Learning Names and Attributes of Allah: 1st Stage; IMPRINTING the understanding in your heart

Bismillah! Al Hamdulillah!

What Allah wanted us to do by His names?

You heard it many times from many scholars.
“The best knowledge comes from the study of the ‘Names of Allah’, ‘Asma Ul Husna’
Then, what’s the knowledge in those names? How would you get that knowledge?
By memorizing them? By contemplating on those names?
By study those names? Living by the those names?
You hear all those acts and purposes of learning those names.
But where do you start from?
Most importantly what Allah Subhanahu Himself said about His names?
What He wanted us to do by His names?
It is specifically instructing us to, “Make Dua, call Allah by those names!”

“And to Allah belong the best names, so invoke Him by them.”  (Al Quran Al-Hakeem 7:180)

How do you call Allah by His Names?

Did you ever come to know how do you call Allah by those names? 
Did you find any books, any scholarly work about that?
You won’t.
I don’t understand this. I can’t figure this out.

How come Allah Subhanahu has a clear instruction to “Call Allah by those names” but unfortunately you won’t find any guidelines about that in our thousand years of times in thousands of Ulema’s greatest works? At least I failed in my search. (If any of you find that, please let me know and I will ask Allah to reward you abundantly, InShaa Allah)

There are hundreds of books written about the Names of Allah. Numerous lectures you can get about it. But what those commonly lacking is a comprehensive guideline as to how to call Allah by using these names except only a few names such as ‘Ya Haiyyu, Ya Qaiyyumu’,  ‘Al-Ahadu Samad’ etc from authentic Dua in Hadiths.

The unauthentic/Bida’h practices

But there are two groups I found did some comprehensive work as to how to use those names but in my utter surprise, they lack of any references of their work to any authentic original sources.

Such works are,
(1) They will prescribe you, making Tasbeah by Allah’s names thousand times even there is prescription to make Tasbeah for 125,000 times, SubhanAllah!
But where they got this prescription from? Allah knows!
Who has the RIGHT to prescribe an act of worship?
Who has the AUTHORITY to prescribe how to worship Allah Ajja Wa Jalla?
Only Allah, the ONLY ILAHA through his Rasul Muhammad Salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam.
Any other prescription is just innovation and thus be rejected.

(2) Reciting some specific Allah’s names for some specific physical cure.
I don’t find this as an ebadah but rather a scientific use of Allah’s words.
Allahu Akbar! Mind blowing! But I won’t dare to do it nor I would prescribe anyone to do it.
I fear Allah and fear His punishment.
I restrict myself only within the prescription from authentic sources from Rasulullah Salla Allahu alaihi sallam. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala clearly instructed to leave any deviation about His names.

“And leave [the company of] those who practice deviation concerning His names. They will be recompensed for what they have been doing.” (Al Quran Al-Hakeem 7:180)

But they have got no authentic references nor any links to indicate these use by Rasulullah salla Allahu alaihi sallam or Sahaba.So, you can simply discard them as bidah, innovation into the deen.

Anybody could fall into Bida’h

(3) Then I got shocked by one of the most knowledgeable scholars who practiced something about Allah’s Names for some numbers of times which he mentioned were dreamt by a most righteous scholars of the past and he gave the logic that the sahaba made Dua which later became even the part of the Salah such as “Rabbana lakal hamdu hamdan katheeran taiyyeban (when you stand after Ruku’a in the Salah) and also another Dua made by a Sahabi calling Allah’s names of Al-Ahad As-Samad. (Tirmidhi 3475) and of course, Adhan was dreamt by many Sahaba etc.

But the point is, Rasulullah SallaAllahu alaihi wa sallam heard it and he was there to approve it. After Rasulullah Salla Allahu alaihi wa sallam has passed away who is there to approve something which He didn’t teach?

Most alarmingly when He, Salla ALlahu alaihi wa Sallam said, “I didn’t leave anything to inform you that will bring you one step closer to Jannah, nor did I leave anything to inform you that will take you further one step away from Jahannam”*
This Hadith stops anything new in the Deen. You don’t need to do any other worship except what is prescribed by Rasulullah.

The book is finished writing, and printed out. End of story.
Any new things even from a most righteous Ulema’s dream, it’s simply Bida’a. Period.

My Approach to Bida’h

And my approach is, why do I have to go for an optional Ebadah which has a doubt of innovation in it while there’s hundreds of Ebadah from the authentic narrations yet left to do? Doesn’t make sense to me!
But then, you are in the same situation again, You want to call your Rabb using those names but you need a guideline that can be safely referred to anything that void of innovation. I don’t know, I am looking for a guidance about that. 

The First Step

So, while we will look for that guidance, there are steps that we can do to equip us with whatever we have for now.
First question is, Do you know all those names and attributes of Allah? 
I mean do you have a minimum knowledge about what they mean?
I am not asking whether you memorized it and whether you know just a translated literal meaning of it. 
I am asking, whether you have a got a brief knowledge about those names? 
For sure you know many names and surely you also don’t know many names.
If you don’t, then, that’s the first step you can take towards understanding and calling Allah by those names in Shaa Allah.

My failed experience

So, how do you do it? Here is the method.
But before I tell you the method, let me tell you a personal account.
I tried many lectures, reading books to learn those names.
Thing is, you start with lot of enthusiasm but after 4/5/10 sitting you got destructed, I don’t know, it happened with me in several attempt, I failed. I couldn’t finish it all of them once in last 4 years. SubhanAllah, finally this easy method now gave me what I was looking for.
And you can try it. In Shaa Allah!

The Mothod of Study

There are digital posters (images) of Allah’s Names.
Please download those from here. 
Set them as your desktop Screen.
Set those to appear SERIALLY one EVERYDAY.
So whenever you start the PC the poster will appear in the screen. 

HOLD yourself for ONE minute before you jump into your work.
Just spend ONE minute only. Read the meaning described. Read it 2/3 times.
Even if you already know the meaning of this name, STILL read it. Read it AGAIN.

Then move on to whatever you intended the PC for.
So, do it EVERY TIME you start the PC, even you start the PC in the morning once, in the evening once. 
Thus within the Day you are repeating the same name. 

SubhanAllah! You will see that in 3 months times you have a rough idea about ALL the names of Allah. And then after three months you set the repeatation to ‘whenever you start PC’.
Now, if you start PC twice a day you will read two names a day.
You will refresh and get more understanding.
Leave it for another 3 months. You will see what happens. InShaaAllah.

How do you express your Love?

By the way, I didn’t discuss anything about the importance of knowing Allah’s names! 
I took you as someone who already has the common knowledge as to why you need to learn it.
If I have to put it simply, that is to establish your connection with your Rabb, Allah!

SubhanAllah, when you love your child, how many ways you call him/her? What can I say!
Merely your intention of knowing Allah’s name would be enough for Allah to turn to you and make it easy for you In Shaa Allah because He wants you to call Him by those names! Because He is Al-Khabeer, He knows your heart! SubhanAllah!
May Allah make it easy for us to learn Deen and get closer to Allah Ta’ala. Ameen.