Al Basir
The All-Seeing One
Exalted and Glorious
And Allah is All-Seer of what they do. (2:96)
And Allah will be pleased with them. And Allah is All-Seer of His slaves. (3:15)
And fight them until there is no more disbelief (fitnah) and the religion will all be for Allah alone. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do. (8:39)
Therefore stand firm and straight as you are commanded, and those (your companions) who turn unto Allah in repentance with you, and transgress not (from the path). Verily, He is All-Seer of what you do. (11:112)
Glorified and Exalted is He above all that they associate with Him Who took His servant, Muhammad, may His peace and blessings be upon him, for a journey by night from al-Masjid-al-Haram at Mecca to al-Masjid-al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, the neighborhood whereof We have blessed, in order that We might show him, Muhammad, may His peace and blessings be upon him, Our ayat (signs). Verily, He is the All-Hearer, the All-Seer. (17:1)
This is one of the attributes of Allah which carries the meaning of the ability to see. He sees all things. Even the steps of a black ant on a black stone on a dark night. We should supplicate Allah with the purity of thought and implicit faith.
He who repeats this name 100 times between the first four bows of the tradition of the Holy Prophet and the obligatory prayer at the Friday prayer, Allah will give this person esteem in the eyes of others.
Al-Basir is the One Who Sees everything in its outward and its inward. He encircles everything that is visible. So worship Allah as if you see Him. And if you do not see Him, know that He sees you.
From: The Meanings of the Names of Our Lord by Shaykh Muhammad Sa’id al-Jamal ar-Rifa’i Head of the Higher Sufi Council in Jerusalem and the Holy Land Teacher at the Dome of the Rock (al-Aqsa)
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He is the one who is All-Seeing. He sees all that has passed, all there is, and all that will be until the end of time from before the time when He moved the sea of nothingness in ‘alam al-lahut until after Doomsday and the Last Judgment. He has also given His creatures the ability to behold His creation. Some of His creatures see shapes and colors and movements better than people do. Human perception is limited in registering only preexisting objects at a certain distance, and can differentiate those objects only when the eye or the object moves and changes. The eyes are incapable of seeing what is under the surface.
The least we can do is to believe that these eyes are given to us to observe the universe around us as signs and attributes of our Creator and take a lesson from what we see.
Someone asked Jesus (pbuh), “Could anyone among us be like you?” He answered, “Whoever speaks only what God makes him say; whoever, when silent, is only silent in remembrance of God; and whoever, when he looks at things knows that what he sees is not God but from God, and learns and takes a lesson from what he sees, is like me.”
Allah has also given us an eye of the heart for seeing deeper things than our ordinary eyes can see; an inner eye to see the inner man. That eye is called the Basirah. Although we cannot see Allah, only He can see Himself, with the Basirah we can see ourselves. In doing so we will know that though we cannot see Him, He is looking at us, seeing not only what is on the outside of us, but what is in our minds and in our hearts. He who sees himself and knows himself knows that Allah sees him.
When you are in front of someone whom you respect and fear, you behave properly with good conduct. You stand respectfully. You watch what you do and what you say. Yet that person can only see your outside; your respect and fear of him depend only on your temporal worldly interest and concern. The One who has created you and those who came before you; the One who truly controls your life, sustains you, loves you, protects you, has mercy on you, is with you night and day; the One on whom your life depends for eternity in the Hereafter, He is closer to you than your jugular vein. He has also told you clearly through His prophets and in His holy books what He wishes you to do, how He wishes you to behave, to the minutest detail. Yet right in front of His eyes, you do not hesitate to perform the most shameful and careless acts, without respect or fear.
Is it because you do not see Him that you believe that Allah al-Basir cannot see you?
If an intended action is not selfish but for God’s sake, then if one recites ya Allahu ya Basir 100 times before Friday communal prayers, Allah will treat one with His compassion and grant success in the intended act.
From: The Name & the Named by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti
