No Partner, No Minister: Allah Answers the Whisper of Doubt

Allah (swt) then turns the attention back to the Real, al-Ḥaqq, and speaks of Himself: I am your Lord, the God besides whom there is none, alone, with no partner in My dominion, none resembling Me. I have no administrators, no advisers, no ministers to help Me rule; in My dominion I alone am sultan, I alone am king. This is precisely where Shayṭān directs one of his greatest tricks against practising young people in particular, coming with a waswasah about the very foundations of belief, ʿaqīdah: how is it known that Islam is true, that Allah truly exists, that the Qurʾān is a revealed book? To a Muslim already firm in this, he comes from a different angle instead: what makes it certain that the Christians, or the Jews, will not enter Paradise, since they too believe in God? All manner of questions arrive this way, and the less a person knows, the more wrong answers he gives, and the more questions Shayṭān is able to raise from them, since he can never be made to stop — that is his function and his trade, to keep raising further questions and put a person into difficulty.

When this happens, a Muslim should say at once: Ashhadu an lā ilāha illallāh wa ashhadu anna Muḥammadan ʿabduhu wa rasūluh — "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger" — meaning that everything the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) brought is believed, in full — followed by seeking refuge in Allah from the accursed Shayṭān. If the whispering does not stop even then, it becomes obligatory to go and seek help in one's own ʿaqīdah from a scholar without delay — to ask, what does this mean, I am somewhat confused, please help me understand — and it is not permissible to put this off, telling oneself, I will go in two months, in three weeks, in six months, in a year. A ship with a hole beneath the waterline, ignored while at sea, will sink before its crew even know it; ʿaqīdah is exactly this kind of watertight vessel, and it must be entirely sound in order to sail the waves of Shayṭān and of this world. Knowledge, for this reason, is essential.

A question increasingly put is this: if it is believed that Allah created everything, then who created Allah? On first hearing this, the reply given was, "You have spoken the truth, O Messenger of Allah" — for the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) foretold that a time would come when people would ask exactly this question; none of the Companions, nor those close to that time, ever asked it, yet he prophesied that it would be asked, and it has come to pass. It is not, in itself, a wrong question — it is, in fact, a right one — but it is worth asking who is prompting it: the invisible one standing beside a person. Every question has an answer in Islam, one hundred per cent, but only for one who has beneficial knowledge and is convinced of it in himself; without that knowledge, Shayṭān will plant doubt, shirk, and specious ambiguity, shubhah, in the heart. So Allah (swt) says, with the particle of emphasis, innanī, leaving no possibility of doubt or exception: verily, I am your Lord — the one who has no partner, the only one, in complete control of everything.