Page 26 - New English Book L

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forth, because we conceived the eternity, omnipresence,
universal knowledge, mercifulness, as emanating from
His essence, and belonging to Him alone and absolutely.
He is alone the infinitely Knowing, Powerful, Living,
Holy, Beautiful, Good, Loving, Glorious, Terrible
Avenger, because it is from Him alone that emanate and
flow the qualities of knowledge, power, life, holiness,
beauty and the rest. God has no attributes in the sense
we understand them. With us an attribute or a property
is common to many individuals of a species, but what is
God’s is His alone, and there is none other to share it with
Him. When we say, “Solomon(pbuh)is wise, powerful, just
and beautiful,” we do not ascribe exclusively to him all
wisdom, power, justice and beauty. We only mean to say
that he is relatively wise as compared with others of his
species, and that wisdom too is relatively his attribute in
common with the individuals belonging to his class.

To make it more clear, a divine attribute is an emanation
of God, and therefore an activity. Now every divine action
is nothing more or less than a creation.

It is also to be admitted that the divine attributes,
inasmuch as they are emanations, posit time and a
beginning; consequently when Allah said Kun fakána
-i.e. “Be, and it became”- or He uttered, pronounced His
word in time and in the beginning of the creation. This is
what the Sufees term ‘aql-kull, or universal intelligence
as the emanation of the ‘aql awwal, namely, the “first
intelligence.” Then the nafs-kull or the “universal soul”
that was the first to hear and obey this divine order,
emanated from the “first soul” and transformed the
universe. Of course, these mystic views of the Sufees are
not to be considered as dogmas of Islam; and if we deeply
penetrate into these occult doctrines, we may involuntarily
be led into Pantheism, which is destructive of a practical
religion.