To God belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth as ownership, origination, creation, and devising. He gave them existence from nonexistence, so He owns them with the ownership of exaltedness and powerfulness, not the ownership of gaining and earning. He does in them whatsoever He wills [3:40] and He decrees whatsoever He desires [5:1]. He is saying that everything in the heavens and the earth is owned by God, ownership of existence-giving and exaltedness, not ownership of earning and inheritance. It is the ownership of the Adamites that is gained by the ruling property of commerce and gift, or acquisition and inheritance.
2:284 To God belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. Whether you show what is in your souls or you hide it, God will bring you to account for it.
Hence the ruling property that establishes ownership makes the rightful due of what is owned necessary for them. As for God’s ownership, it comes by way of bringing nonbeing into being, by creation after nonbeing, and by making new from the outset.
Thus His ownership is not like anyone else’s ownership, nor does anyone have any ruling property over Him in that. What He does with what He Himself created He does by reason of His own Lordhood.
From Him. it is justice, not injustice. Injustice is when someone does something that is not his to do. But it is God’s to do whatever He does because He is creator, enactor, and king. Majestic is His ruling power, tremendous His rank, exalted His magnificence, realized His word, and high His reality beyond the perception of intellects!
To God belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. He did not say this so that you would attach your heart to it and occupy yourself with it, but so that you would attach your heart to its creator and see its artisan.
This is the same as He said: “Do not prostrate yourselves to the sun and the moon but prostrate yourselves to God, who created them” [41:37].
When He created heaven and earth, He created them as the gazing place of the common people, so that they would look at the artisanry and from it reach the Artisan. Say: “Gaze at that which is in the heavens and the earth” [10:101].
He gave the elect a higher rank. He invited them away from the gaze of taking heed to the gaze of reflective thought. He turned them away from artisanry to reflective thought. He said, “What, do they not ponder the Qur’an?” [4:82].
Then He made Muṣṭafā pass through the degree of the elect, gave him access to the reality of solitariness, and set him down in the center point of togetherness so that his gaze would go beyond the artisanry and the attributes. He said to him, “Dost thou not see thy Lord?” [25:45].
