Why were we Created? 2

"There is nothing like him, and he is the hearer and seer of all."

So when we try to interpret Allah’s creation like the way we create, then we have made Him like his creation and it leads us ultimately to those aspects of shirk which I have mentioned. This is quite common amongst the Muslim world today, because when you look into the various branches of the Sufi religion, where they have prescribed various acts of purification, they call it dhikr, exercises to torture the body through spinning and dancing. What is the purpose of this? They will tell you, to liberate the soul from this earthly body and to achieve that state of "fana" or "itihad", a variety of names they have for it.

It is this concept, which lead al-Hallaj, many centuries ago, when he was promoting this idea, and he was put before a panel of judges questioning these concepts, which he was expressing. When they asked him to recant, to take this stuff back, he stood up, opened up his cloak and said "There is nothing inside this cloak except Allah". So they executed him. And of course, those in the Sufi religion, they have stories that when they cut his head off, it rolled around saying "Allah, Allah, Allahu Akbar etc". It might have, that is Shaytan may have entered and said these things, as happened with the calf of the Isrealites, when the Prophet Musa (Moses) let Egypt and the people, after crossing the red sea, had a desire to have a god that they could see, so they made a golden calf which they began to worship. This calf was saying "moo" like the calves do. This is what convinced them that this was the real thing. We know it wasn’t the calf saying this. The evil jinn can enter the in to physical entities, make sounds and give these impressions. So there is no problem for us to say ok, maybe when they cut of al-Hallaj’s head that it said these things, because this was part of a test. If we are clear in terms of creator and creation, this is no problem for us.

Allah is the creator and everything besides Him is His creation, which He created from nothing. It is not Him, nor is He it. This is the pure concept as taught by the Prophet sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, his companions, and the early generations of righteous scholars, the students of the companions and those who came after them. The best of generations. That is how they understood this matter. There was no confusion in their minds. It wasn’t until Islam spread to areas like Egypt, India and Persia, areas where the Christians had already gotten into deep philosophies, trying to explain how Jesus was a man and god at the same time. When they came in to Islam they brought it with them. This is the reality. It is not something we should necessarily condemn them for or feel is unusual. It is natural, when a person reverts to Islam, that they will carry with them what they believed before. What has been clarified for them, of the basic principles, they accept, and they reject things, which obviously contradict. But it doesn’t mean that every last thought that they have, and everything that was wrong in their philosophies, ideology and concepts will be erased. They will carry these things in with them. This is why in the later part of the Prophet's sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam life, prior to his death, when he was coming back from one of the battles, his companions asked him to set aside a tree for them, that they could hang their weapons on, like the way the pagans would hang their weapons on trees, believing that when they hung the weapons, it became super-powerful, as if some power was coming from the tree, that their shields would now block steel and their swords would cut through the enemy. Some of the companions who had newly accepted Islam, asked the Prophet sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam to designate one for them, a special one, an Islamic one. They understood that what the pagans had, this was wrong. These were the companions of the Prophet sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam and he had to clarify it for them. He said:

You are like the companions of Musa who asked to have the calf built.

And he clarified for them that all of this is shirk and there is no place for it in Islam. So if it could happen to some of the companions, then we cannot blame the generations who have come after them, who come into Islam and carry with them some of their old ideas. What it is for us to do is to clarify.

So what we have in front of us then, is that Allah created this universe out of nothing, and everything that is in it was created. For example:

"Allah created all things, and he is the agent, upon which, all things depend." [Surah 39, verse 62]

This is the reality. This is stressed for us, in order for us to realize that ultimately, all good, all evil, that takes place in the world, only takes place by the permission of Allah. Therefore we should not seek any other channels to protect ourselves from evil, or to gather for ourselves good, as people commonly do today. They will go to fortunetellers, this is big business today, all the magazines have various forms of fortunetellers like dial a horoscope etc. in a society that has lost touch with Allah, this is what is open to them. Allah has stressed for us that no calamity will befall us except by Allah’s permission;

"Nothing is taking place in this world except by the permission of Allah."

And the Prophet sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam further emphasized this principle by saying;

"If the whole of mankind gathered to do some thing to help us, they could not help in anything which Allah had not already written for us. And if the whole of mankind gathered together to harm us, then they would not be able to harm with anything which Allah had not already written for us."

Therefore what is required of us is to depend on Allah, put our trust in Allah. This is what we have to draw out of this attribute of Allah being the creator. This creation exists because of that attribute. Its practical significance to us lies in putting our trust in Allah.

There is another aspect, besides the fact that the creation exists because Allah is the creator. We can also see from what the Prophet sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam has informed us, that in the creation there is manifestation of Allah’s attributes of mercy, forgiveness, kindness etc etc. Allah created man in paradise, they disobeyed Allah, but Allah had taught them how to repent, how to turn back to him and seek his forgiveness, then he would forgive them. Having done that, they were forgiven, Adam became the first prophet, and mankind was absolved of that sin. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of human existence. Human beings are given a consciousness of Allah. When Allah created all human beings, as he states in the Qur'an, he took from Adam (Adam) all of his descendents, and made them all bear witness that Allah is their Lord. So we are all born with that consciousness. He has also given us a consciousness of what is right and what is wrong.