harm, increase or decrease, comfort or fatigue, health or illness except by His ruling and governance, His will and predestination. Were mankind and jinn, angels and devils all to unite in order to move a single mote in the universe—or to bring it to rest, to diminish it or to augment it—without His will, power, and strength, they would be utterly incapable and powerless to do so. Whatever Allah wills comes to pass, and whatever He does not will can never be; His will is never thwarted. All that has been, all that is, and all that will be occurs only by His arrangement, command, and subjugation.

Fifth and Sixth Principles: His Hearing and Sight
Just as He knows every knowable, He hears every audible thing and sees every visible thing. With a single act of hearing and a single act of seeing He perceives the stealthy tread of an ant on a pitch-black night, and the sound of worms beneath the layers of earth is not concealed from Him. Yet His hearing is not by means of an ear, nor His seeing by means of an eye. As His knowledge is not produced by reflection, so His action is without tool or instrument; He but says to a thing, “Be!” and it is.

Seventh Principle: Divine Speech
His command over every creature is effective and binding; whatever He has conveyed of promise or threat is true, and His command is His speech. As He is All-Knowing, All-Willing, All-Powerful, All-Hearing, and All-Seeing, so too He is Speaking—yet His speech is without throat or tongue, without mouth or teeth. The Quran, the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and every scripture sent down to the prophets, peace be upon them all, are His speech. His speech is one of His attributes, and all His attributes are pre-eternal. Whereas human speech is composed of letters and sounds, the speech of Allah is exalted beyond sounds and letters.