Are all of Allah’s attributes for us to emulate?
When we look at various names of Allah as revealed in the Qur'an and in the Sunnah of the last Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), we are looking at these names from the perspective of applying them, on the one hand, to our knowledge of Allah, so that we better know Him and to worship Him in a more complete and better guided way; and on the other hand, we study these names in order to better understand how they are relevant to us in our lives; what aspects of them have particular relevance to our day to day lives, and how we can reflect those names in our actions. We are relevant, not to say each and every name has such relevance, but most of the names do call us either to act in a way similar from a human perspective. Allah is merciful; we strive to be merciful; or it is to go in the opposite; Allah is proud, too proud to oppress His creatures. We cannot be proud. It is not acceptable for us to be proud because Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) said:
“One who has an atom’s weight of pride in his or her heart will not enter paradise.”
So it is for us a characteristic which we do not emulate but we should avoid. And then there are some names of Allah where we just praise Him with it. We do not try to avoid or we do not try to do. We just praise Him with it, like His name Allah. His name Allah is the greatest Name. It encompasses within it all of the other names. So it is just that we pray to Allah with that name. We begin our deeds with Bismillah, in all the daily deeds we are doing, base on what Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) has taught us. And we call on Allah: Allahumma, we use it in our prayers. That is what we can extract from that great Name.
 [Muslim (91)]< Back to Questions