Shia Islamic Belief System 13/46

'Audhu bi Llahi min al-Shaytan al-Rajim, Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim. Al-Hamdulillahi Rabb al-Alamin, wa as-salatu wa as-salam 'ala Sayyidina, wa nabiyyina Abi 'l-Qasim al-Mustafa Muhammad wa 'Aalih, at-tahirin.

As-salam 'alaykum brothers and sisters, and welcome to another session of Mizan Live covering different aspects of Islamic thought. I hope everyone is well. This is the last session we are having in March and after this week, inshaAllah, we are going to move on to April, inshaAllah. To know which of us are going to have sessions in April, how many sessions, please just look out for the flyer that we are going to be putting out soon for the April sessions. I know that Sheikh Mahdi might be doing a couple less sessions in the coming month. I will probably be doing all of the Wednesdays of the upcoming month meaning the month of April.

Salamun 'alaykum to everyone who is joining us and thanks for tuning in. So let us go over last week's articles very quickly before we get into today's lesson. So last week we went through, we started with article 34 or 38, excuse me, of the book Doctrines of Shia Islam. In the article 38, Ayatullah Subhani, he starts talking about, from Article 38 onwards, rather, he starts talking about sifat al-fa'al of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala stuff that we have explained before, talked about before, and most of you knew about more or less, even before the sessions.

So sifatu al-fa'al, those attributes of God's divine action. I am not going to go over the description of that any more, I think we have repeated it enough. There are three things he discusses in this chapter, which is made up of three articles. This chapter has three articles in it, if I am not mistaken, which is article 38 to 41, if I am not mistaken. One second, excuse me. Articles 38, 39, 40, 41. So these three articles. So this chapter is made up of three articles.

Now, each article speaks about one of three of the divine attributes of God that have to do with divine action. And as-salam 'alaykum to the rest of you who are joining in saying Salam. Article 38 talks about God's words, God's speech. And I discussed that in depth last week.

We know that the Qur'an talks about this, he brought a verse Ayatullah Subhani, Surah Shura verse 51 where he talks about how God speaks. So we all know God speaks to people sometimes. But how? That was the question that we had. How? So he explained, according to the verse, Surah Shura verse 51, it was either through "wahi", revelation or inspiration, "min wara'i hijab", from behind a veil, and that was explained last week as well, "aw yursila Rasulan", or He sends a messenger or an agent, an angel, to come down. So that was how God speaks.

So the closest you will get to speech actually, in these three is the second one, "min wara'i hijab", from behind a veil. In other words, a voice or sound is made and words are said, but not through a mouth, not a God has a mouth, but rather is happening is that God is making this voice or sound and meanings are put across to the person, the addressee of those words, like in Prophet Moses case, we all know about the story of Prophet Musa and how Allah kind of quote unquote spoke with him.

That is the closest you will get to actual, like, human speech when it comes to God, "min wara'ee hijab", from behind a veil. But there was a explanation there too. It does not mean that God has a voice, does not mean that God has a mouth, and there are some hadiths as well that I think we covered. Now, that was one meaning of kalamu Allah or the speech of God.

We also had another interpretation of kalamu Allah, kalimat Ullah. And over there it was not about speech, it was about God's action and what God does, and that how God, whatever He does is a sign of Him, in other words, hence it is an action, it is a kalima of Him. Because the kalima and word is a sign of the person speaking that word. So in that sense, it is a sign and everything that has been created is a sign of Allah.

And then this famous verse of Surah Kahf verse 109, that if the sea was to be ink and the trees were to be pens, the kalimat of Allah could not be written. And Allama Tabataba'i explained in his tafsir that here kalimat and words does not mean actual words that God speaks. If we were to transcribe them, we will not have enough room or paper or ink or pens to do it. No, no, he said, what is meant here is anything, any object that has been created, anything that has existence, is a kalimat Ullah.

So, we had two interpretation for kalamu Allah, kalimat Ullah, speech of God. One of these two, either it is through a veil, from behind the veil, through inspiration/revelation, or through sending a messenger, meaning an angel, that was one interpretation. Another interpretation is that kalima, when we say kalamu Allah, it means the things that Allah has created, so khaluqu Ilah, in other words.

Both of them, in both of their interpretations will be attributes and qualities of God's action, not God's essence, God's action, because He has to do them, He has to bring them about.

And then we move on to Article 39, since we were talking about the word of God, the speech of God and so on, we had a problem and that was, "mihnatu al-Qur'an", the inquisition of the Qur'an. As I said and explained before, there was a little history here that during the time of some of the Abbasid khaleefas, there was a whole theological discussion. Is the Qur'an qadeem or is it haadith? Is the Qur'an something that is created or is it something that was eternal and it was always there from the beginning, there was no time that the Qur'an did not exist?

For you and I, this might seem like, you know, not a very important discussion, but back then, people got in big trouble for not believing in the fact that the Qur'an is haadith, something that was created and did not exist all the time. And the khaleefas, some khaleefas would push for it until Muttawakil came into power and eventually stopped this. Anyway, there was a history to that, "mihnatu al-Qur'an".

Ayatollah Subhani, he says, look, we can solve the problem very easily. When we talk, when we talk about the speech of God and the words of God, we can tell if this word of God, whether it is the Qur'an or anything else, is haadith or qadeem, is something that was created and did not exist before or was not eternal with God or was eternal from the beginning. And when I say eternal, of course, it is for lack of better words, eternal means something that never dies, never ends in the future. I am talking about from the beginning it was there.

So anyway, he says, look, if what you mean by Qur'an is the book of the Qur'an and the words that are in it, one. Or two, if you mean the words that Angel Jibra'eel brought down to the Holy Prophet, two. Or three, what you mean by Qur'an is the concepts and meanings and those kinds of things and the stories that you have in the Qur'an regarding the prophets and their stories. If any of these three is meant by the Qur'an, that means the Qur'an is going to be haadith because these are things that have to be created. They were not there from the beginning, the prophets were not there from the beginning, their stories were not there from the beginning. Right?

But if what you mean by Qur'an is God's knowledge of what will be in the Qur'an, then yes, it is something that is qadeem, it was always there because it has to do with God's knowledge, not with other things. Anyway, that is a long story, and we kept it short even last week because it is not too important, in my opinion. This is something that is in classical theology you will find the debate of "mihnatul Qur'an". We are going to move on. He just mentioned this in passing because we were talking about the word of God and the biggest word of God is the Qur'an. So he just felt that as befitting just to insert that into the book, in this part of the book.

So that was one attribute of action, one of the sifat al-fa'al of God, the speech of God. And then you had sidq. Sidq, the truthfulness or always being right. And we talked about that. If someone is not going to be truthful, it is because either they are mistaken or they are lying, both of which have their roots in deficiencies. A person who lies or a person who makes mistakes, and that as a result, you can not call them someone who is truthful, then this person, the mistake they are making or the lie that they are committing is rooted in a deficiency they have. Either they are ignorant or they are in need or they are in trouble and in danger. And that is why they have to do things like this.

All of which do not apply to Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. So, Allah is as-Sadiq, the one who is truthful and is always right, not wrong, not mistaken, because He has knowledge and He has power, nothing can force Him, nothing can get Him in trouble, nothing can endanger Him, and He is not ignorant as a result to make mistakes either. So that is the Sidq of Allah. So that is another one of sifat al-fa'al, one of the attributes of action of God. That when He speaks or when He says something, then He is right about it. Either, right, He is right and truthful about it.

Wa 'alaykum as-salam sisters who are joining us and brothers. All right, the last sifat al-fa'al that was discussed was hikma of Allah, the wisdom of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. So wisdom can have different meanings. What he defines wisdom as he gave it to parts. Number one, he says that whatever Allah does is done in the best form, number one. Number two - and the best way possible. Number two, is that Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, when He does things they are purposeful, they are not in vain, they are not just for nothing, there is a purpose behind them. So what He does is purposeful and in the best way, is done in the best way possible for that action. That is wisdom. A person who is wise makes sure to do things in a purposeful way and in the best manner.

And I gave examples of how people who are not wise, they will do things that are not purposeful sometimes, or they will do things that are purposeful, but they are not done in the best way to secure the interests of the person doing them. Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala, none of this applies to Him, either. He is the All-wise, that means He will never do something that goes against these two main pillars of wisdom.

For that, he brought two verses of the Qur'an and he also brought rational argumentation as well, he brought that. So for the verses, he said, look at the verse that says: "sun'a Allahi al-ladhee atqana kulla shay'" (27:88). This is the creation of God, the one whom made everything in its perfect, in the most perfect manner. So that proves, according to the Qur'an, that when He does something, He will do it in the best way.

To prove that He does not do things in vain and everything He does is purposeful, "ma khalaqna as-sama'a wa al-ardh wa ma baynahuma batila" (38:27) . We did not create the sky and the Earth and whatever is in between them in vain, batilan, in falsehood. No, everything has a purpose for it, there is a reason for it, it is not batil, it has to do with truth.

So that was Qur'anic proof that whatever He does is in line with wisdom. But then he also brought a rational argument as well. He said, listen, if we have proven from before and have concluded from before that God has ultimate perfection, when something is ultimate perfection, we have to understand that sometimes people they are mistaken about, when it comes to their understanding of ultimate perfection. If we understand what perfection is, you can only expect things that are done by this perfect entity to be perfect as well or in the most perfect manner that they can be.

So that is his rational argument. He says Allah is wise. Why? Because wisdom had these two pillars in its definition, and since He is all perfection, you can be sure that these two pillars of the definition of wisdom will be secured in everything that He does.

Al-Hamdilillah. That is so far, those were three of the sifat al-fa'al of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. He moves on and he closes the chapter of as-sifat al thubuteeya, the positive actions or the affirmative qualities, excuse me, of God, the affirmative qualities, those qualities that can be attributed to Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala. He closes the chapter there, which were of course, these qualities were two parts, as we discussed, some were sifat ud-dhat and some were sifat al-fa'al. Some were qualities of His essence, some were qualities of His action.

All right. Closing that chapter, opening up the next chapter. And that is today's lesson that we are talking now about the negated sifat, the negated qualities of God. When we say negated qualities of God, it does not mean that God has certain qualities that are negated. No. Negated qualities of God means the qualities, the attributes, the characteristics that we cannot associate God with, we cannot attribute to God, because they will lead to a deficiency somewhere in Him.

So he begins by in article 32, he goes over what sifat al-salbeeya were, these negated sifat, these negated qualities. He says we recalled above or explained before, that the attributes of God can be divided into two categories. Those of Jamal and those of Jallal, those that pertain to perfection and Jamal are referred to as attributes of beauty or positive affirmative attributes. While those that refer indirectly to God by negating what He is not, and which relate to imperfection or deficiency that we can not attribute to Him, are referred to as attributes of majesty or as negative attributes or as I like to call them, negated attributes.

What is the purpose of these negated qualities? The intention behind the formulation of negated attributes is to negate from the divine reality in Allah, any possible susceptibility to imperfection. So we are like, be careful, do not attribute these things to Him, because if you do, we are attributing to Him deficiency and we are afraid He is way higher than that. The intention behind the formulation negative attributes is to negate from the divine reality any possible susceptibility to imperfection, deficiency or inadequacy. Insofar as the divine essence is utterly self-sufficient and constitutes in itself absolute perfection, it is necessarily devoid of any attributes that derive from imperfection and dependency.

So he is explaining how God is and how you cannot describe Him in any manner that would imply His imperfection or dependency. From this point of view, Muslim theologians argue that God does not have a body. So as a result of this, we can not say He has a body. So these are some examples of negated attributes. Having a body, nor is He material.

He is not a locus for any other entity. What does that mean? Locus, not locust, but locus. Over here in the Farsi I am looking at it, it means nothing can, He can not go into something else. I guess they are trying to say that we do not believe what the Christian faith might hold. Nor is He incarnate in any other entity. Such features pre-suppose the imperfection and dependency proper to contingent existent entities. If we ever attribute these things to Him, then we are attributing to Him dependency, something that has to do with contingent beings, mumkin al-wujud, not wajib al-wujud, which is God.

OK, so then he moves into one of these attributes in particular and wants to discuss it in depth. Which one is it? He says among the attributes deriving from imperfection is the capacity of being seen. The fact that God can be seen, mar'ee. In order for, why is one of these attributes that are negated from Him, the fact, the capacity of being seen, visibility. Why?

He says because in order to be seen, an object must fulfill the conditions of visual sense-perception. If you want to be able to see something, brothers and sisters, it has to fulfill a few conditions that have to do with our senses. Such as, one, being in a particular place. I can only see something if it is in a particular place and I look in that place, at that place. If I do not look in that direction, I will not see it anymore, right. So God has to be somewhere so that I can see Him. Being somewhere itself is a problem for God, one.

Two, being illuminated by some source, think about it, if we want to be able to see Him, then at night, for example, when there is no light, we can not see Him anymore. In other words, there is some need here to be, for light to be able to be seen, for God to be able to be seen, for us to be able to describe Him as something that can be seen. So that means He is in need of something here, which is impossible when it comes to Him.

And third, being separate, in essence, from the preceding subject. Think about it. If something is within me, I can not see it anymore. It has to be outside and away from me. There has to be a distance between me and that thing for it to be able to be seen. So but when Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala in the Qur'an, for example, He says, I am with you, I am in your heart, I am closer to you than the artery or the vein of your heart and your jugular vein and things like that. All of that we are going have to put aside then. God has to be somewhere in daytime, far away from me, away from me, so I can see Him. All of these are batil, all of these are wrong and false about God.

So, you can not be a being that is seen as mar'ee, as visible. So what is your reason for this and any other reason? That was the first reason that it leads to these deficiencies. He says that in addition, we can say that a God that can be seen, this part is important, I need you to pay attention. We can say that in addition, we can say that a God that can be seen cannot escape from the following two conditions. Number one, either the totality of its being would be visible or a part of its being.

When you want to say that God is visible, what does that mean? That means, OK, either Him in His entirety is visible or at least part of Him is visible. Right. It is one of these two. So what is wrong with that?

He goes on and says, in the first case, you know, when we can see Him entirely, the All-encompassing divine reality would be encompassed and delimited. So that means that if God is going to be able to be perceived by us in His totality, it means that we are encompassing Him. In one way or the other, in any sense. That goes against Him being unlimited and God cannot be encompassed. As a matter of fact, He encompasses all things.

As a matter of fact, not even He encompasses all things. The Qur'an says His mercy encompasses all things. So a trait of His is all encompassing, let alone His essence itself, and then you want to say God is visible, no. So God is visible in the sense that we can see Him in His entirety for sure is wrong.

What if, when we say God is visible, we can see Him, what if we mean a part of Him can be seen? Ayatullah Subhani continues to answer this one now. He says, and in the second, it will consist of parts, both of which conditions are far removed from the divine reality. He says, look, if you are going to say I can see part of Him and the other part of Him I will not see, what you just did is broke Him down into parts and God does not have parts. God is one all encompassing, unlimited, simple being of existence. That is all He is.

Now, we do not want to get philosophical here. What does it mean that He is simple existence and none other than that? We can not get into that. But that goes against the fact that we believe in, and not just Muslim theologians, but Western theologians, Western philosophers, they all agree, at least the mainstream of them, that God is not made up of parts. Why? Because if He is made up of parts that means He is in need of His parts or else He will not exist anymore. Right? If He does not exist anymore, excuse me, if He does not have any parts anymore, He is not going to exist. That means He is in need, that goes against Him being the wajib al-wujud and how everything is dependent on Him, not Him being dependent on anything.

In this case, if He has parts, if He is made up of parts, that means He relies on His parts or else He will not exist, and that is dependency itself and it goes against Him being God to begin with.

Now, he adds something here, it is not necessary to our discussion, but it is nice. He goes on, Aytullah Subhani, he says now all that we said has to do with, is regarding the vision of, he says, the corporeal, sensible vision. The visibility of God through our vision, through our eyes, when we say He is not visible, it means through the physical eyes that we have.

Or else the eyes of the heart is a different story, he says. The eyes of the heart is a different story. Inward spiritual perception, which sees by the light of perfected faith, this is different. Not only is it possible, he says, but he says awliya' AIlah have achieved that and that is the goal of the awliya' AIlah, to somehow, through their connection to the unseen, through connection to the Wajib al-Wujud Himself and Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala Himself to be able to understand Him or see Him with the eyes of their heart.

Of course, this is metaphorical, the heart does not have eyes. So it is talking about a cognition and ma'rifa of God in reality. And we have all heard that famous hadith by Amir al-Mu'minin that when someone asked him, have you seen your Lord? He says, I would not worship a Lord I can not see. And so the person ask, well, how do you see him? And the Imam answers "la tudrikah ul'iyoon bi mushahadata al-'ayan walakin tudrikuhu 'l-qulub bi haqa'iqi il -Iman". The way I see or the way He can be seen is not through the eyes and through sight and seeing but rather the hearts are what see Him.

So, everything that we said about God not being seen has to do with the eyes of the face, not the eyes of the heart. Now, that was an intellectual, rational argumentation for why God cannot be seen and that one of the qualities, or negated qualities of God is visibility and the capacity to be seen. In other words, the fact that He cannot be described as something that is visible. These are all rational, 'aqlee, intellectual arguments.

Now, what about the Qur'an? What about the Qur'an? Does the Qur'an also speak about this or not? He says, yes, the Qur'an also mentions here and there that He can not be seen.

The verse he brings here Surah A'raf, verse 143, says that when Prophet Musa asked Allah, Oh Allah: "Rabbi arini andhur ilaik" (7:143). Show me Yourself so I can see you. What did Allah say? "Qala lan taranee"(7:143). You will never see Me, you will never see Me.

So, in other words, brothers and sisters, if there is anyone on the face of the Earth during Prophet Musa's time that will be able to see Him, it should be Prophet Musa, right? The fact that Allah tells him that you will never see Me shows that it is not possible to see Him, or else why would Allah deprive Prophet Musa of His sight, you know?

Now, someone might ask, though, but look, you are talking about God not being, not being possible to see God, right? What do you do with the verses number 21 and 22 of Surah Qiyamah: "wujuhun yawma idhin nadhirah" (75:22). "Ila Rabbiha nadhirah" (75:23). That day will faces be radiant, looking at their Lord, wujuhun, faces, yawma idhin nadhirah. They are very happy, these faces are happy and joyous, ila Rabbiha nadhirah, and they are looking at their Lord.

What do you do about this verse? Ayatullah Subhani does not say this. And he answers, I will share the answer that he gives with you. But first, I want to add a little bit, something that he does not say. First of all, brothers and sisters, the Akhira is a whole different story. We do not know how it is going to be. Of course, mainstream 'ulama based on the Qur'an and many verses of the Qur'an say that Akhira is going to be a material resurrection. There will be a material resurrection on Yawm al-Qiyama.

But still, we do not know exactly how things are going to work there, so just discussing these verses gets a little hard at the get go. Right from the get go, what we have is that, look, this is, we are talking about dunya and God being visible in the dunya in this world we live in right now. What does it mean? How does it work in the Akhira? We do not know. We do not know. But anyway, we can still discuss it a little bit.

You know what Ayatullah Subhani says here? He says that "ila Rabbiha nadhira", the tafseer of this verse does not mean that they are looking at their Lord, necessarily. It is saying that they are looking at their Lord, meaning they are waiting. They are waiting for the, or looking forward to the blessings of their lord. You know, when they say you are looking to someone or looking up to someone for something, I am looking to him for his money. Does not necessarily mean that I am looking at him right now with my eyes, physically. I might live on the other side of the world, but they will say, these people on this side of the world are looking to you for help. Looking to you means that they have hope in your, are looking forward to, are awaiting your assistance, your help.

The same wording we will have in Arabic as well. I mean, there is a lot of details regarding this verse, "ila Rabbiha nadhira". Some have said "ila" is the word that whose plural is aala'. That is one tafseer. I do not want to go into details, I might confuse you more. But some say no, "ila Rabbiha nadhira" means, "nadhira" here comes from intidhar, awaiting something. Some say no, it means to look but look forward to, etc.. Lots of different interpretations here.

What Ayatullah Subhani chooses to mention as tafseer of this verse here, is that "ila Rabbiha nadhira" means that they are looking forward to the blessings or looking to the blessings of their Lord, not looking at their Lord, necessarily, with physical eyes. This does not prove anything, especially since, as I said, this is the Akhira we are talking about here, we are not talking about normal dunya. We do not know how it works, how the looking over there necessarily would work. Maybe over there, even like, it says, faces, but it is metaphorical of the hearts, again. I do not know really, there is a million things you can say here.

OK, Ayatullah Subhani, you are telling us that the verse is talking about looking forward to the blessings of the Lord, right? OK, what is your reason for it? What is your reasoning for it? Because we know brothers and sisters, when it comes to academics or academia, we do not, just because a great individual has said something, we do not necessarily accept it right away. We have to see what their reasoning is. Usually those big names usually know more than us, know better than us, and usually they will probably be closer to the truth than us. But all in all, at the end of the day, they are not ma'soom.

So, Ayatullah Subhani, what is your reasoning for it? He says, look, first of all, it says, the faces are looking to the Lord. If actual looking with eyes was meant, then the Qur'an should have said, it should have said that the eyes are looking at Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala that day. But that is not the wording of the verse is. The wording of the verse is the faces are looking and this is metaphorical. Faces do not look, the eyes of the face look.

So he is kind of disproving that it is not looking with eyes or else they would have said, the eyes are looking not the faces are looking. Personally, I do not like that too much, but it is not too bad of a reasoning either. I mean, it is something that is worth answering at least.

Number two reason for why "ila Rabbiha nadhira" means they are looking forward to the blessing of their Lord, he says, and this one is a good, I like this reasoning more, those of you who have done tafseer, I have done tafseer with will know what I am talking about, "qareenat il-muqabala", is what he uses.

Lots of times you can tell the meaning of something by its opposite. Sometimes it is hard to figure something out, but you see the opposite of it, you know exactly what it means. So the opposite of it will help you to understand that thing itself, what that term itself means or what is meant by it. So here he uses this clue. He uses this clue in his favor.

He says, look, as we go on through these verses, it talks about the good people: "wujuhun yawma idhin nadhirah" (75:22). "Ila Rabbiha nadhirah" (75:23). True. But then, let me see if I can pull it up actually. This is Surah Qiyama. So it says: "wujuhun yawma idhin nadhirah" (75:22). "Ila Rabbiha nadhirah" (75:23). This is verses 22 to 23. So the address here is wrong, I said 21 and 22. It is 22 and 23.

"Wa wujoohun yawma idhin basira" (75:24). Which means, and some faces will be scowling on that day, and frowning on that day. All right, so now what happens to them? They are expecting "tadhunu an yuf'ala biha faqira"(75:25) . That they are expecting to be inflicted by some back breaking punishment and chastisement. Ayatullah Subhani, he says, look, we will look at these verses and it says wujoohun again, wujooh means faces.

OK, so let me go through these four verses very quickly again for you guys. It says wujoohun faces on that day will be"Wujuhun yawma idhin nadhirah" (75:22), will be in brightness of happiness. Faces will be in brightness of happiness, looking at the Lord. And faces will be frowning that expect a very harsh chastisement to befall them. So those are the four verses.

When we look at the verses that say, the verse that says or those two verses that say there are frowning faces, what are those frowning faces doing? They are expecting chastisement to come. Expecting is the verb. Expecting is the word, verb. All right, so what is for sure is that eyes do not expect things, right? What is meant here that faces are expecting it, means it is that the people are expecting it. These people who have frowning faces are expecting punishment. So faces here is denoting people, or faces actually, not the eyes in the face.

If that is the case, then in the previous, this is the opposite of that, the previous verses that talked about the good people and their faces shining, if that one was expecting bad stuff to happen to it, then this one is expecting good things to happen to it. "Ila Rabbiha nadhirah" (75:23). Not that it is looking to its Lord, it is looking forward to the blessings, versus the other one that is looking forward to or expecting the chastisement. I hope it is clear, I tried my best to explain it. This one it is a little more technical, this qareena, this clue that he explains, qareenat ul-muqabala.

Let me read off the book and see how good the book translates this part. It says, as a parallel, one second, excuse me. The book just like puts two or three paragraphs together and does not separate them, so it is hard to find exactly where. OK, here we go.

"Secondly, the discourse of the Surah in question refers to two groups." So what are we discussing again here brothers and sisters? We are trying to figure out what the Qur'an means when it says: "Wujuhun yawma idhin nadhirah" (75:22), "ila Rabbiha nadhirah" (75:23). That faces are looking to God. We want to see if this is looking to God means looking with their eyes to Allah and actually seeing now a being by the name of God, or no, something metaphorical is meant here that they are expecting the blessings of the Lord. That is what we are trying to figure out.

Ayatullah Subhani said, it is their expecting blessings of the Lord. What is his reasoning? He says, the discourse of the Surah in question refers to two groups. One with bright and radiant faces, whose anticipated and expected reward is made clear by the verse, "looking at their lord". And the other group with grim and anguished faces, whose anticipated punishment is alluded to by the verse that "they know that some great disaster is about to befall them".

The meaning of the second phrase is clear, that talks about the bad people. They know that some painful punishment will soon befall them and they are dreading its imminent advent. As a parallel to the comparison between the two groups, we can make use of another aspect of the meaning of the first verse, that "looking to their Lord" means the same thing, that they are expecting a blessing, just like how those other ones are expecting a punishment. So "looking" here does not necessarily mean looking with the eyes. It means expecting just like the second verse where it means, where it is talking about people expecting things, some bad things to happen.

Oh, it is tough, it is really tough, these technical terms and explanations sometimes can get a little hard. Now, hopefully we got it across. Brother is asking, so everything is metaphorical in the Qur'an? he says.

We just covered one verse. We just covered one verse where it is metaphorical, where we have reason to believe that it is metaphorical because if we take it in its literal sense, it will not add up with one, intellectual reasoning and two, it will not add up with other verses of the Qur'an.

And Ayatollah Subhani will say this as we go on as well. Right after this, actually, he says, in addition to reason number one and number two for this ayah, this verse, meaning that they are expecting the blessings of their Lord, in addition to the two reasons we mentioned, there is a third reason.

And that is when we want to do tafseer of other verses, when we want to do tafseer of verses we have to look at other verses as well and make sure the verses read with each other. Or else we have to reinterpret one of them that goes against other verses. For here, for sure, seeing God with the eyeball is not a possibility because it was already mentioned why. It leads to deficiency in God's essence, even in yawm al-qiyama. Being able to see Him with a physical eye is not going to be possible. It is not like I am going to see Him, oh, this is God. Why? Because those three things that he said in the beginning, Ayatullah Subhani, will come into the picture.

OK, I see God, that means He is there, not here. Well, He is here too, though. He has to be illuminated enough for me to see Him. If it is dark, I can not see Him. And He has to have, He has to be in a place for me to see Him. All of these go against Him being God. So even in yawm al-qiyama, if He gives us physical eyes, we are not going to be seeing Him. So this is what pushes us Brother Shuja', pushes us to know that this verse is probably being it is a metaphorical one. OK, this is the verse that is being metaphorical. This does not mean everything in the Qur'an is not metaphorical just because one of these verses was metaphorical, no. So all these other verses, we take them in their true meaning.

But at the same time, this has been explained, the Qur'an has been written just like every other book and every other language, sometimes things are used metaphorically as well. Sometimes it helps in the understanding of things. Sometimes it stresses on things. I can always say, if I said something to you ten times and repeated it to you ten times, and I am upset about it when you are asking me for the eleventh time, I can either say I told you this ten times already, or to highlight how upset I am about this, I can tell you, hey man, I have told you this a million times. A million times is not true, literally, but it is exaggeration here.

These are different things that are used in literature to highlight certain things, to underline certain things, to bolden them in the minds of people. God is no exception when it comes to speaking to us in our languages, in the way we speak to each other. We exaggerate sometimes, we use a figurative language sometimes, so on and so forth. So the Qur'an will have some verses sometimes that are like that as well. We have to understand that, it does not mean everything now in the Qur'an is metaphorical just because ten verses out of one hundred verses in the Qur'an are metaphorical.

After all of this and him explaining these three reasons, for what is meant by "illa Rabbiha nadhira", does not mean that you can see Him on the Day of Judgment. Three reasons he brought, what were they again? Very quickly. Number one was the Qur'an first attributes the sight of these people to their faces, not their eyes, number one. Number two, as we look at the verses that come after these verses, it is talking about how people are expecting punishment, and the same wording is used, but they are expecting punishment now. So that must be what is meant by those who are seeing their Lord, meaning, expecting something from their Lord, which is blessings. That was the second reasoning. Third reasoning was, hey, if we take this verse to mean that they are actually seeing God, it will not read with other verses of the Qur'an as well.

OK, yes, it is a tough one, though. It is a tough one in the sense that some people might actually, even in the Shi'a mufasareen, some people might believe that no, we can see God on the Day of Judgment. I mean, I am not going to say that this is something everyone accepts, but you can be sure that I think mainstream muffasirs and those who do tafseer of Qur'an, that is what they think. So these are the three reasons for why God can not be seen on the Day of Judgment, according to that verse, "ila Rabbiha nadhirah" (75:23).

In the end, Ayatullah Subhani, he talks about something else, to be honest with you guys, I did not really understand why he even explains this, says this, and it is something on the side, that is what he says, and that is why he uses the word, "It also becomes clear from the above arguments that" such so-and-so and so-and-so, but I do not even want to get into that. I think it is very confusing and it is unnecessary for our discussion here.

I am not going to go into the next article, I am not going to go into the next article because it is going to drag on, it is going to take a long time to cover it. I am just going to explain it, give an introduction to it and we will leave the rest for next week. As I said, next week is going to be April. So I want to get everyone to look out for the flyer that we are going to be putting up with the schedule of these sessions, which al-hamdu lil-Lah these sessions are wonderful. I thank everyone for tuning in because wherever I go, I will have a few people who will tell me, "oh yeah, we follow that, we can not watch it live, but we tune in later and we watch it, we listen to it on our way to work." I put the audio of all of these, I put them in a telegram channel that I have as well, so people who want to listen to it, they can listen to it. So al-hamdu lil-Lah, we are getting good feedback and I thank all of you for that.

So just to give an introduction to next week's topic. We are done with sifat thubuteeya, right? Affirmative qualities, that itself was divided into two parts. The sifat ad-dhat and sifat al-fa'al, qualities of action versus qualities of essence, that we were done with. Today we finished as-sifat al-salbeeya, the negated qualities of God. And he gave just one example, the fact the visibility of God and the capacity to be seen, that capacity to be seen of God and how this, these are qualities that can never be attributed to God because they lead to deficiency and dependency. I do not want to sound like I said independency. They lead to imperfection and dependency. Those are sifat al-salbeeya, the qualities you cannot, those are the qualities that are negated from God. That chapter, that bigger chapter is done now.

Then we are going to move on into those qualities that if it was just us and our minds, we would never even know that this quality existed, this quality of God. The way God describes Himself sometimes in the Qur'an, for example, when He talks about how He has a hand, how He has a face, how He has an eye and so on and so forth. These sifat, these qualities, they are referred to sifat khabariya.

And to be honest with you, in other conventional theology books, I have not seen this category or a title like this given to a category of God's qualities, to be honest with you. So this might be his, he might have coined this, I do not know. And I might be totally wrong, but I am just being honest. I have not seen this before. But what he means by it, informative he calls it, the translations says here, informative attributes, which I disagree with this equivalent, I am sorry. Informative usually means that that is something that is informing you. I think what sifat khabariya means is, it means the informed attributes of God. Those attributes which God has informed us of Himself, or else we would have never been able to figure it out on our own.

We were able to figure out the knowledge of God, the power of God, the truthfulness of God, all these things we were able to figure out on our own. The fact that God cannot be seen, that is something we can figure out on our own with our mind. But then there are some things, if God did not call Himself those things, we would have never thought of that, like God has a hand, God has an eye. But you will see, and you could probably guess right now that most of these things, these attributes are metaphorical, once again.

When God speaks about Himself, He is usually, He tells us that, look, I am going to explain myself to you, I am going to describe myself to you, but at the end of the day, your understanding of Me is still limited. The words that I use to describe Myself still are not accurate, but there is no other better words. And that has to do with our limitedness and He is unlimited. We do not have words for something that is unlimited, something that can really denote to us His attributes in their unlimited form, because at the end of the day we are all limited beings. So that is an introduction to the next chapter. It starts with Article 43. I thank all of you for tuning in once again, inshaAllah till next week.

Wa as-salamu alaykum, wa Rahmat Ullahi, wa barakatu.