The Ultimate King - Al-Malik

Al-Malik, The Sovereign

Malik means that you have sovereignty over something and can do with it as you wish. Everything other than God is subject to His essence and attributes, while He is independent of everything. So God is The Absolute King, and not like the kings of the world who are necessarily dependent on their subjects. Moreover, God is also Al-Mālik, the Ultimate Possessor, and this Name comes from the same root. God tells us that He is “Māliki youm ad-deen” after He tells us that He is Lord of the worlds. If He is the Lord of the worlds, then He must also be the Lord on the Day of Judgment. But to specifically single out the Day of Judgment is for all of us, who either behave in unethical ways or wonder how others are allowed to behave in such ways. But God reminds us that the innocent lives lost are not lost forever. Power will fade. And we will all be before God. Imam Al-Ghazali, may God have mercy on him, recounts a story where one person said “to a certain shaykh: ‘Advise me’, and he said to him: ‘Be a king in this world and you will be a king in the next.’ When he said: ‘How might I do that?’ The shaykh answered: ‘Renounce this world and you will be a king in the next.’ He meant: detach your needs and your passions from this world, for kingship lies in being free and able to dispense with everything.”