Tawheed of Allah’s Names and Attributes
This
category of Tawhid has five main aspects:
1. For the unity of Allah’s names and
attributes to be maintained in the first aspect, Allah must be referred to
according to how He and His Prophet have described Him, without explaining away
His names and attributes by giving them meanings other than their obvious
meanings.
For example, in the Qur’an Allah says that He gets angry with the disbelievers and the
hypocrites. He says:
“That He [Allah] may
punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the pagans, men and women who have an
evil opinion of Allah.
A circle of evil is around them; Allah is
angry with them, curses them and has prepared for them an evil end.” (Qur’an 48: 6)
Thus, anger is one of God’s attributes.
It is
incorrect to say that His anger must mean His punishment since anger is a sign
of weakness in man and, as such, not befitting of Allah.
What
Allah has stated should be accepted, with the qualification that His anger is
not like human anger, Based on Allah’s statement:
“There is nothing
like Him…” (Qur’an 42: 11)
The process of so-called “rational”
interpretation when taken to its logical conclusion results in the denial of
God’s very existence.
For
Allah describes Himself as living and man lives, therefore, according to this
“rationalist” argument, God is neither living nor existing.
The fact is that the similarity between God’s attributes and those of mankind is only in name and not in degree.
When
attributes are used in reference to God, they are to be taken in the absolute
sense, free from human deficiencies.
2. The second aspect of Tawhid
al-Asma’ was-Sifat involves referring to Allah as He has referred to Himself
without giving Him any new names or attributes.
For
example, Allah may not be given the name al-Ghadib (the Angry One), in spite of
the fact that He has said that He gets angry, because neither Allah nor His
messenger has used this name.
This
may seem to be a very fine point, but it must be maintained in order to prevent
the false description of God.
That
is, finite man is in no position to define the infinite Lord of creation.
3. In the third aspect of Tawhid
al-Asma’ was-Sifat Allah is referred to without giving Him the attributes of
His creation.
For
example, it is claimed in the Bible and Torah that Allah spent the first six
days creating the universe then slept on the seventh.
For
this reason, Jews and Christians take either Saturday or Sunday as a day of
rest during which work is looked at as a sin.
Such a
claim assigns to God the attributes of His creation.
It is
man who tires after heavy work and needs sleep to recuperate.
In contrast Allah says explicitly in the Qur’an, “No tiredness
overcomes Him nor sleep…” (Qur’an 2: 255).
Elsewhere
in the Bible and Torah, God is portrayed as repenting for His bad thoughts in
the same way that humans do when they realize their errors.
Similarly
the claim that God is a spirit or has a spirit completely ruins this area of
Tawhid.
Allah
does not refer to Himself as a spirit anywhere in the Qur’an nor does His
Prophet (Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him) express anything of that
nature in Hadith.
In
fact, Allah refers to the spirit as part of His creation.
Allah clearly states that in the following verse: “They ask you [Muhammad] about the spirit.
Tell [them] that the spirit [exists] by my Lord’s command.” (Qur’an 17: 85)
The key principle which should be followed when dealing with Allah’s attributes is the Qur’anic formula,
“…There is nothing
like Him, and He is the hearer and seer of all.” (Qur’an 42: 11)
The
attributes of hearing and seeing are among human attributes, but when they are
attributed to The Divine Being they are without comparison in their perfection.
However,
when these attributes are associated with men they necessitate ear and eye
apparatuses which cannot be attributed to God.
What
man knows about the Creator is only what little He has revealed to him through
His prophets.
Therefore,
man is obliged to stay within these narrow limits.
When
man gives free reign to his intellect in describing God, he is liable to fall
into errors by assigning to Allah the attributes of His creation.
In
their love of pictorial representations, Christians have painted, carved and
molded innumerable human likenesses and called them images of God.
These have served to pave the way for the acceptance of Jesus’ divinity among the masses.
Once
they accepted the conception of the Creator as being like a human being,
accepting Jesus as God presented no real problem.
4. The third aspect of Tawhid
al-Asma’ was-Sifat requires that man not be given the attributes of Allah.
For
example, in the New Testament, Paul takes the figure of Melchizedek, king of
Salem, from the Torah (Genesis 14:18-20) and gives both him and Jesus the
divine attribute of having no beginning or end:
“For this
Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, met Abraham returning
from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, and to him Abraham apportioned
a tenth part of everything.
He is first, by translation of his name, king of
righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace.
He is without father or mother or genealogy, and has neither
beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the son of God he
continues a priest forever.”
“So also Christ did
not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said
to him, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’; as he says also in
another place, ‘Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek.’”
Most Shi’ite sects
(with the exception of the Zaidites of Yemen) have given their “Imams” divine
attributes of absolute infallibility, knowledge of the past, the future and the unseen, the ability to
change destiny and control over the atoms of creation.
In so doing they set up rivals who share God’s unique attributes and who, in fact, become gods besides Allah.
5. Maintaining the unity of Allah’s
names also means that Allah’s names in the definite form cannot be given to His
creation unless preceded by the prefix Abd meaning “slave of” or “servant of.”
Many of
the Divine names in their indefinite form like Ra’uf and Rahim are allowable
names for me because Allah has used some of them in their indefinite forms to
refer to the Prophet:
“A messenger has
come to you from among yourselves who is grieved by whatever afflicts you.
He is full of concern for you, full of pity
[Ra’uf] and full of mercy
[Rahim] for the believers.”
(Qur’an 9: 128)
But Al-Ra’uf (the
One Most Full of Pity) and Al-Raheem (the Most Merciful) can only be used to
refer to men if they are preceded by Abd as in Abd Al-Ra’uf or Abd Al-Rahim,
since in the definite form they represent a level of perfection which only
belongs to God.
Similarly,
names like Abd Al-Rasool (slave of the messenger), Abd Al-Nabi (slave of the
Prophet), Abd Al-Husayn (slave of Husayn), etc., where people name themselves
slaves to other than Allah are also forbidden.
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