Hayat · Sam' · Basar
The Living, the Hearing, the Seeing
He is living, hearing and seeing — really, but not by an organ and not as a creature
Can He who has no ears hear?
لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْءٌ ۖ وَهُوَ السَّمِيعُ الْبَصِيرُ
There is nothing like Him; and He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
The Living, the Hearing, the Seeing
Revelation describes Allah as the Living — al-Hayy; as the Self-Subsisting who holds all — al-Qayyum; and as the Hearing and the Seeing — as-Sami', al-Basir. He hears and sees every thing; nothing is hidden from Him, neither in sound nor in silence, neither in the manifest nor in the hidden. Life, hearing, sight, speech — in these are distinct attributes of the Essence, sifat ma'ani; and life is the condition of all the rest: without the Living there is neither knowledge, nor will, nor speech.
But the that opened the hall sets two movements side by side. "There is nothing like Him — and He is the Hearing, the Seeing": the attribute is affirmed firmly — and in the same line the creaturely image is cut away. He hears — but not with an ear; sees — but not with an eye; lives — but not as the created lives, which is born and dies. Thus holds both sides at once: He is not in place and not in time — and yet not mute and not indifferent: living, hearing, seeing.
The organ is not the attribute
Here a distinction helps — one the next hall, Speech, will carry to its end. Ear, eye, nerve are created carriers of perception: they come to be, they sicken, they fail. But "hearing" as an attribute of the Creator is not in the ear and does not reduce to the working of an organ, as the meaning of writing does not reduce to ink. The carrier is one thing, the carried another: the organ serves, but it is not the organ that perceives.
Beyond this the comparison leads no further — we say it plainly. It helped only to see that "hears without an ear" is not nonsense: for with us too it is not the ear by itself that hears, but the one whom it serves. Yet the Creator's Hearing is not "like ours, only better": — we affirm the attribute and ascribe to it no creaturely "how". The image brought us to the threshold — beyond the threshold, tanzih again.