Glorification by Word, or by State

Imam Tāj al-Dīn Ibn al-Subkī, the great Shāfiʿī jurist and ḥadīth scholar, records in his Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyyah al-Kubrā that the interpretation the Shāfiʿī scholars prefer, in explaining that all things glorify Allah, is that they do so through actual speech, bi-l-lisān al-maqāl — this being far from impossible, and supported by a number of texts. On this view, even lifeless things make dhikr with tongues Allah has given them, simply beyond human hearing. This is Imam al-Shāfiʿī's own opinion, drawn from the āyah:

The mountains' glorification by actual speech does not require that it be heard, any more than a Bluetooth signal requires a listener to be real. A further text speaks of "the faces made radiant by the vastness of mercy," and offers a further explanation: that all things most likely glorify Allah literally, but that this remains hidden from people except where the ordinary course of things is broken, kharq al-ʿādah — as the Companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) are recorded to have heard, from time to time, the tasbīḥ of food and other objects.

As to the closing words of the earlier āyah, "He is ever Forbearing, Forgiving," three explanations are given. First, most people are distracted from the remembrance of Allah, unlike the heavens and the earth and all within them, and this distraction — common to both mankind and the jinn — leaves them in need of His clemency and mercy. Second, since people and jinn do not grasp the praise offered by these things, perhaps through insufficient reflection, they stand again in need of forgiveness. Third, not hearing that praise may lead them to regard such things with contempt and to neglect the rights owed to them, which again calls for clemency.

The same source records an account of one of the servants of Allah who, in a time before modern facilities, went out to relieve himself and, as the fiqh permits where water is unavailable, took up stones — an odd number, as the Sunnah directs — to clean himself. He had long wished to hear the tasbīḥ of creation, and on this occasion the veil was lifted from his hearing: he took up one stone and heard it making dhikr of Allah, and set it down; he took a second, and heard the same. A third stone he could not bring himself to use, and he begged Allah: "My Lord, conceal their dhikr from me, so that I may use them" — for the Sharīʿah permits such objects to be put to ordinary use, and he judged that he could not bear to hear their praise while doing so. Were everything's constant dhikr audible, it is hard to imagine how anyone could eat or touch anything without being overwhelmed; the concealment of this praise from human hearing carries, for this reason, a wisdom of its own.