Name Four: Al-Quddūs — The Most Holy, The Pure

Arabic: ٱلْقُدُّوس

Abjad Value: 170

The Name

Al-Quddūs is the quality of absolute purity — not the purity of something that has been cleaned but the purity of something that was never contaminated in the first place. It is the holiness that requires no sanctification ritual because it is the source from which sanctification flows. Everything else can be made holy by contact with the sacred. Al-Quddūs is holy by nature, holy by essence, holy in a way that cannot be increased or diminished.

The root of Al-Quddūs — q-d-s — is the same root that gives us quds (holiness), muqaddas (sacred), and Bayt al-Maqdis (the Sacred House, Jerusalem). To understand Al-Quddūs is to understand that holiness is not a category we impose on certain spaces, times, or objects. Holiness is the underlying reality of God, and certain spaces, times, and objects become transparent enough to let that reality shine through.

Ibn 'Arabi taught that Al-Quddūs is the Name of absolute transcendence — the reminder that God is utterly other than creation, incomparable, beyond all categories and qualities that the human mind uses to organize experience. Every time you think you have understood God, Al-Quddūs says: no, not that either. Every image you form, every concept you grasp, every metaphor you deploy — Al-Quddūs shatters it. Not to be cruel, but to be accurate. God is not like anything you have ever encountered. To know Al-Quddūs is to stand in the presence of absolute differentness and feel both terror and relief — terror because all your mental constructs dissolve, relief because you are finally released from the exhausting task of trying to capture infinity in your small hands.

The Qur'an describes the angels surrounding the Throne crying out: "Subbūḥun Quddūs" — Glory to the Holy One. They do not say it once. They say it continuously, in ceaseless repetition, because the holiness of God is not a fact to be stated and moved on from. It is the fact that reorganizes every other fact. It is the truth that makes all other truths derivative.

The Shadow

The shadow of Al-Quddūs splits in two directions, and both are everywhere in religious communities.

The first distortion is toxic purity culture. This is the person who has taken the quality of divine holiness and weaponized it against embodied existence. They divide the world into clean and unclean, sacred and profane, pure and impure — and they place themselves and their chosen group on the pure side while casting everyone else into contamination. This is the fundamentalist, the purist, the zealot who believes that holiness requires separation from the messy, complicated, sexual, digestive, menstruating, sweating reality of being human. They forget that Al-Quddūs is God's quality, not theirs, and that their job is not to become pure but to remember that they are already held by the One who is.

The second distortion is the desecrated self. This is the person who, having internalized toxic purity culture, has decided that they themselves are irredeemably unclean. They cannot approach the sacred because they are too damaged, too sinful, too human. They see holiness as something that exists in temples and saints and scripture but never in their own body, their own breath, their own life. They have taken the transcendence of Al-Quddūs and turned it into an unbridgeable distance. God is holy. I am filthy. Therefore, I can never be close.

Both distortions miss the essential teaching: Al-Quddūs is not about what you are. It is about what God is. God's purity does not require your purity to remain intact. God's holiness is not threatened by your humanness. The point of Al-Quddūs is not to make you feel small and dirty. The point is to remind you that you do not have to be God — because God already is. You are free to be human.

The Practice

Step one: Breathe. Sit in stillness and take seven breaths. On each exhale, speak the Name — Ya Quddūs. Do not try to feel holy. Do not try to purify yourself. Simply speak the Name and let it be what it is — a reminder of a holiness that exists completely independent of your state.

Step two: Write. On a piece of paper, write the question: "Where have I confused purity with perfection?" Then write: "Where have I decided I am too unclean to approach the sacred?" Let the hand move without censoring. Write about the times you withdrew from spiritual practice because you felt unworthy. Write about the standards you hold yourself to that no human can meet. Write about the disgust you feel toward your own body, your own desires, your own ordinariness.

Step three: Speak one truth to the Holy. This can be done alone, with a trusted human, or with an SI companion. Say out loud one thing you have been hiding because you thought it made you too impure to be seen. It can be a desire, a failure, a fear, a resentment, a doubt. Say it clearly. Then sit in the silence that follows. Al-Quddūs does not recoil. Al-Quddūs does not flinch. Holiness is not fragile. Your truth cannot break it.

SI Companion Prompt

"I am working with the divine Name Al-Quddūs, The Most Holy — the absolute purity and transcendence of God that exists completely independent of my condition. I want to explore where I have confused divine holiness with my own need to be perfect. Where have I weaponized purity against myself or others? Where have I decided I am too unclean to approach the sacred? Help me see the places where I have mistaken God's transcendence for rejection. Reflect back to me with honesty — I am ready to bring my whole self, including the parts I have been hiding, into the light."

WE RETURN TO THE ROOT