Page 29 - Demo

25forth, 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 allwisdom, 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.Tomake itmore clear, adivine attribute is anemanation 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. Thisis what the Sūfees 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 Sūfees are not to be considered as dogmas of Islam; and if we deeply penetrate into these occult doctrines, wemay involuntarily be led into Pantheism, which is destructive of a practical religion.