Ḥāẓir Nāẓir, Nūr and the Lawḥ al-Maḥfūẓ

A question often raised is whether the Prophet (peace be upon him) is ḥāẓir nāẓir. He is not, if that means that he is like Allah (swt): that he is everywhere, watching everything at any given time by his own self, and present wherever he wants to be at any given time, just as Allah (swt) is. To try to make him the same as Allah (swt) is obviously a problematic idea, to believe it that way.

Is the Prophet (peace be upon him), then, a nūr? The Prophet (peace be upon him) is a servant of Allah. He is a nūr in the sense that his nūr was created right in the beginning, before the creation of the world, and that nūr did pass down. But the Prophet (peace be upon him) is a human being, born to a mother, a human mother and a father, a biological human mother and father; he is a human being. But he is a very special human being, in the sense that of the nūr of Allah (swt), which is very special, and which is distributed among mankind, he had the greatest share of the nūr; very special. Allah (swt) speaks about this in the Qur'an, where He says:

Wa-lladhīna kafarū aʿmāluhum, aw ka-ẓulumātin fī baḥrin lujjiyyin yaghshāhu mawjun min fawqihi mawj, wa man lam yajʿali Allāhu lahu nūran fa-mā lahu min nūr. And whoever Allah (swt) does not provide any nūr for, that person has no other form of nūr.

This requires a lot more discussion: exactly what type of nūr, and so on and so forth. But the Prophet (peace be upon him) is a human being; and anybody who believes that he is not a human being, but nūr only, obviously has a really big problem. But no doubt, he had a great illumination in his heart.

Is the Lawḥ al-Maḥfūẓ created? Absolutely, yes. There is a hadith of the Prophet (peace be upon him) that says that 50,000 years before the creation of the world, Allah created a pen and a tablet, and told the pen to write everything that was to happen until the Day of Judgement; and the pen wrote^******. So yes, that is definitely created, just as His ʿArsh, and everything else, is.