Al-Mani: The Preventer of Harm

Allah Mani, Allah Hu. 

The esma of Mani is one of the 99 Attributes of Allah. It is the esma that shows that Allah the Creator, in order to prevent His servants from falling to harm, will prevent them from things. Now we are going to do the tefekkür, the contemplative meditation. of this esma, Insha’Allah. And Insha’Allah after the tefekkür we are going to try to explain this esma with some symbols. Let us say it again: 

Allah Mani, Allah Hu.

You know that tefekkür is one of the most valuable parts of the Islamic worship. Tefekkür is not thinking. You leave the esma that you have just received in the depths of your mind in a state of submission to Allah, trusting in Allah. With the energy that it creates there, the manifestation of that esma spreads throughout your whole body. If you try to do the tefekkür of an esma by thinking about it, other ideas and thoughts will come into that thought and some mistakes will be born through the influence of your nefs, your ego self. So thinking of absolutely nothing, you have to just establish that esma there and establish your rabita, your connection with Allah. Then the true energy, the Nur, the Divine Light, will come into being.

The esma of Mani of Allah is an esma that is born from Allah’s watchful and protective attributes so that His servant will not fall into harm and is prevented from doing so. Allah has created His servants with love and sent them to this world, but because people have forgotten Him, He is bringing the people back to the Path through these esmas, through these Names. Now, who is it who explained these esmas? All of the Prophets have opened up the existence of the esmas. But these esmas are working in every human being and they bring people toward goodness and beauty. If a person follows his nefs, his self, his soul, Allah will see that and will see that he is going to do harm with his nefs; immediately Allah’s esma of Mani will come into play and will distance him from that, because Allah has given us the nefs and with this nefs Allah is having His own work performed by us here in the world. But because He wishes this nefs to be worked in a beautiful manner, He has made these esmas as a gown to be worn on top of this nefs. But because people are not aware of this, because they live in heedlessness, they have certain desires and wishes, but not knowing if those desires and wishes are going to be a good blessing for them or not, they hurry so that it happens. And there Allah, through His esma of Mani, puts up obstacles so that it doesn’t happen. Because if it does come through as they wish it could be for their harm and so in order that that does not happen Allah creates such causes that prevent it from happening. If you think of it in this way, we are going to see how this Mani esma works in our day-to-day lives very much. For example, we read in the newspaper or hear in the news and sometimes we are also witness to the events ourselves. 

I’ll give an example. A man is ready to get on a ship and go to wherever he is going to go. But he does not know what is going to happen with this ship. On his way to the ship an obstacle comes and he is late and he misses the boat. Time passes and he hears that in a storm this ship was turned over, capsized by a large wave and sunk. And so that Allah could protect this one there, He put into the workings the esma of Mani, the Preventor. You are going down the road, for example, and you are hurrying somewhere in your car, the traffic jams up, and you do not know why it is jammed. Maybe if you had passed by there ten minutes earlier something very bad was going to happen to you. Your going ten minutes later became the manifestation of the esma of Mani. So you went there ten minutes late but you did not see anything bad happen and you got there in a good way. We are giving these examples so we can all understand how the esma of Mani works, because Allah created the human being as beautiful and whatever He has written into his kader, his fate, only Allah can know. Even the angels do not know and He did not even allow the Prophets to know. So for the beauty and goodness of that servant, He creates always His own beautiful wishes. 

Let me give another example. We are poor and dependent; we are like small children, so like a small child we go and we ask for a hundred thousand dollars from our father. Now, will our father give us this? What is a ten year-old child going to do with a hundred thousand dollars? He can do bad things and he can harm many things with this. And Allah’s servants are the same way. Allah knows the servants that He has created and because He knows what He is going to use where, He is not hasty in His judgment. He knows when to give and He creates the goodness and beauty of His servants. The esma of Mani of Allah is always working within us and with this esma He is making us more beautiful.
So what should we do in the face of this esma of Mani? We should not be hasty but we should take our precautions. Let us not live as stupid, let us make our plans but let us not ask insistently from Allah. We have to wait and when Allah wishes, it will manifest and maybe that time will be the most blessed for us. Maybe if it had manifested earlier, it would have been harmful for us. The sole duty that we are to perform here is to trust Allah and to be surrendered, submitted to Allah.

Now we all have nefs, but we do not know how to use this nefs and the things that this nefs creates as bad have taken command of our mind, have taken our mind as prisoner. And because our mind is working within that system, it is keeping us distant from what is good and beautiful. Allah created us lovingly and because He gave us all that is good and beautiful, with this esma of Mani He is keeping us back from those bad desires and He is holding us back from bad actions. In order for us to understand this well, we will see this in our day-to-day lives and we should see this in our day-to-day lives. That is why we should always be thankful for every state that we are in.
Say for example an illness comes to you. You do not know why it came; maybe if it did not you were going to be a very harmful and bad person. Your nefs was going to be raging and you were going to be a murderer or you were going to be a monster that put people against each other, but because Allah loves you, He gave you an illness and with this esma of Mani, the Preventor, He prevented you from being that thing.
I will give you an example on this subject. You know that Yezid, who gave the command for the massacre and murder of Hazreti Huseyin in Kerbela, sent news to his greatest commander calling him to go to the front of his army, the command of his army. Now let me tell you what was happening with the commander at the time. This was a commander with great belief, very strong. One day he went up on the roof of his house, having no idea of anything, and he was changing the tiles on his roof. But as he was doing it, he was getting closer to the edge of the roof without being aware and his wife from below shouted out, “Efendi, you have come to the edge of the roof; watch out or you are going to fall and break something now. Leave that alone and go work somewhere else; that place is dangerous for you.” But the man continued his work and he said, “What Allah says will happen,” and as he was repairing that place in fact he did fall and break his leg. His wife shouted at him, “You didn’t listen to what I said; look, you fell and you broke your leg. What are you going to do now? You are not even going to be able to go to your work.” And so that woman got angry with her husband. And they laid him in his house and he did his healing, and when the remedies and treatments that were used in those days was done, for a month he could not stand up.
At that point, Yezid sent word to him, “Let him come to the head of the army, he is to cut off the heads of Hazreti Huseyin and all of his family in Kerbela.” And the man said to the soldiers who came for him, “Tell Yezid my leg is broken, I am lying in bed for months. I have no strength, no power.” And the soldiers saw what state he was in and they went and told Yezid that the commander was in a weak position with his leg broken, he could not get up, there was no possibility for him to come. And the commander said, “Ya Rabb, Alhamdu sena, the greatest praises to You, thank You very much. It is a good thing that I fell from that roof and You broke my leg. You prevented me, you were Mani for my doing something so terrible as that. This is the esma of Mani.
Allah will give you an illness maybe to prevent you from doing things that are bad or if you are going to be doing whatever work, with His Muta’ahir, with His Ahir esma He will postpone your doing it. Why? For your goodness and beauty. If that man’s leg was not broken, then he would have been forced to follow Yezid’s commands and he was going to go there and he was going to spill the blood of evla de Rasul, the children of the Prophet. What happened with the esma of Mani, the Preventor, was that his leg was broken, he became ill, his body became discomforted, but his heart was in huzur, in peace and tranquillity, and he entered into Paradise.
So what do we understand from this? It means that the esma of Mani is an esma that protects us from every kind of badness. We are not aware of this, but we have to be thankful of every state that we are in and be submitted, and strengthen our trust in Allah. All of the esmas are working in the human being and with these esmas people can have such a rabita, a connection, with Allah, but they are not completely aware of this. It is working all the time, at every instant, but people are not able to think of it. That is why all of the Prophets, all the velis, all the evliyas, the saints and Friends of Allah, all of the murshidi kamils, the mature spiritual teachers, all studied in the schools of the esmas, of the Beautiful Names. And through the events and the experiences of life they saw the existence of these Names within themselves and first of all they enlightened their own being and then they held that light to people.
May Allah make us beautiful human beings. May Allah protect us from what is bad. May He increase our submission. May He increase the ashk, the endless love, in our hearts. And may He offer beauty and goodness to our world. The systems in which the esma of Mani is working in the world are always working through hikmet, wisdom. One part is torn down, another part is built up. Some are made to cry and some are made to laugh. These are the games of the esma of Mani. Allah does this so people become beautiful and He gives lessons so that we know ourselves. That is why we are to trust in Allah and be submitted and give duas, prayers, and serve one another as much as possible.
May Allah make us beautiful human beings.