THE ATTRIBUTES OF EXEMPTION OR FREEDOM

THE ATTRIBUTES IN THE NEGATIVE OR THE ATTRIBUTES OF EXEMPTION OR FREEDOM

These Attributes are concepts which express that God Almighty is absolutely free or exempt from any need, defect, fault, or shortcoming such as impotence, poverty, neediness, the need to eat or drink, and to beget or be begotten. Ibrahim Haqqi of Erzurum mentions some of them as follows:

There is no opposite, nor peer, of my Lord in the universe; He is the All-Transcendent and exempt from having a form.

He has no partners, and He is free from begetting and being begotten; He is the Unique, having no equals— these He mentions in Suratu’l-Ikhlas.

He is neither a body nor a substance, nor is He an accident nor of matter.

He does not eat or drink, nor is He contained by time.

He is absolutely free from change, alteration, and transformation,

and from colors and having a shape as well— these are His Attributes in the negative.

He is neither in the heavens nor on the earth;

neither on the right nor on the left; neither before nor after; He is absolutely free from any direction.

So He is never contained in space. He is God, eternally existent, having neither a beginning nor an end.

His Existence is by Himself, not with or by any other one— by God, this is so.

He existed while the universe did not exist; He is the Unique, the One;

He needs nothing and no one at all, but everyone needs Him.

Nothing bound by time or space happens to Him; nothing is incumbent on Him.

In whatever He does there are instances of wisdom; He does nothing in vain.

Scholars mention many other Attributes of Exemption for the Divine Being. However, these cannot even be restricted to those that they have mentioned, for many things unbecoming to the truths of Divinity and Lordship, which we are acquainted with based on the explicit, indisputable statements of the Qur’an and Hadith, have been put forward from the earliest times and are still being put forward and will be put forward in the future. Therefore, believers do and will continue to declare God’s absolute ex emption or freedom from such imputations.