What Ibn Arabi Saw Hidden in Surah Ikhlas.

[Abu Hafsat]

As-Salaam alaikum,

 The Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu alaihi Wasallam, said that Surah Ikhlas (chapter 112 of the Holy Qur'an) equals one-third of the Qur'an. Four short lines, 57 letters in Arabic, yet somehow equivalent to over 200 pages of revelation. How wonderful.

Most people read this Surah daily, they know it protects them; brings blessings; opens doors; but Sheikh Ibn Arabi, may Allah sanctify his secret and be Merciful to him, discovered something that scholars whisper about but rarely explain in public. The Surah is not just about Allah's Oneness; it is about the the dissolution of everything that is not Allah, including you.

The Sheikh in his 'Futuhat al-Makkiyyah', notes that Surah Ikhlas begins with 'Qul'- Say. This is a Command from Allah to the Prophet, Sallallahu alaihi Wasallam, but Ibn Arabi saw deeper layers. The command to 'say' itself is a teaching about the nature of speech and existence. When you say something, where does the sound come from? -- from breath; from vibration in the throat; from the intention in the mind. But who gave you breath, who created the vocal cords, who placed the thought in your consciousness? Every word you speak is ultimately Allah speaking through the instrument of your body. So when the verse/ayat commands Qul (Say) it's reminding you even your act of recitation is not truly yours, it's Divine Speech manifesting through a human form.

Then comes 'HUWA ALLAHU AHAD' -- He is Allah, the One. Ibn Arabi spent years meditating on the word AHAD because it's different from WAHID, another word for one. WAHID means one in number -- implying the possibility of a second. You can count 1, 2, 3 but AHAD means the Absolute One beyond all counting; beyond all comparison; beyond all conceptualization -- it's the Oneness that cannot even be thought about properly, because thinking requires a subject; an object; a thinker and a thought. But AHAD dissolves that duality.

Ibn Arabi wrote that when you truly say Ahad, your mind reaches for something it cannot grasp. And in that failure to grasp, something happens; the ego which survives on categorization and separation finds nothing to hold on to. The verse continues: ALLAHU SAMAD -- Allah the Eternal Refuge. The word SAMAD has multiple meanings that Ibn Arabi carefully unpacked. On one level, it means the one who needs nothing but whom everything needs; on another level it means solid without hollowness, without internal parts.

Most beings are composite made of parts dependent on those parts staying together. Your body is made of organs, your organs are cells, your cells are molecules. You are a temporary assembly that will one day disassemble, but Allah is SAMAD... Absolute, noncomposite, Eternal. He has no parts, no dependencies, no internal structure that could fail or decay. When you say 'Allahu Samad' with understanding you're acknowledging that only Allah has true self-subsisting existence; everything else including your sense of 'I' is borrowed, contingent and destined to return to the source. 

Then the Surah delivers the blow: LAM YALID WA LAM YULAD -- He begets not, nor is He begotten. This verse destroys the concept of origin and derivative. Everything in your experience has a beginning and an end. You were born; you will die; your thought arise and pass; your feeling come and go; the entire universe emerged from the Big Bang and will eventually end...but Allah was never born, never originated, never came from anything and He never begets, never produces offspring, never creates something that is His equal or shares His Essence.

Ibn Arrabi saw that this shatters the ego's attempt to understand Allah by analogy. We understand things by comparison - this is like that; this came from that; but Allah cannot be understood that way. He is not like anything. He did not come from anything; He does not produce equals. This verse forces the mind into a corner where all its tools fail. You cannot think youur way to Allah because thinking operates through relationship; and this verse says Allah has no relationship of origin or derivation. 

The final blow comes with WALAM YAKUN LAHU KUFU'AN AHAD -- And there is none comparable to Him.... the word KUFU'AN means equal, comparable, similar. This is the Absolute negation of all comparison -- nothing is like Allah; not metaphorically unlike, but absolutely, categorically incomparable. Every time you think you understand something about Allah, this verse says no! you don't.  Whatever you imagined is not Him, whatever concept you formed is not Him, whatever feeling you had is not Him. Ibn Arabi calle this the via negativa - the path of negation; you cannot say what Allah is, only what He is not. And this final verse negates everything.