A Heavy Topic

This chapter has been an introduction: a background; why this is studied; the need for it; and what is being studied. The book itself begins in the chapters that follow, in shāʾ Allāh. It runs to about 130 points. This introduction has been more of a narrative; it is more of a description, and so raises fewer questions than what follows.

It is a heavy topic. It is a heavy topic. It is not like detailing the way of ṣalāh, which is going to have a practical aspect to it, where a person can go out after two days of in-depth study and at least resort back to some things. This is a very important subject. What happens is that some of these things are going to be very heavy and complex, extremely heavy and complex. And to try to cram all of the various different important points into a short space leaves no time to digest them. That is why it is best taken in stages.

The first half of the book, 60-something of its points, takes in perhaps three of the main aspects. Throughout the whole book there are probably about five to six in-depth discussions that are important: like the issue of taqdīr, or destiny; the issue of the ṣifāt of Allah (swt); the issue of the speech of Allah (swt) in particular; things like that. Each of them needs some time. Does īmān increase or decrease? These are some of the more important points. The rest of it is just to reiterate what we already know, in shāʾ Allāh, and to put it in perspective: to see the limits of how far we can take things, and how we need to understand things.