Question:
Could you explain sh Nazim’s saying about Allah’s kingdom depending on the existence of His servants ( Mercy Océans p.13) ? ‘Aqidah a-tahawiya states : “ lahu ma’na rububiyatih wa la marbub” ” He possesses the Lordship without need of someone to be lord of.”
Answer:
wa `alaykum salam,
Again an insinuated accusation without even the benefit of a quote.
We will quote what Mawlana said in its entirety first:
Allah Almighty is greatest. He is timeless, ever ready, without beginning. He is king.
And yet you cannot find a king without a kingdom. Without subjects his kingship has no meaning. Just as there can be no meaning for a prophet without an ummah (nation). Therefore, Allah was ready without beginning, and his servants also were ready without beginning. If there were no people, to whom was He Allah? Was it to Himself? No! A hadith relates: “I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known.” His people were part of this treasure.
What Mawlana did not say is that Allah is obliged to have subjects, rather, he explains that the concept of kingship is irrelevant without them, in much the same way that saying Allah is Creator without creating is irrelevant, and Allah does not deal in irrelevancies, for that would be baatil. So while the `aqida says Allah is not obliged to have servants, nonetheless He does have servants, and since Allah is beyond time and space, that fact is a perpetual reality. In fact, it is categorically obligatory to believe that the Divine Knowledge of Allah Most High includes, pre-eternally without beginning, the knowledge
that He will create His creatures; that is the sense to which Mawlana is
referring, just as Tahawi and many others did in their books of `aqida.
Taher Siddiqui
