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In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate,
Praise be to Allah, Lord of all the Worlds
Belief consist of belief in Allah,
His angels, His books, His messengers, the last day, and
belief that the Decree both the good of it and the evil of
it, the sweet of it and the bitter of it is from Allah.
We say about Allah's unity,
believing by Allah's help that:
1. Allah is One, without any partners.
2. There is nothing like Him.
3. There is nothing that can overwhelm Him.
4. There is no god other than Him.
5. He is the Eternal without a beginning and enduring
without end.
6. He will never perish nor come to an end.
7. Nothing happens except what He wills.
8. No imagination can conceive of Him and no understanding
can comprehend of Him
9. He is different from any created being.
10. He is living and never dies and is eternally active and
never sleeps.
11. He creates without His being in need to do so and
provides for His creation without any effort.
12. He causes death with no fear and restores to life
without difficulty.
13. He has always existed together with His attributes since
before creation. Bringing creation into existence did not
add anything to His attributes that was not already there.
As He was, together with His attributes, in pre-eternity, so
He will remain throughout endless time.
14. It was not only after the act of creation that He could
be described as "the Creator" nor was it only by the act of
origination that He could be described as "the Originator".
15. He was always the Lord even when there was nothing to be
Lord of, and always the Creator even when there was no
creation.
16. In the same way that He is the "Bringer to life of the
dead," after He has brought them to life a first time, and
deserves this name before bringing them to life, so too He
deserves the name of "Creator" before He has created them.
17. This is because He has power to do everything,
everything is dependent on Him, everything is easy for Him,
and He does not need anything. "There is nothing like Him
and He is the Hearer, the Seer" (42:11).
18. He created creation with His knowledge.
19. He is Exalted beyond having opposites or equals.
20. Anyone who describes Allah as being in any way the same
as a human being has become an unbeliever. All those who
grasp this will take heed and refrain from saying things
such as the disbelievers say, and they will know that He, in
his attributes, is not like human beings.
21. The seeing of Allah by the People of the Garden is true,
without their vision being all encompassing and without the
manner of their vision being known. As the Book of our Lord
has expressed it: "Faces on that Day radiant, looking at
their Lord" (75:22-3). The explanation of this is as Allah
knows and wills. Everything that has come down to us about
this in authentic Traditions from the Messenger, may Allah
bless him and grant him peace, in authentic traditions, is
as he said and means what he intended. We do not delve into
that, trying to interpret it according to our opinions or
letting our imaginations have free rein. No one is safe in
his religion unless he surrenders himself completely to
Allah, the Exalted and Glorified, and to His Messenger
(peace be upon him) and leaves the knowledge of ambiguous
things to the One who knows them. Knowledge and correct
belief, and that he turns between disbelief and belief,
confirmation and denial and acceptance and rejection. He
will he subject to whisperings and find himself confused and
full of doubt, being neither an accepting believer nor
denying rejecter.
22. Belief of a person in the seeing of Allah by the People
of the Garden is not correct if he interprets or imagines
what it is like according to his own understanding, since
the interpretation of this seeing (or indeed, the meaning of
any of the subtle phenomena which are in the realm of
Lordship), is in avoiding its interpretation and strictly
adhering to the submission. This is the religion of Muslims.
Anyone who does not guard himself against negating the
attributes of Allah, or likening Allah to something else,
has gone astray and has failed to understand Allah's glory,
because our Lord, the Glorified and the Exalted, can only be
described in terms of oneness and absolute singularity and
no creation is in any way like Him.
23. He is beyond having limits placed on Him, or being
restricted, or having parts or limbs. Nor is He contained by
the six directions as all created things are.
24. The Throne (al-arsh) and the Chair (al-kursi) are true.
25. He is independent of the Throne and that which is
beneath the Throne.
26. He encompasses all things and that which is above it,
and what He has created is incapable of encompassing Him.
27. We say with belief, acceptance, submission that Allah
took Abraham as an intimate friend and that He spoke
directly to Moses.
28. Allah responds to people's supplications and gives them
what they ask for.
29. Allah has absolute control over everything and nothing
has any control over Him. Nothing can be independent of
Allah even for the blinking of an eye, and whoever considers
himself independent of Allah for the blinking of an eye is
guilty of unbelief and becomes one of the people of
perdition.
30. Allah is angered and He is pleased but not in the same
way as any creature.
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