Memorize Surah al-Mulk Ramadan 2021 | Verse 14

Verse 14
أَلَا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ خَلَقَ وَهُوَ ٱللَّطِيفُ ٱلْخَبِيرُ

Allāh says: Does He not know who He created? For He is the Most Subtle, the All-Aware.

Continuing from yesterday’s verse, we are delving further into learning just how all-encompassing, deep, intense, and precise Allāh’s knowledge is of us and every single thing He created. As we discussed, yesterday’s verse was revealed to fix the misunderstanding that the polytheists had about Allāh and Allāh’s level of knowledge.
They thought that maybe if we just speak more quietly, if we just talk among among ourselves secretly and in private, then Allāh won’t be able to hear us and know what we are talking about. Allāh effectively corrected that misunderstanding by stating that — whether it is private, whether it is public, Allāh knows what is in your hearts. Allāh knows whatever you were thinking on doing, planning on doing, before you even made it public or private.

The verse we have here for today further drives that point home. How can Allāh not know His own creation? If Allāh is the one who created you, and He did create you, how can He not intimately and intricately know everything about you? Not just what you do, not just what you say, but what you think and how you feel.
This is a rhetorical question, meaning, this question is being asked to make a point rather than to get an answer. Because the answer is — of course, definitely, obviously. Does He, Allāh , not know who He created? There is no doubt that Allāh knows who He created, with a knowledge that permeates throughout the entire entity of that creation.

This verse firstly, although without explicitly stating it, affirms that fact that Allāh truly is our Creator. He is the One who created us, that is why He knows every single thing about us.
After affirming that Allāh is truly the one who created us, Allāh then negates this idea that there can be a creator of something, someone who brings something into existence, that does not know all the ins and outs of that creation; that does not know the inward and outward state of that creation.
It’s absurd, it doesn’t make sense. How can you have someone who brought a creation into existence and does not know every detail about that creation?

Connecting back to the last verse, the polytheists are worried about Allāh knowing about their secrets. This verse is asking the question — how can the Creator of that secret not know about the secret?He created us, our actions, our thoughts, and our feelings. If we have a secret we want to keep from others, we definitely cannot keep that secret from Allāh , because He is the one who created that secret. And again, this verse definitively states that one who creates something and bring it into existence is intimately aware of it in its entirety, inward, outward, and everything that goes on with it in every single moment.

There is a story narrated by Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, one of the greatest scholars among the tabiʿīn, the generation following the Companions of the Prophet . He said that once there was a person standing at nighttime among a bunch of trees. Then a violent, forceful gust of wind blew. This person then had a thought occur — do you think Allāh knows every single leaf that just fell? Does He know each one, exactly when and where it fell, from where it came o the tree?
Then something amazing, miraculous happened. A strong, powerful, and grand voice called out from direction of the dense pocket of trees — أَلَا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ خَلَقَ وَهُوَ ٱللَّطِيفُ ٱلْخَبِيرُ
The soundness of this story is not relevant for our purposes here, as the meaning is undoubtedly true. Regardless of whether this actually happened, it is true that Allāh knows exactly every leaf that falls from a tree, from where on the tree it fell from, when it fell, when and where it hit the floor.
The tiny grains of sand that we see at the beach, that completely move, shift, and relocate when we sink our feet into that sand — Allāh knows about every single grain. Where it was before we stepped into it, where and how it moved, and where it ended up after we stepped into it. Allāh has deep, intimate, and intricate knowledge of everyone and everything that He has created.

Allāh ends this verse with two of His Divine Names and Attributes — al-Laṭīf and al-Khabīr. Both of these names fall under an overarching category of Allāh’s names that have to do with knowledge. Allāh has many names that are related to knowledge — al-ʿAlīm, al-Shahīd; each name providing subtle, added meanings making it into a name for a specific type of knowledge.
These two names we have in our verse for today,al-Laṭīf and al-Khabīr, fall under that category of names that are related to knowledge. One of the meanings of al-Laṭīf is that Allāh is knowledgeable of the intricacies, details, and particulars of things. Those things that have even the most subtle, hardly noticeable of characteristics, Allāh knows about those subtle characteristics.
One of the meanings of al-Khabīr is that Allāh is knowledgeable of the realities, essences, and true states of things. When something seems like it might be something else, Allāh knows what that thing actually is. When something is vague, ambiguous, hard to grasp for us human beings, Allāh has full knowledge of what that thing actually, in reality, is. Its nature, its true essence.
Allāh has full and complete knowledge of us; of our subtle intricacies and particulars. Whether it is in our speech, actions, behaviors, feelings, emotions. And of our true essence and reality, who we truly are.
And these two qualities that Allāh mentions are so appropriate here because our own intricacies and our own realities are things that we do not even know about ourselves. We do not know about every intricacy within ourselves, we do not know who we truly are. But Allāh knows, further proving that He knows us more than we can possibly know ourselves.

May Allāh help us to recognize and appreciate Allāh’s intimate and expansive knowledge of everything in existence, and may He aid us in living our lives in line with knowing that He knows us.

So again, our verse for today is: أَلَا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ خَلَقَ وَهُوَ ٱللَّطِيفُ ٱلْخَبِيرُ
Does He not know who He created? For He is the Most Subtle, the All-Aware.