A Letter to a Dear One — Page 22
22 Letter to a Dear One have a conception of Him. Yet He is closer to us than our own thought processes. He has every excellence in its utmost perfection. His being is free from all defect and weakness, in fact it should be said that all excellence is an image of one of His attributes, and all weakness is a result of the fact that man has shied away from the splendor of one of His attributes. He is Ever-Living, Self-Subsisting and All-Sustaining and is Ever-Vigilant. Sleep and sloth are conditions brought on by lack or suspension of certain attributes and His Being is constant at all times and His attributes are always prevalent. Unity of God Let me say a little about the Divine attributes and hope that certain factors of these attributes will be imprinted on your heart. The first attribute of Allah that Islam lays emphasis on is His Unity—that is to say, Allah is One in being and attributes, He has no partner and is alone worthy of worship and is worthy that we let His will rule us in every way and imprint His attributes on ourselves; to believe in Him as the font of all excellence, virtue, power and favor and to implore Him for everything. His fear alone should be in our heart and in His love should we find all our happiness. Unity of God establishes peace in this world. Plurality of deities would have caused much disorder. Human differences and dissensions aside, the mutual wars of various deities would have been never ending. It was the Unity of God that established man’s greatness, for those who do not believe in the Unity of God and worship rivers, seas, mountain tops and caves; some worship stones and trees, clouds and lightening, moon, starts and the sun, even animals—and the reason for this worship is to seek benefit from these ‘things’ or to be saved from their evil. The fact of the matter is that these things have no power or control to be beneficial or detrimental to anyone. All these things are created to benefit human being. They are appointed to serve him. A human, no matter how much power he can yield, does not have the authority to be truly detrimental or beneficial to another. When a person worships these things then his heart is overcome with their fear and awe, he thus fails to discover their mode and reason and indeed fails to take advantage of them. His condition is like that of an affluent person whose house has all kinds of amenities, with modern electrical facilities and all kinds of arrangements, many servants appointed to serve the