Praise be to Allah, whom great endeavours fail to realise, scholars fail to comprehend His knowledge, glorifiers are incapable of praising Him, those who try to rank His blessings cannot even calculate them, those who strive with worships cannot pay their due, sharp minds cannot reach His will in the absolute sense, His attribute has no limit, no numbered time and no prolonged duration.

Although man perceives the universe with his five sense organs, he sees, hears or thinks in a limited way. All that he sees and hears in the universe is in the ratio of 5/1,000,000. For example, he cannot hear the sound of the earth’s rotation. Or he cannot see the microbe that makes him sick. The reason why we have been created with limited vision is that we are programmed to perceive only those things that may be included in the test of the Hereafter. Allah (swt) knows the most accurate.

That is to say, the field of sight and hearing of the human being is very small compared to the existence. The ignorance of such questioners stems from the fact that they limit the available information not to the ratio of five million to five, but to the information that suits their own understanding. However, the fact that we can understand a piece of information does not mean that we fully comprehend that information in every aspect.

For example, it is known that there are 250,000,000,000,000 (two hundred and fifty billion) planets in an average galaxy and 300,000,000,000,000 (three hundred billion) galaxies harbouring planets. Now, beyond these galaxies that fill our comprehension, where and how can we have information about the quality and quantity of Allah, the One who is the One who transforms all this universe, and even if we travelled a trillion years away at the speed of light (300,000 km/sec) and piled up all that is seen, would it still be a mote compared to His existence? Those who ask the question “Why can’t we see?” by adding a scientific dimension by attempting to recognise Allah with His essence are unfortunate people who have not been able to break the pride of their ego and have not even understood what introspection is. Those who think like this, even if they go to Space in the name of science, accept the existing world as their own understanding, like the astronaut who said, “There was no one else in Space except me,” referring to Allah. In fact, with this statement, they reveal their misguidance in the name of science and philosophy as well as religion. Not only in this aspect. Man can realise everything only with its opposite. He cannot perceive what has no opposite.

For example, he perceives the writing as a result of being written on a black board with a white pen or a pen close to that tone. If there are words written in black on a black board, he cannot recognise that writing. It perceives everything such as darkness-light, cold-hot, good-bad, disbeliever-muslim, rich-poor, right-wrong, etc. only when the knowledge of its opposite is available.

Allah (swt), on the other hand, has gathered all the opposite attributes in His Divinity. He is the one who resurrects as He is the one who kills. He is the one who leads to guidance as He is the one who causes to fall into madness. In order to recognise His divinity, He has determined the roof of the Islamic religion as “La La La La Illallah” and commanded to say “There is no god but Allah”. In order for us to progress in the direction of reaching this realisation, He has firstly made us state in the Word of Shahada that He is a servant (abduhu) like us, and then He has added “Muhammad un Rasulullah” to the Word of Tawhid as a result of His acceptance as a Messenger for His believing servants to take as an example.

“And certainly, in the Messenger of Allah, there is for you one who hopes to meet Allah and the Last Day,

There is a good example for those who remember Allah much.” (33/21)

In the Holy Qur’an, when Moses (alaihis salaam) requested, “My Lord, show yourself to me so that I may see you,” Allah (swt) replied, “You cannot see me, but look at this mountain, if it can stand in its place, you will see me. And then when his Lord manifested to the mountain, He destroyed it and Moses fell unconscious. When he came to his senses, he said, “Glory be to You, I have repented and turned to You, and I am the first of the believers.” (7:143)

Let him who qualifies Allah know that he associates Him with that which He qualifies. And because he associates Him with whatever He qualifies, he doubles Him. And he who doubles Him is not able to know Him, not able to unite Him. He draws a boundary that points as if in a certain direction. He who draws a boundary counts Him as one of the things that can be counted. He who says, “Where is He?” includes Him in something. Allah is Samad. Every being is in need of Him, and He is not in need of anything, and He is the only one to whom help can be sought. (112/2) He was not fathered and He was not born. (112/3) Nothing is equal or similar to Him. (112/4) He exists without any creation and He exists without non-existence. He is with everything without union. For example, where three people talk in secret, the fourth is surely Him. (58/7) He is the other of everything without separation. He created the creatures for the first time without any idea that He pondered, experience that He utilised, movement that He created or hesitation. Since He brought all beings into existence in time, He removed the contradiction between their differences. He created the nature, character and temperament of each creature and endowed them with a special mould. He knows everything about the creatures, what they reveal and what they conceal.

After all these explanations, it should be understood that Allah (swt) is completely different from the reality and relativity of the things He has created. He is beyond all our imaginations in a world of perception which we cannot know and which causes us to think in a limited way. It is not possible to know and see it with the reality of its essence.

As for the knowledge of His existence, the essence of the Islamic religion is to know Allah, and the aim is to direct every work and action in the direction of gaining His pleasure. Knowing Allah is possible by affirming His existence and affirming His existence is possible by unification. The summit of unification can be reached in the absolute sense by being connected to Him with ihlâs. Kul hüvallâhü ehad (112/1) in Surah Ihlas expresses this truth. Because He is one in His essence. There is nothing that He is accustomed to or habituated to, so that He would be sad to lose it or to lose it. Existence exists with Him. Everything is created by Him, comes from Him and returns to Him. Hell, the world and the hereafter is the name of living without Him, and Paradise is the name of living with Him because He is a being beyond everything.

Let us make the recognition of His existence more understandable with an example.

Let the Postman ring your doorbell to bring a notification while you are sitting at home with your friend. With the ringing of the bell, you started talking about who might have come. Your friend said “this or that person” for the person who rang the doorbell. This is called imagining. You, on the other hand, after expressing his views as “the intellect does not have the power to conceive in this case”, said, “We cannot know who it is only by knocking on the door. What falls to the intellect is primarily to accept that there is someone behind the door. It would be best to ask the person who knocked on the door who it was.” This is called taakkul, i.e. reasoning.

Just as this example expresses, Allah (swt), who says to the one who conceives, “I am on the assumption of my servant”, shows the one who intellects the way to look at His Word in the way He introduces Himself. Those who deny by running away from the truth in order not to accept the warning will never believe in its existence without seeing it. However, those who are wise will try to recognise Allah by ascending from His creations to His names, from His names to His attributes, and from His attributes to His manifestation, and they will believe without seeing. Those who believe in the unseen (2/3)

In this case, the one who does not care who knocks on the door will deny the reason for the Postman’s arrival and will have to accept the punishment or the result of the notification. The one who reads the notification will not only have an idea of who it is without feeling the need to see who left it, but will also learn from the content of the word what he should do for himself.

It has been narrated in a hadith kudsi that the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam), who stated about the essence of Allah (swt), “Allah is far from everything that comes to mind”, said. “Allaah said: “I am according to the belief of my servant about me.” (Bukhari, Tawheed 35, Muslim, Zikr 1, Tirmidhi, Zuhr 51)

İlhan TOSUN

                                                                                   With Greetings and Prayers