(Original article: Mystic Living Today, July 2024)
Nassir H. Sabah
A most hallowed phrase of the Quran is: “There is no god but Allāh”, whose transliteration in English is: la ilaha illa Allāh.
This phrase has three profound meanings: First is the evident meaning that the universe has only one God, He who created the universe, is the guide and sustainer of everything in it, and whose proper name in Arabic is Allāh. This is the same God who sent revelations to all people at all times everywhere through prophets, including Moses, Jesus, and ending with Muhammad.
The Quran gives a simple, realistic reason why there could only be one God: “Were there gods other than Allāh in them (the heavens and Earth), they would surely have been corrupted. So glory be to Allāh, Lord of the Throne, above that which they ascribe.” (Q21:22)
The second meaning is that only Allāh should be worshipped, that is, idolized and made the center of our devotion and attention. Nowadays, polytheism prevails in different forms, as many people do in fact worship, in this sense of the word, other gods, such as money, power and status, our own egos and self-interests, or other worldly and materialistic pursuits.
The third meaning is that in opposing all forms of evil, one should fear only Allāh and not anything or anyone. All pious believers are commanded to oppose evil to the best of their ability, where evil includes all forms of injustice, oppression, exploitation, and corruption.
Linguistically, both this phrase and the word Allāh are composed of one or more occurrences of three Arabic letters that are equivalent to the English letters “a”, “l”, and “h”. All six, three-letter combinations of these letters are meaningful words in Arabic.
Numerically, if the number of letters in each of the four words of this phrase are laid side by side, with the number of letters of the first word in Arabic on the right, the resulting number is 4332 = 19x19x12 = (19×4)(19×3), where the product is made up of the mystically significant number 19 multiplied by the number of words in the phrase and also by the number 19 multiplied by the number of different letters used in the phrase. The product 4×3 = 12 is also the sum of the digits of the number 4332, that is, the number of letters in the phrase. Moreover, the sum of the first and last digits of this number is 6 and the sum of the two middle digits is also 6, where 6 in mathematics is the first perfect number, that is a number that equals the sum of its proper divisors, which in the case of 6 are 1, 2, and 3.
The significance of the number 19 is that it consists of the first, nonzero, numeral and the last numeral of the decimal system and is considered to be a reference to The First and The Last, these being two of The Most Exalted Names of The Almighty in the Quran. These two names occur in the verse: “He is the First, and the Last, and the Outward, and the Inward; and He is Knower of all things.” (Q57:3). This is similar to the Biblical passage: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Revelation 22:13), where alpha and omega are the first and last letters, respectively, of the classical Greek alphabet. In Arabic gematria, whereby each letter is assigned a numerical value, the value of the Divine Name Wāḥid (One), is 19. The number 19 is also believed to be the first number revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (Q74:30).
Isn’t it simply amazing that the number 19 associated with the oneness and uniqueness of God is expressed in the numerical relation (19×4)(19×3), in one instance in conjunction with the number of words in the Arabic phrase, “There is no god but Allāh”, and in another instance in conjunction with the number of different letters used in this phrase? But this is not all. If the three numbers 19, 19, and 12 are combined in any of the three possible orders, the resulting numbers are multiples of the mystical number 7 when read from left to right or from right to left. Thus: 191912 = 27,416×7, 219191 = 31,313×7, 191219 = 27,317×7, 912191 = 130,313×7, 121919 = 17,417×7, and 919121 = 131,303×7!
Is all this purely coincidental?
