BB00195: Khutbah fi Ard-i-Sad (insha’uha fi balad as-sad)

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

All praise be to God Who hath testified to His own Self by His own Self that there is none other God but Him, the Truth from all eternity, and that He is even as He was throughout all ages that come to pass, subject neither to change nor transformation. Names are cut off from the precincts of His nearness, and attributes are barred from mention of His holy Oneness, for He hath ever been, and none else beside Him existed, and will ever be, with none to be mentioned in His rank. Even as He is in His station of glory and majesty, single in His unity and omnipotence, and sanctified above mention of names and similitudes in the realms of dominion and kingdom, for His Essence separateth fundamental realities from the station of knowledge, and His Identity preventeth material things from the station of utterance.

Whosoever claimeth to know Him hath indeed been ignorant of Him, for knowledge is contingent upon conjunction, and affirmation cometh after separation. And whosoever claimeth to unify Him hath associated His creation with Him and hath conceived falsehood within himself, for none but He can unify Him, and none but He can worship Him, since mention of unity is impossible in the station of attributes, and the decree of glorification appeareth not in the station of qualities. He is far exalted above being described by His creation or being unified by aught else. Glorified and exalted is He! None knoweth how He is save Him.

I bear witness that there is no God but God, alone with no partner, even as His Essence hath testified unto His Essence, and those endowed with knowledge among His creation in His realm of origination that He is a God, Living, Self-Subsisting, All-Knowing, All-Powerful, All-Choosing, from Whose knowledge nothing in the heavens or earth escapeth, and nothing in the worlds of command and creation overwhelmeth Him, having no attribute apart from His Essence and no quality apart from His attributes. Glorified and exalted is He above what they describe!

And I bear witness that Muhammad, peace be upon him and his family, is His servant whom He selected from the midst of the eternity of action for His station of authority, chose him from the heights of grace for His station of love, and selected him as the sign of His Self for His station of knowledge, unique without peer or likeness in the worlds of creation. He chose him for the loftiness of His grandeur for His own station in performance and decree, and was well-pleased with him for His sovereign station, with knowledge over all contingent things, for He hath ever been unconnected to servants and indescribable by the manifestations of the heart. He graspeth all vision, and He is the All-Subtle, the All-Aware.

And I bear witness to the successors of Muhammad, the Messenger of God, peace be upon him and his family, with that which God hath testified for them in the worlds of creation, and which God hath ordained for them in the knowledge of the unseen with the highest degrees of praise and glory, that they are the repositories of command and manifestations of grace and pillars of unity and ultimate manifestations of sanctification in the worlds of invention, of which none encompasseth knowledge concerning their station save God, the Glorified. He is the Mighty, the Most High.

And I bear witness to every truth with what God hath willed and desired in the stations of command and purposes of creation, in origin and return. He it is Who sendeth blessings upon you, as do His angels, that He might bring you forth from darkness into light, and He is ever Merciful to the believers.

Praise be to God Who originated the essences of abstract realities through the appearance of the manifestations of His Self in the signs of invention, that every limit might know itself and recognize the ordinances of its origin and witness the lights of divinity in its secret and manifest aspects, lest it be veiled in any condition from the station of the manifestations of the Presence of Oneness in the kingdom of names and attributes, and might see Him manifest and self-subsisting over all existences and see nothing in any condition save through the manifestation of His light in the essential and accidental realities, so that each may attain, through knowledge of that station, to all the stations which God hath ordained for it in the verses of the manifestations of the Beginning and the appearances of the End, even unto the final goal.

And praise be to God Who hath caused to shine forth whatsoever hath dawned upon the temples of radiance, and Who hath revealed the hidden mysteries within the inmost hearts of the people of the Covenant on the Day of Reckoning, that all might be distinguished at the time of meeting from the manifestations of the Beginning and the revelations of His traces at the station of conjunction, from similarity and likeness in the signs of the verses of limitation at the station of separation.

Glorified and exalted is He! He hath originated the likeness of abstraction in the station of individuations and the examples of glorification in the essence of the verses, that all created things might be guided by the manifestation of the lights of His holiness to the glory of the court of nearness to His might, and that all things might behold Him after all things just as before all things, without cessation or decline, until all have testified in the stations of the manifestations of the Essence to that which God hath testified concerning Himself in the eternity of eternities and the everlastingness of days.

None knoweth Him save through that whereby He hath described Himself to His servants, for, exalted be His remembrance, none shall ever know Him but Himself, and none shall be mentioned in His rank, for His existence in itself indicateth utter nothingness before the countenance of the pure Essence, and the existence of eternity in its essence indicateth the non-existence of aught else with Him.

Glorified and exalted is He! Sanctified is His Essence and exalted His Being and His Grandeur above anyone’s ability to unify that which cannot possibly be known to exist, or to negate that whose remembrance and manifestation cannot possibly be lost from existence.

Glorified and exalted is He! Whoso uttereth a word from the court of His holy sovereignty hath indeed taken upon himself polytheism in his soul and sin in his deeds, for the mention of attributes in relation to His Essence is but a manifestation of His kingdom and a description of the affairs of His power, and it in itself indicateth origination and telleth of the recognition of subsistence belonging to the Living, the Self-Subsisting, Whom no vision can encompass, and unto the heaven of Whose Lordship no bird of hearts and minds can soar, while He encompasseth all vision, and He is the All-Subtle, the All-Informed.

Praise be to God Who hath fashioned all geometries according to what they themselves have accepted at the station of indications and essential realities, then at that of modes of being and verses, then at that of souls and indications, then at that of individuations and signs, and what God hath ordained beyond these stations and allusions of that which no one among the people of names and attributes can encompass in knowledge, and upon which no rule of allusions and infinities can be applied. Verily God encompasses all things in the stations of command and endings.

Praise be to God Who hath caused all to know that the way is barred to the knowledge of His Essence and that proof is prevented from ascending to the court of nearness to His presence and from attaining to the sanctum of His grandeur, that all created things might become certain, in the station of recognizing the manifestation of the Essence, of the negation of names and attributes and the establishment of unity through that which God hath revealed to them through them, from the origins of causes to the rank of dust in the station of the unity of the Essence and the manifestations of the recognition of holy verses in the kingdom of justice and essences, and that it might not be said through the manifestations of the affairs of the mines of knowledge in the midst of the eternity of passivity until man attaineth unto the rank of dust.

Praise be to God Who hath sent down in the Book whatsoever people need of the ordinances of the beginning and the return, that none might doubt concerning any decree and might witness the decree of all names in all the verses of the Book just as God sent down in the Qur’an when the decree of the Bayan was not forgotten, and We have recorded all things in a clear register.

And praise be to God Who decreeth what He pleaseth as He pleaseth through what He hath wished and willed and ordained and decreed in His knowledge for all contingent beings and whatsoever hath been ordained in the degrees of the manifestations of His creation, that they may all praise Him in the paths of powerlessness and remembrance, in accordance with His word: “All praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds.”