to us the different qualities of God. The qualities of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala can be looked at from different angles. When you look at it from one angle, they are divided, he says, into Sifat al-jamal wa jalal. Jamal literally means beauty and there is a reason why I am saying this, although I do not like to use technical terms too much sometimes, but in classical theology these terms are used. Allah has Sifat al-jamal and Sifat al-jalal, these two. Jamal means beauty, jalal means magnificence. So let me see what the book has translated these two. God's attributes of beauty, jamal, majesty, jalal.

Now I understand that jalal might translate to majesty. In Farsi we have it, I am pretty sure in Urdu we have it and in Arabic of course, it is an Arabic word. So that is what jalal translates to, true. But let us talk about this a little bit and you will see that these are just names that have been put and would not necessarily will we get a good understanding of what is meant by them, just by the titles that have been given to these two concepts. Let us talk about the two concepts that are referred to as Sifat al-jamal and Sifat al-jamal.

He says, he says what is meant by - and as I said, we are looking at the qualities of God from a certain angle, right now. There are different angles that we can look at them and we will get to those as we go on Inshallah wa Ta'ala. But for now, he says that what is meant by Sifat al-jamal, the attributes or qualities of beauty is those things that reflect or represent God's qualities, that make up the perfection of God.

It is because of these qualities that Allah is perfect. Which qualities? What is a perfect being? What is a perfect entity brothers and sisters? If we think about that a little bit, I think we can derive certain qualities, a being that is perfect, a person that is perfect, an intelligence that is perfect, what qualities will it have? I am reading off of the book now - the attributes of beauty are those which display the perfection of God's nature. Such as knowledge, so for example, brothers and sisters, if there is somebody out there or if there is a being out there that is lacking when it comes to their knowledge, is lacking when it comes to 'ilm and is not aware of certain things, can we refer to that being as perfect? No, it has a deficiency, not perfect. Sorry. Right. So the first thing that you find on this list is 'ilm, knowledge. God's knowledge.

Number one, these are Sifat al-jamal. Number two power, qudra. Life, hayat. Will, ikhtiyar and so on and so forth. These types of of qualities that make up the perfection of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, that Allah is perfect because He bears these qualities, these are referred to as Sifat al-jamal, the qualities of beauty, so to speak.

Well then, if these are the qualities of beauty, the opposite will be qualities of non-beauty, right? But they are referred to as jalal. Attributes of jalal I will explain why this term has been used. What are they? They are those attributes or those qualities or let us not even call them qualities. They are those attributes or maybe characteristics that if a person has them, they are not going to be perfect. Jalal means majesty, as a youth or whatever, growing up, I always had this question.

God has qualities of beauty and qualities of jalal, majesty. But why is it then when we look at these qualities, they are not actually qualities, good qualities. They are actually bad qualities. So for example, having a body or having a material body, what does he translate that as? For example, material body, he says, possessing a material body, occupying a particular space. Being established in a particular time, being a composite entity, murakab tarkeeb. All of these are referred to as Sifat al-jalal.

These are qualities of God, of majesty. What does that mean? That means God has these deficiencies? Is that what you are saying? No brothers and sisters, let me explain, and so that you do not have the same problems I had growing up.

What jalal means, means majesty. When we say these are Sifat al-jalal these are qualities of majesty, that is just a translation that is being used for this term, jalal. In reality, though, in Farsi we have this. In Arabic, we also have this. We say someone or something as ajall than having a material body, is ajalla than being a composite entity. Which means He is higher than that to have these attributes. So when we are talking about God, Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala and we say these are the attributes of jalal of God, that means He is higher than that, His Majesty. He is so majestic that He does not have these qualities. That is what is meant. I know it is a little misleading, you know. It is been misleading for me personally, even back in the day. You are like, these are qualities, then why do they say God's qualities are divided into these two parts, into these two categories, that implies that He bears both of them. I mean, look at, look at this paragraph right here.

Let me read it to you. And I want to leave the judgment to the brothers and sisters listening. Does it not imply that He bears both categories? It says, "given the fact that the essence of God is an infinite reality, having thus no like or equal, man has no way of grasping the depth of His essence. He can only come to know God by way of an appreciation of God's attributes of beauty and majesty."

Whoa, whoa. God, you can only know Him through His attributes of beauty and majesty. That implies He has both. But in reality, brothers and sisters, He possesses the attributes that He possesses that have to do with His essence, probably, these are called attributes of beauty and jamal. And those attributes that He cannot possess because it will hurt His divinity, so He is higher than having those, those are referred to as attributes of jalal.

He does not have those attributes, you know, being confined to time, to space, to matter and all these things. Having jahal. So jahal ignorance, for example, will be a Sifat, is one of the Sifat al-jalal. Does that mean God is ignorant? No, it means He does not have ignorance. So I want you brothers and sisters, I want you to keep that in mind, Oh, we have a lot of people saying salam, wa 'alaykum as-alam everybody. I hope that does the job. I am going to slowly not say salam a lot in the middle of my talk because I have been told and I could guess this myself as well, that it just it does throw people off. But I wish I could each and every one of you who say salam as I go on, I wish I could have that chance to reply. I will reply just altogether with a big salam alaikum every now and then. Hopefully you accept that from me.

All right. Sister asks, how are qualities of jamal and Sifat of qualities of jamal and jalal different from Sifat salbeeya and thubuteeya. Very good. See, this shows that you are paying attention. It makes me happy. It makes me happy. Very good. And that is what it says in the last line of article 34.

The last line of article 34 says sometimes these two types of attributes, meaning Sifat al-jalal and jamal are referred to as thabutee, affirmative and salbee, negative. I would rather translate salbee to negated rather than negative. Salbee, it means that it has been negated from God, it has been not been attributed to God. When you say negative, I do not know, it just does not give you the same understanding as negated does. While he says, he continues, he says "while the object to which both ultimately refer to is one and the same."

In other words, Sifat al-jamal, the attributes of beauty, are also referred to as Sifat thubutee or thubuteeya, meaning positive or affirmed, affirmed qualities. Yes, these have been affirmed and confirmed for God, these exist for God. Thubut, thubut means something that exists, something that is, so these qualities are qualities that actually God has.

Versus Sifat salbeeya, those attributes that are salbd from God, negated from God, stripped away from God, not attributed to God. OK, I hope it is clear, Inshallah it is clear.

So anything, anything that we cannot attribute to God that thing will be referred to as a sifa, a characteristic, a quality that is salbee, is one of the jalalee attributes, meaning God is higher than that to be described with such a description or quality or attribute. Ignorance. You can call people ignorant, but you cannot call God ignorant. It goes against the very fact that He is God.

So I do want to say something here. It is going to get a little deep, a little irfanee, I hope you forgive me, but allow me to say it. Even when it comes to Sifat thubuteeya, or Sifat al-jamal. These attributes that we actually believe Allah bears and possesses. We have a problem still. We still have a problem. When I say God is all knowing, God is 'aleem, and I do not know, maybe he will point to this later, but I read ahead, I did not see it, maybe way ahead, he will say it, I do not know, or he might not even address it, I do not know.

But when we say Allah is 'aleem, all knowing. When I say it, my understanding of God's knowledge is different than a Prophet's understanding of God being all knowing. My understanding will be different than Imam Ali 'alayhi as-salat wa as-salam, understanding of God's knowledge. That is why in the Qur'an it says: "Subhana Allahi amma yasifoon"(37:159). Allah says in the Qur'an that Allah is higher than what we attribute to Him, our understanding of Him. But then He makes an exception: "illa 'ibad Allahi al-mukhlaseen" (37:160) . Except those chosen, purified servants of Allah. They know what they are talking about when they say Allah is 'aleem. But other than that, even a Muslim, a mu'min, a person who knows, who believes in God, when we say 'aleem, Allah is all knowing. It is still our understanding of Allah's knowledge is still flawed.

We have to understand this. We will never be able to encompass intellectually God and the concept of God. We will have an understanding of it, though, but, at the end of the day, it will not be as accurate as you would think because we are limited creatures and He is unlimited. So His knowledge, which is unlimited, we will not be able to understand with our limited intellect.

That is why in the first sentence of article 34, he says, "given the fact that the essence of God is an infinite reality, having thus no like or equal man has no way of grasping the depth of this essence." So at the end of day, we will try and we will read Qur'an and we will try to understand Him. But at the same time, we even when it comes to Sifat al-thubuteeya or Sifat al-jamal, still we have to remember that we have not completely understood His knowledge because we can only compare His knowledge to our knowledge, which is something finite, which is something limited, not unlimited.

Let us move on to article number 35. So if God has these qualities now and we want to learn about them, how can we learn about them? We talked about this a little bit before of how to gain cognition of things, and that is epistemology, and we talked about this in the beginning of the book. There are, I think, three ways that were discussed there.

Here Ayatullah Subhani, he introduces two ways a person can become more familiar with God's qualities. Number one, he says the way of the 'Aql, the way of the 'Aql, the way of the intellect, to use intellectual reasoning and rationing, rationale to understand God. How is that? Very simple, and we have spoken about this before a little bit, but it is interesting how it keeps coming up again and again, which shows this is something pretty important, although it might be downplayed by some people, especially in this day and age and in this modern era or post-modern era.

What does that he says, the way of the intellect is to look around you. And observe and take in data through your senses and then do some rational reasoning and come up with the conclusion. Look around you and see how, look at all the fine tuning that is out there now. He does not really go into detail when it comes to the argument from design and the fine tuning of the universe, but that is what he is referring to. And he brings the verse 101 of Surah Yunus, he says, it says: "Qul undhuru madha fi as-samawati wa al-ardh" (10:101), look around you and see what is in the heavens and the skies and in the earth.

That is enough to reach this conclusion that God exists. That is what he said. He does not get into this whole argument and maybe some of the counter-arguments to it and the answers to those and so on. As I said before, he is keeping it concise. But there is one hadith that I came across a few days ago, and I also shared it with some brothers and sisters, I really like this hadith. It just illustrates how different things in this universe can be looked at as a sign of God's existence.

It is a cool hadith. I am going to share with you. I really like it. It is about a person by the name of Abdullah Dayasanee, his name is. Dayasanee here means the atheist or the one who was against God, apparently, that is what it says in the footnote here.

Anyway, this Abdullah is an atheist. Well, there was no atheism in that sense as an organised religion back then. Yes, I refer to atheism as a faith kind of. It is turning into something like that actually now, with its own tenants and so on. And there is different denominations of them as well. But anyway, I do not want to speak about things I do not know too much about, so I will just leave it at that. But yeah, you do notice that it kind of has that, you have the same pattern there as you have in organised religion, actually.

Anyway, so this person is a person who does not believe in God. He comes to Imam al-Sadiq 'alayhi as-salam, and he tells him, "Dulanee 'ala ma'budee. Hey, guide me to my Lord, prove to me my Lord, the one that I am supposed to worship or the one that I worship."

And so the Imam tells him, hey, OK, no problem, what is your name? He asked him, what is your name? And this Abdullah, he leaves without answering that question. So the people ask him later, they are like, hey, why didn't you just say your name? He is like, If I had said my name, my name is Abdullah. The Imam would have said, OK, there you go, that is your God, and it would have been over. No, I didn't want him to use that against me, so I said whatever I left. So the people said, OK, well go back to him, go back to him and ask him, show me my God, show me the Lord, prove the Lord to me, but do not ask me my name. And that is exactly what he did.

It says, fa raja'a ileyh, he went back to him. Fa qala lahu "Ya Ja'far, ya Ja'far ibn Muhammad, oh Ja'far son of Muhammad al-Baqir, show me my Lord, prove to my Lord and do not ask me my name." So the Imam tells him, okay, sit. And they sit, and then it says a little kid comes in with an egg. He is playing with an egg. The Imam asked the kid to hand him the egg and he gives him the egg. And I think you can guess how the story goes from here on.

The Imam says, Hey, Abdullah Dayasanee, he says to Abdullah, oh Dayasanee, this egg, look at it, it is a protected hisn. Hisn means like fortress, it is protected with a hard shell, maknunun, it is covered with a hard shell, and underneath this hard shell, you have a soft skin or a membrane in it. We have all made scrambled eggs, right? Sometimes you break the shell, but the egg yolk and the egg whites do not come out. It does not come out, it is still stuck. Why? Because you have that inner skin also like a bag or sack holding it, not letting it come out. So you have to kind of puncture that and go through it so that the egg comes out. The egg contents come out.

So he says this, under that hard shell is a thin skin or a thin membrane. And then under, underneath that there is thahabatun ma'ee'a. There is thahabatun ma'ee'a, which means a golden liquid. Look at how the Imam words it. So I am giving an example, brothers and sisters, for what? For how the Imam is looking at one object here. Ayatullah Subhani, he said, use the 'Aql. By looking around you, you will need the help of your senses, look around you, observe and then deduce, draw conclusions.

You want to know about God and His wisdom, His power, His might, all that stuff, I will do it through an egg. I will prove how He is through an egg. I will prove His existence, not only His qualities. His existence through this. So there is a golden fluid under that thin skin and fidhdatun dhaeeba, there is a molten silver as in. So he refers to the egg yolk as golden fluid and to the egg white as molten silver.

Look at that. How he words that. He words it beautifully. He says "fa lal dhahabtu 'l-maee'a takhtalit bi 'l-fidhdhatu 'l-dhaeeba wala la-fidhdhatu 'l-dhaeeba takhtalit bi 'l-dhahabit al-maee'a", these two fluids that I said the golden and the silver, they do not mix in each other. So that itself shows that there is something going on. He goes on and on and talks about the egg and he says, la yudra, we do not know if it is li 'dh-dhakar khuliqat am al untha, we do not know if this is going to be a male or a female chicken that is going come out of this egg, or male or female or whatever it is that is going to come out of this egg. Not necessarily chicken, might be something else. In other words, he is trying to show that, look, something like this has the potential to be one of each of these two, miraculously.

And then it goes on, he says, "tanfaleequ an mithlih alwan al-tawawees", out of this egg comes the colors of the peacock. It was just a golden fluid and silver fluid, out of it comes, you get the colors of the peacock, that itself is a miracle. All of this, and then he ends with "atara laha mudabbira". Oh Dayasanee, oh individual, can you imagine, can you believe in a mudabbir, someone who is taking care of this thing? Can you think of such a person for this egg or not? In other words, do you see it in yourself that this thing would have a divinity behind it that is running the show, that is managing it, that is the cause behind all of these miracles, just in a single egg. And it says this person put his head down for a while, raised his head again, and he embraced the faith and he did tawbah for his past.

So that is all it took, it took an egg. Now, in this day and age, I am not saying, oh my God, this is going to work for atheists. This is your argument now against atheists and so on. But if a person has not distanced themselves too much from the fitra and that God given nature that they have, these things will work. The fact that something like this is happening.

Now, this is one object. Ayatullah Subhani, he says, and he brings the verse: "qul undhuru madha fi as-samawati wa al-ardh" (10:101). Look around you, see what you find in the heavens and the skies and the Earth. That should be enough to prove that this God exists, one and two, the qualities of this God. Look at how much wisdom, how much intellect has been put into a single egg, into a single eyeball, into fingertips, into the nervous system, the digestive system, your feet, everything, everything, everything. All of this is enough to show the qualities of God as well, wisdom, power, all of these things.

And he ends with this point that you are going to need the help of your senses for this. So that is one method, he says, that can be used as one tool that can be used to understand God and his qualities better.

Then he says also we can use and get the help of wahee, revelation and see how God describes himself in the Qur'an. That is also a way to understand God and have an idea of how God is. True, we will always have a, let us call it a deficient understanding of His attributes, because we are finite, we are not unlimited, we are not infinite beings. So our understanding of these attributes of His will be limited as well. But at the end of the day, it is better than nothing. You have scratched the surface at least, you have an understanding of how God is. That itself is valuable in and of itself.

So he brings this verse of the Qur'an just to show how the Qur'an speaks about Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. This famous verse that usually reciters recite in their, when they are reciting with their nice voices like Abdel Basset and those guys, that is old school, there is a lot of new reciters now. The verses 22 to 24 of Surah Hashir: "Huwa Allahu al-ladhee la ilaha illa Huwa, al-Malik, al-Quddus, as-Salam, al-Mu'min, al-Mohaymin, al-'Azeez, al-Jabbar, al-Muttakabir. Subhana Allahi 'amma yushreekun" (59:23). "Huwa Allahu, al-Khaliq, al-Bari'u, al-Musawiru. Lahu al-asma' al-husna yusabbihu lahu ma fi 's-samawti wa al-ardh wa Huwa al-'Azeez, ul-Hakeem" (59:24).

You have like 20 or something or 15 or something attributes of God in these two verses or three verses. He is God, other than whom there is no god, the sovereign Lord, He does what He wants, you know. The Holy One, peace, as-salam. He is peace incarnate, the keeper of faith, the Guardian, the Majestic, the Compeller, the Superb, Glorified be God from all that they ascribe as partners to Him. He is God, the Creator, the Shaper, the Fashioner, His are the most beautiful names.

That means if you can think of anything good out there, it belongs to Him. All that is in the heavens and the Earth, glorify Him, glorifies Him and whatever that means there is tafseer for this. And He is the Mighty, the Wise. So in my book it says Hashr 22 to 24, but in the translation it says Hashr 23 and 24. It seems that this is more accurate, 23 and 24 because that is only two verses, it is not three.

In the end he says one thing that is important. This we had this in classical theology, we might even have it today before we end article 35. He says that there is a group, they are referred to as the mu'attela. Mu'attela with a ta' in the middle, comes from ta'teel. I do not know if you have this Urdu, we have it in Farsi and we have it in Arabic though. Ta'teel means to cancel something out or to end something or to stop something. So, for example, when you have days off in the year, those are referred to in Farsi as ta'teelat. Days that are off, holiday days, you know, that kind of thing. Ta'teel means to cancel something.

Now, there are some out there who are referred to as the mu'attela. They do ta'teel. Ta'teel of what? When it comes to God's attributes - OK, they are telling me in Urdu, we have it in Urdu too. Okay nice. When it comes to God's attributes, they do ta'teel of what? Of their 'Aql. They do ta'teel of their 'Aql means they do not think about it. They say, look, we cannot understand it, so do not even talk about it, do not even reflect on it, and just, God is God, that is it.

So let me read this for you. He says, "here we should recall that those who subscribe to the mu'attela position, stripping God of all qualities, would deprive men of the lofty sacred sciences made possible by the intellect and revelation, on the question of the attributes of God." He says that the problem with this group is that they are depriving everyone of understanding God at least a little bit, at least scratching the surface as I said before. They are not allowing people to do that. They say, look, do not waste your time, you will not understand him. Well the Qur'an is telling us to reflect, philosophy tells us to reflect and so on.

He goes on, he says, "we would reply to this by asserting". What is your answer Ayatullah Subhani to this group who says, do not use your mind, do not even think about God's attributes, do not even waste your time on it. He says, our reply to this, is by asserting that if discussion and an investigation of these sciences to the divine names pertaining to the divine names and qualities were to be forbidden and we were not supposed to do it, the mentioning of all these attributes in the Qur'an, along with the command to meditate upon them, reflect upon them, would have been utterly redundant and in vain.

The Qur'an tells us to think about God, the Qur'an tells us to reflect and so on and so forth. All these verses that tell us to look into the natural universe and the miracles therein, all of this would be in vain. Why is God telling us to do that to begin with? They will probably tell you, well God is telling us just so that we know He exists. But Ayatullah Subhani says, no there is more to it than that. We are to look at them to know that God exists, one, and two, to understand how great God is. True, we will not understand His Greatness completely, but we can understand it to a good extent, at least, or to some extent, at least. OK, so that is article 35.

Let me see. No questions. Just everyone telling me that we have this word in Urdu. OK, and wa 'alaykum as-alam Sister Uzma, it is been a long time and hope you are well too.

Sister asks, as you mentioned, everything good belongs to Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. What about bad? Where did it come from and to whom does it belong to? Yes. Evil and bad, we have to see what our definition of it is. Now. I am going to give you, you can take a rain check on this because we are going to get to suffering and evil in the world. There are different categories of bad. Usually bad and evil, people will use those words and terms loosely.

Bad like earthquakes. Earthquakes are bad. Are they really bad or relatively we see them as bad, but as a matter of fact, in the grand scheme of things of the universe and the natural laws that govern the universe, as a matter of fact, earthquakes are not bad. The only thing that you can really label as bad is those things that have to do with our choices and our decisions as bearers of free will and ikhtiyar.

Us, people and the jinn both, because we are both free willed beings and creatures, because when it comes to what we do, it is not just Allah that makes the decision. And I explained this before as well, when I was talking about God and the whole vertical chain of causality, I said that over there I explained in depth that if a bad thing is happening, if a bad thing is happening and the evil that we do, as you just mentioned, actually evil is what you meant, you just mentioned that, since we have a say in that and Allah has given us permission to have a say in that, when evil happens at our hands, those will be attributed to us because we had a say in it as well. We had a say in it, Allah is at the top, He is giving permission to us to do that evil.

But since we are the direct, we are directly involved in that evil, our decision and choice is involved directly, that is attributed to us, the evil is attributed to us. (30:41) Dhahara al-fasadu fil barree wal-bahr bi ma kasabat aydee alnas. Evil, corruption has become manifest in land and in sea, bi ma kasabat aydee alnas. Because, as a result of the doing of the hands of man, meaning what man has done. So you see in this verse, it is attributing evil to who? To mankind.

And we have this type of wording a lot throughout the Qur'an, "bi ma kasabat aydeekum" (42:30), and so on, because of what you have done. So when it comes to bad and evil, yes, that is attributed to us because God did not choose it, we chose it. Even though Allah has given us permission to do that in this dunya that He has put us in. And that is where the whole test is.

So we were talking about God's attributes, from one angle. There is another angle that we can also look at God's attributes, and this is where article 36 comes into the picture. Looking at the attributes and qualities of God from the angle of His essence being enough for those qualities or not being enough for those qualities. Let me explain. Article 36 is talking about Sifat ad-dhat and Sifat al-fa'al.

Now, those of you who've gone to Sunday school, those of you who teach in Sunday school, maybe you are pretty familiar with these concepts, just like how you also asked questions about the previous set of or categorisation of Allah's qualities into thubuteeya and salbeeya. Here also, the same thing applies, I am pretty sure many of you have heard of Sifat ad-dhat versus Sifat al-fa'al. What does that mean?

Dhat means essence, so Sifat ad-dhat means the qualities of essence, of God's essence. And then you have Sifat al-fa'al, the qualities of God's action. In other words, what God does and does not do.

These two, the description for them, definition for them is as follows. Those Sifat ad-dhat, attributes of essence are those which describe God in a manner - well I do not like the translation we have here. I think the translation here falls short actually. I am looking at the Farsi, which is penned by Ayatullah Subhani himself. I am looking at the translation here, it does not seem to be accurate. He says "the Sifat of essence, the attributes of the essence of God are those which describe God in a manner that adequately enables us to form some kind of conception of His essential nature". I do not like this translation. I would translate it like this. It is saying Sifat ad-dhat, the attributes of God's essence are those attributes of God that all you need to be able to understand those or derive those qualities from Him will be His essence only. His essence is enough for Him to have these qualities.

Okay, versus those Sifatu al-fa'al, the attributes of activity or action, which means that His essence is not enough for Him to be attributed with these qualities. Rather, He has to actually do something to before you can give Him such a quality. Let me explain with some examples now. It is very simple, not too hard.

When we look at God, and we look like let us say philosophically, we come to the conclusion that God exists and God is unlimited and perfect and has all knowledge and has all power and everything. How do we come to this conclusion? When I look at God philosophically, and it is this being that is perfect. I come up with this philosophically. Will it be possible for Him, as I explained earlier in the beginning of this session, will it be possible for me to believe in Him and His essence without Him being All-knowing, All-powerful? No. His essence is enough to also prove to me His existence is going to be enough to prove to me that he also bears power, possesses all might, possesses all knowledge. That is enough for me.

But if I come to the conclusion that a god exists and he has these qualities, question brothers and sisters, can I also call Him Raziq, a sustainer or Khaliq, the one who creates, before He has actually created or before He has actually sustained? No. The claim is that God will have certain attributes as a result of certain activity or actions that He has. Because He creates, we refer to Him as al-Khaliq, the Creator. Because He sustains and provides the rizq, we will refer to Him as Raziq. But if it was just Him and there was no creation, we would not be able to derive Khaliq only from His essence. Yes, granted, the - and Ayatullah Subhani also says this - these attributes and qualities of God that we can derive from His activity and what He does and His actions, they will eventually go back originally to the attributes of essence that God has.

Yes, they will stem from that, but conceptually speaking, theoretically speaking, this is not that. Creatorship is not might and power and wisdom and knowledge. These are two separate concepts. They are two separate concepts, but one comes from the other. One will not be possible without the other. So all of the Sifat al-fa'al of God and the qualities of God that have to do with His activity and actions will go back to the qualities that He has in His essence. But these are different than that at the end of the day, conceptually and from a nadharee perspective.

So, for example, if God is going to create, if God is going to create, He can create and can be called Khaliq after He creates. Why? As a result of His power, because to create something you have to have the power for it and the knowledge and wisdom, knowledge, how to create that thing and wisdom, the purpose behind its creation. If there is no purpose behind the creation of something, God will not create it, straight up. Everything God creates is purposeful, is based on His knowledge and His power to do that thing. So these are all attributes of His essence.

So His Khaliqeeya, His creatorship, let us call it, in reality, is born from His power and His knowledge. So these are the Sifat al-fa'al that go back to Sifat ad-dhat. So there is a reason why these are separated from each other so we can understand exactly what He is, in His essence.

Now, having said all of that and explaining these different angles of looking at God's qualities, he gets into the qualities of essence. I will leave that InshaAllah for next week. He gets and he goes a little bit, a little bit, very, very little bit into the knowledge of God, the power of God and so on and so forth. I am going to leave that InshaAllah for our next session.

So, Sister who had asked about if everything good belongs to God, what about bad, where did it come from and to whom does it belong to? Sister Mahjabeen, she asked, so the shar that is talked about and Surah Falaq, is referring to what? Exactly, it is referring to the shar of the people. "Min sharri al-waswasi al-khannas" (114:4). Either to the shar of the people or the waswas al-khannas, which is usually the best example for that will be Shaytan. The one who whispers in your ear and runs away and like that. This waswas al-khannas. Shaytan, other shayteen, they are either jinn or they are human beings, as I said before. Since they have free will, they can do bad things, they can do wrong things, they can do sharr and when they do sharr, that is attributed to them and does not, is not attributed to God, and that is why they are the ones who will be punished on the Day of Judgment, not God, Astaghfirullah. Yes, because God does not even have one percent to do with the sharr that comes from the people.

It is their decision, it is their choice. That is the test for us, and that is why Allah says I created man and jinn illa, I did not create them except that they obey me and serve me "illa li ya'bidun" (51:56).

So I think we are going to end here. I thank all of you for tuning in. Please look out for the the March flyer, InshaAllah. So we are done al-Hamdilillah, we have finished, we ended February Mizan live sessions. We do have a Daylight Savings Time change coming up in March. We might change up the timing a little bit, might not change it up, might stay same. So look out for that and look out for the flyer, the March Mizan live flyer. You can find it on our Facebook page, you can find it on the mizaninstitute.org website as well. So I will leave you with that.

We just have one more question here. But if God exists outside of time, how can you say He is a creator only after He creates? Would that not be applying the limitation of time to Him? Would it not be more accurate to say we only can perceive Him as Creator only after He creates within our perception of time?

As a matter of fact, when I was explaining this whole idea, this came to my mind as well. I was like, I do not think they will point that out, but here we are, there you are, I mean, you are pointing it out Brother. So that is deeper, that is not for this class. But yes, we can not even think of a time that God has not been creator because God has always been creating. And even using the word always been creating is also wrong. It is not the right way to word it philosophically. But no, right now we are just gaining a general understanding. We are not philosophers like you, so we will just leave it at that. You know, me and you, we joke around a lot about these things, so I will leave it at that, Brother. I am not saying your name because half the community knows you and they are going to be listening to this later, maybe the audio. And thank you sisters, as well for tuning in. And I thank all of you for tuning in actually. InshaAllah till next week.

Wa as-salamu alaykum, wa Rahmat Ullahi, wa barakatu.