He Transcends Having Any Opposites or Peers

Wa huwa mutaʿālin ʿan al-aḍdādi wa-l-andād.

Before going on to the topic of the Prophet (peace be upon him), Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī decides to remind us again about Allah (swt) and His transcendent nature. So he goes back to that, and he says: He transcends having any opposites or peers. What that means is that He is beyond — He is above — having any opposites or peers. So Allah is way above, pure and transcendent, above having an opposite. An opposite means somebody like an equal, somebody that opposes Him, competes with Him.

None can thwart His decree, overrule His judgment or override His command.

None can repel His decree. When He decrees something, none can repel that; or when He has decreed something, nobody can repel it. Overrule His judgment, or override His command: these things are absolute. So if something has been decreed — which means that if Allah has known something, and has written it to be in a particular way — then that is the way it is going to happen, try as one might.

As the hadith has said: if the entire world of the jinn and humans — everybody — tried to benefit you in a way that Allah has not written for you, they would not be able to do so, even if they gathered and tried to do it cumulatively. And likewise the opposite of that. And finally:

We believe in all of that and are certain that all of it is from Him.

So we believe in that, which means we believe in the decree. We believe in everything that Allah (swt) has decreed — all of it, whether it is good or bad, whether it is bitter or sweet. All of that we believe: that Allah (swt) is in control; He knows, and He has predestined it; and there is a wisdom behind it. Wa ayqannā: and we are convinced that all of this is happening from the will and the irādah of Allah (swt).

An overview of the sections that follow is useful at this point. The next section is obviously about the prophethood of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him); that is the nubuwwāt section, and it is quite simple. Then the text goes on to the next section, from 35: the Qur'an, the speech of Allah — that comes back to the ilāhiyyāt. Then Allah's transcendence, the beatific vision, anthropomorphism — that is a bit of a heavy topic, though many of its issues have more or less been alluded to already. And the Pool, the intercession, the covenant: these are very simple. The divine decree: some parts of it have been alluded to, again, but in shāʾ Allāh it should not be too difficult. And then he clarifies many issues that relate to that.