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Allah

Sermon of Ali (may Allah be pleased with him): Excerpts

    "Glory to Allah in the highest, Whose glorification cannot be described in words; Whose blessings and bounties cannot be enumerated by reckoners and enumerators, and homage due to Him cannot be paid even by the most assiduous and persevering attempters. None can fully understand or explain His Being, however hard he may try. Reason and sagacity cannot visualize Him. Intelligence, understanding and attainments cannot attain the depth of knowledge to study or scrutinize the Godhead. Human faculties of conception, perception and learning, and attributes of volition, intuition and apprehension cannot perceive Him or fathom the extent of His Might and Glory. His attributes cannot be defined, limited or circumscribed. There do not exist words in any language to specify or define His qualities, peculiarities, characteristics and singularities. He is Eternal, therefore, no time could be imagined to say that He existed since then, similarly no period could be assigned for the duration of His existence.

"The first step of religion is to accept, understand and realize Him as the Lord; thorough understanding lies in conviction and confirmation, and the right conviction is to sincerely believe that there is no god but He. The true belief in His Oneness is to realize that He is so absolutely Pure and above nature, that nothing can be added to or subtracted from Him; because one should realize that there is no difference between His Person and His Attributes.

"Whoever accepts His Attributes to be an addition to His Being abandons the concept of monotheism and believes in duality (He and His Attributes). Such a person in fact believes Him to exist in parts. One who holds such a belief, cannot form a true concept of Allah. He is ignorant and will always try to believe in some creation of his imagination as his god. And whoever holds such a belief accepts limitations in His Being and confines Him to a place or to particular attributes and brings Him on a level with His creatures.

"To believe that He is invested with the characteristic of residing in a particular place (Heaven or Earth) and to point towards Him accordingly, or to believe that He is restricted to a special position or occasion (that is to localize Him) or to consider that certain place or time can exist without Him, and can be void of His Omniscience and Omnipresence is a conception which results in assigning Godhead to a numerical unity.

"To assign a place to Him by considering Him within or over a place means to subject Him to the limitations of space and to allot Him an importance secondary to space; it also means to believe that some place can exist outside the sphere of His Omnipresence.

"His existence is Eternal; He neither came into being at some period of time, nor was He created. His being did not come into existence from non-entity. He is with everything but not physically and bodily; He is away from everything but not by way of bodily distance or being unconcerned and indifferent to it. He acts and works but His action or work does not require any movement or help of any parts of body, instruments or machinery. He had vision even when there was nothing to see. He is One and Alone, because He has no companion who would keep His company or whose absence He would miss.

"He originated the creation without passing through any anxiety, and without first trying experiments and benefiting by the results or improving the models, and without finding Himself obliged to move about forced to carefully work out a particular plan or line of action." [Nahajul Balagha (Peak of Eloquence), Islamic Seminary Publication, pp.137-140]