By OmarKN
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{So know, that there is no deity except Allah and ask forgiveness for your sin and for the believing men and believing women. And Allah knows of your movement and your resting place.} 47-19
{There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearer, the All-Seer.} 42-11
At the heart of existence[1] stands the reality of God, the One,[2]: the Absolute and Infinite, the Infinitely Good and All-Merciful, the One Who is at once transcendent and immanent[3], greater than all we can conceive or imagine, yet, as the Quran, the sacred scripture of Islam, attests, closer to us than our jugular vein:
{And when My servants ask you concerning Me, then surely I am very near; I answer the prayer of the suppliant when he calls on Me, so they should answer My call and believe in Me that they may walk in the right way.}[4]
The one God, known by his Arabic Name, Allah, is the central reality of Islam in all of its facets, and attestation to this oneness, which is called tawhīd , is the axis around which all that is Islamic revolves. Allah is beyond all duality and relationality, beyond the differences of gender and of all qualities that distinguish beings from each other in this world. Yet He is the source of all existence and all cosmic and human qualities as well as the End to Whom all things return.[5]
However, there is more at stake than philosophy, it is ”fleeing to God (Quran 51–50), which in the context of Islamic doctrine[6] is the essence of existence (´ain al-wujūd ). It is not a 'flight away from one thing towards another'[7], since in reality there is nothing in existence but God…”
Muhyiddīn Ibn ’Arabi then asks, “From whom do you flee and there is nought in existence but He?”[7]
{Therefore flee to Allah, surely I am a plain warner to you from Him.} 51–50
The point is not fleeing to a divinity of one’s own imagining, while not paying attention to what is mentioned in the verse which follows:
So someone who is able to unify those two verses, will know that God's words {so flee to God} refer to the flight from ignorance to knowledge.[9]{And make not something else (another god) an object of worship with Allah: I am from Him a Warner to you, clear and open!} 51–51
The cosmos, all of it, is a book inscribed (كتآب مَسطُور - Su 52–2),
since it is an orderly arrangement, parts of which
have been joined to other parts. Instant by instant in
every state it gives birth. There is nothing but the
appearance of entities perpetually.[8]
Metaphysics mainpageOriginal text has: At the heart of Islam ↩
He is One…/ On Wahdat-ul Wujūd, Allah’s ‘Being’
The Term Oneness of Being Means
The Necessary Existence Of Allah, by Ustadha Umm Sahl ↩
See for example: On the absolute unlikeliness of Allah with anything created ↩
Quran, Sura 2–186 also 50–16
{We verily created a man and We know what his soul whispereth to him, and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein.} ↩
HIN3 The Heart of Islam, S H Nasr p.3 ↩
doctrine: ONLY in the original, etymological meaning of (Latin) doctrina 'teaching, learning'. ↩
The Beauty of Oneness Witnessed in the Emptiness of the Heart ↩
Muhyiddīn Ibn ’Arabi:
”The cosmos and man were created with innate knowledge of God's existence and of the fact that the temporally originated thing is poor toward Him and in need of Him. Since this is the situation, everyone who has this attribute must {flee to God} in order to witness his own poverty and the pain in the soul which poverty gives to him and in order that God may give him independence inasmuch as he cuts himself off from everything but Him. Perhaps He will take away the pain of his poverty through that which gives joy, which is independence (ghinaa) through God.
However, this is a goal which cannot be actualised in any respect. Where anyone to gain independence through God, he would be independent of God, and being independent of God is impossible. So being independent through God is impossible. Nevertheless, God gives the seeker something during his seeking through which he makes him independent; the joy which he finds eliminates the pain of that specific poverty, not the pain of the universal poverty which cannot disappear from the positive thing – since poverty is its essential description – whether in the state of non-existence or in the state of existence. Therefore God places within the soul of the possible thing something through which he finds within himself the joy which eliminates the pain of seeking. Then God occasions another seeking of something else or of the subsistence of that thing he has gained; so it continues forever in this world and the next.
Since this is a person's state, he must withdraw and {flee} from those affairs which divert him from this situation, so that God may unveil his insight and his sight. Then he will witness the situation as it is in itself and he will know how to seek, from whom to seek, who does the seeking, and so on. He will know the meaning of God's words, {Surely God is the Independent the Praiseworthy} 31–26, that is, praised for His independence…”
SKK158 , see: [Booklist] + (III 263.16,35, 265.1)
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