All-Sustaining, He Never Sleeps

So, lā yamūt: Allah (swt) does not die. Qayyūm: qayyūm means qāʾimun bi-nafsihi wa dhātihi, which means that He is self-sustaining. He is standing by Himself, standing in a metaphorical sense. He is alive by Himself. He acts by Himself. He does not need any external assistance or help. He does not need any support. He does not need any enhancement from anywhere. He is as He has always been, and He is self-subsisting.

Basically, this refers to Allah's independence, the might and greatness of Allah (swt): that He does not need anything to make Him who He is. Allah (swt) is well beyond that. In fact… one is that He is self-sustaining; the other is that He is the one who nurtures everybody else, and everybody else subsists through Him. That is an extended meaning of the word qayyūm. So He protects them, He nurtures them, and He guides them.

And this is all then emphasized by the fact that He never sleeps, which means that He is always in control. The human relationship with sleep is that when a person is asleep, a lot of things happen. A person is not in their senses at that time. They begin to see things without their control, when they see their dreams. Some people speak in their sleep, saying things that they would not say outside of sleep. Sleep is like the sister of death. That is why the duʿāʾs are made accordingly. When we get up in the morning, we say: all praise to Allah, who gave us life after death, al-ḥamdu lillāhi alladhī aḥyānā baʿda mā amātanā wa ilayhi al-nushūr, and to Him is the return.

So that is sleep. Sleep is a weakness; sleep is the weak point. Allah (swt) never sleeps. It is an āfah, in a sense, for somebody who wants to be very efficient. People are always trying to find ways of not sleeping: Red Bull, caffeine tablets, and all sorts of other stuff. The thing is, sometimes a person eats, and then suddenly starts feeling sleepy. It is the gases that are rising in the body, and that creates a lulling effect. There is a mechanism. A person does not just sleep; there is a mechanism, something that happens by which they sleep, something that goes on in the body. Allah (swt) is beyond all of these things. Allah is beyond that. He is Ḥayyun Qayyūm: He is always alive, and He is self-sustaining. There is no weakness; there is no failing.