How to Get Closer to Allah: Exploring the Sequence of Allah’s Names in Surah Al-Hashr
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ
Introduction
As Muslims, our purpose is knowing Allah and worshiping Him. However, in an age of autonomy of the self, the very idea of submission and worship can be hard for some people to comprehend or even fully accept. When everything around you is pushing you towards a life lived for yourself and the realizations of your desires above all else, how can you fathom the idea of obedience and servitude? As jurist, theologian and spiritual author Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) explains, “Complete servitude (ʿubūdiyya) is a byproduct of complete love, and complete love is a byproduct of the Beloved’s perceived perfection.”
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The key to servitude to Allah is by loving Him, and we love Him by coming to know Him, and we come to know Him by reflecting on His names and attributes.
These names do not just have relevance to us in this life, but if we truly understand and internalize them as who our Lord is, they help us in maintaining focus on the afterlife. The Prophet ﷺ reminds us that Allah has said, “I am as My servant expects of Me.”
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Our expectations are more accurate when we know who Allah is as He tells us. When we understand His all encompassing mercy, for example, we not only look for its manifestations in this life, but we look forward to His mercy when it will matter the most: on the Day of Judgment. Hence knowing Him helps us to love Him and gain closeness to Him during our time here on earth, whilst maintaining perspective of the afterlife, and looking forward to experiencing His names in the Hereafter.
Furthermore, reflecting deeply on His names and attributes teaches us how to be in this world. As the scholar Ibn al-Qayyim stated,
God loves His Names and Attributes, and He loves the consequences of His Attributes and their manifestations upon His servants. Just as He is beautiful, He loves beauty; as He is Most Forgiving, He loves forgiveness; as He is Most Generous, He loves generosity; as He is All-Knowing, he loves the people of knowledge … Since God loves those who emulate His Attributes, He is with them according to how much of these qualities they reflect, and this is a special and unique type of companionship.
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Allah reveals His names to us in the Qur’an in a multitude of ways, and attending to the context of such verses, the pairings of His names, and the sequence in which they appear brings about a level of reflection that brings us closer to Him and opens up new dimensions to our relationship with God. One remarkable occasion presents itself in the final verses of Sūrat al-Ḥashr, where Allah mentions several of His names in a distinct way, with entire verses in succession being made up wholly or largely of a number of such descriptions. The uniqueness of these verses tells us that there must be something special about these names that warrants our undivided attention. Not only do the names themselves have distinct meanings that are important for our relationship with our Creator, but the order in which they appear is intentional, revealing nuances that we might otherwise not have considered and that help to enrich our relationship with Him.
This paper endeavors to reflect upon the names contained within the last verses of Sūrat al-Ḥashr, particularly in terms of their sequence and relationship to one another, in an attempt to increase our knowledge and love of Allah and thus better our relationship with Him.
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