The Glorification Heard by All Creation

Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, one of the greatest scholars of the generation after Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, studied in Kūfah under both Anas ibn Mālik and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, and was among the teachers of Abū Ḥanīfah. Concerning one of the most striking āyāt of the Qur'an — one whose full meaning Allah has not made plain to human understanding, though the ʿulamāʾ have explained what can be explained — he cites Sūrat al-Isrāʾ, verse 44:

The "seven heavens" of this āyah, al-samāwāt, are not to be confused with Paradise — English uses "heaven" loosely, where the proper terms for Paradise are Firdaws, Khuld, Jannat al-ʿAlyā, and none of those is meant here. The word refers instead to the physical heavens, samāwāt, seven layers, ṭabaqāt, of immense size. The Prophet (peace be upon him) is reported to have said that the entire universe known to us, the cosmos with its billions of galaxies, is no more than the first of these seven skies; passing through each in turn during the Miʿrāj, he said that the size of the first sky, filled with galaxies, set beside the second, is like a small ring cast into the desert — a universe already too vast for its expansion to be calculated is, on this reckoning, still only a ring in the sand. Beyond it lies another sky again, and the size of the second compared to the third is likewise a ring in the desert, and the third compared to the fourth, and so on through the fifth, sixth and seventh.

Within these seven heavens, this āyah states, everything constantly glorifies Allah in tasbīḥ — including the earth and all who are in it; there is not a single thing that does not glorify Him with His praise, though it cannot be heard, "you do not understand their glorification." Something of the same limitation applies to a mobile telephone: a signal passes over Bluetooth from one device to another, unseen and unfelt by either party, travelling to a satellite and back, imperceptible to a human being though perfectly real. In just this way, everything on earth — leaving aside the heavens beyond understanding, and including the earth itself, this globe, this matter — makes dhikr of Allah, every created thing offering praise, down to the squeaking of a door. As Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī puts it, this constant dhikr is simply not seen.