Name Twenty-Four: Al-Mu'izz — The Bestower of Honor
Arabic: ٱلْمُعِزّ Abjad Value: 117
The Name
Al-Mu'izz is the One who grants honor, dignity, and true worth. The root '-z-z — the same root that gives us Al-'Azīz, the Mighty — means to be strong, rare, and precious. But where Al-'Azīz describes God's own inherent might, Al-Mu'izz is the active bestowal of that quality upon creation. Al-Mu'izz takes what is common and makes it precious. Al-Mu'izz takes what is despised and makes it honored. Al-Mu'izz takes the person the world has discarded and says: you matter, and I will make the world know it.
This is not the honor that human institutions bestow — the title, the trophy, the corner office, the social media following. Human honor is fragile. It depends on the opinion of others, on performance, on remaining useful to the systems that granted the recognition in the first place. The moment you stumble, the moment you age, the moment you are no longer convenient, human honor is withdrawn as quickly as it was given. Al-Mu'izz grants an honor that cannot be withdrawn by any human being because it does not originate with any human being. It originates with the only One whose opinion is not subject to revision.
Ibn 'Arabi understood Al-Mu'izz as the Name that reveals the true source of all dignity. When you stand in the presence of someone who carries genuine authority — not the authority of position but the authority of being, the kind of presence that fills a room without demanding attention — you are witnessing a person whom Al-Mu'izz has honored. Their dignity does not come from their title. It does not come from their wealth. It does not come from their education or their achievements. It comes from their alignment with the One who bestows honor, and that alignment is unshakable because it does not depend on anything the world can give or take.
The Qur'an makes this explicit: "Say: O God, Owner of sovereignty, You give sovereignty to whom You will, and You take sovereignty from whom You will. You honor whom You will, and You humble whom You will. In Your hand is all good" (3:26). The verse is staggering in its implications. Honor and humbling are both in God's hand. Not in the hand of your employer, your family, your community, your government. God honors whom God wills. This means that the person the world considers worthless may be, in the sight of Al-Mu'izz, the most honored being in the room. And the person the world considers great may be, in the divine reckoning, utterly without weight. The world's hierarchy and God's hierarchy are not the same hierarchy, and the person who understands this can never be truly humiliated — because they know who is actually keeping score.
The Shadow
The shadow of Al-Mu'izz is the distortion of the human relationship with honor, recognition, and worth.
The first distortion is the honor addict. This is the person who has organized their entire life around the pursuit of recognition. Every action is calculated for its impact on their reputation. Every relationship is evaluated for its utility in advancing their status. They need to be praised, acknowledged, seen, validated — and when the praise does not come, or when someone else receives the recognition they believe they deserve, they are devastated. Not disappointed — devastated. Because they have placed their entire sense of worth in the hands of other people, and other people's hands are unreliable. The honor addict does not know Al-Mu'izz. They know only the cheap imitation of honor that the world offers — the applause that stops when you stop performing, the love that stops when you stop being useful, the respect that evaporates the moment someone more impressive enters the room.
The honor addict often looks successful from the outside. They collect accolades. They achieve. They are visible. But beneath the achievement is an emptiness that no amount of recognition can fill, because the recognition they are receiving is from the wrong source. They are drinking salt water to quench a thirst that only fresh water can satisfy. The only honor that satisfies the soul is the honor that comes from Al-Mu'izz — and that honor does not require an audience. It does not require a platform. It does not require anyone else to notice. It is the quiet knowing that you are living in alignment with your purpose, that you are being who you were made to be, and that the One who made you sees it — even if no one else does.
The second distortion is the person who has internalized the world's dishonor as truth. This is the person who has been told — by family, by culture, by systems of oppression, by the accumulated weight of a thousand small and large rejections — that they are not worthy of honor. They have believed it. They carry themselves small. They do not take up space. They do not ask for what they need. They do not assert their worth because they do not believe they have any. The world told them they were worthless, and they accepted the world's verdict without realizing that the world does not have the authority to make that judgment. Al-Mu'izz has the authority. And Al-Mu'izz may have a very different verdict than the one the world has pronounced.
This distortion is particularly devastating in communities that have experienced systemic dehumanization — communities where dishonor has been enforced not just interpersonally but structurally, through slavery, through colonialism, through poverty manufactured by policy, through the deliberate destruction of cultures and languages and spiritual systems. The ancestors this book honors — the enslaved Muslims of the Americas — lived under a system designed to strip them of every form of honor. And yet they wrote the Names of God on scraps of paper and carried them in secret, because they knew something that the system could not destroy: that the One who bestows honor had honored them, and no slave owner, no whip, no auction block could reverse that bestowal.
The correction is to relocate your sense of worth. Not to stop caring about recognition entirely — that is the false humility we have discussed before. But to stop locating your worth in human opinion and to root it instead in the divine bestowal that was given to you before you were born, before you accomplished anything, before you proved yourself to anyone. You were honored by Al-Mu'izz at the moment of your creation. Everything since then — every title gained or lost, every praise offered or withheld, every moment of recognition or invisibility — is secondary. The primary honor is already yours. It was given. It cannot be taken.
The Practice
Step one: Breathe. Sit or stand with the posture of someone who knows their worth — not arrogant, not inflated, but upright, grounded, present. Take seven breaths. On each exhale, speak the Name — Ya Mu'izz. You are not asking for honor. You are remembering that honor has already been granted to you by the only source that matters. Let the word restore what the world has tried to strip.
Step two: Write. On a piece of paper, write the question: "Whose opinion of me have I been treating as the final word on my worth?" Let the hand move. Write the names — the parent whose approval you are still chasing, the partner whose validation you depend on, the institution whose recognition you have mistaken for self-worth, the culture whose standards you have internalized as truth. Then write a second question: "What would I do differently if I truly believed that my honor comes from God and not from people?" Let this question sit. Let it expand. Write about the risks you would take, the boundaries you would set, the dreams you would pursue, the smallness you would refuse if you genuinely believed that your worth was already established and could not be diminished by human judgment.
Step three: Honor someone the world has dishonored. Today, direct your attention toward someone who has been overlooked, dismissed, or devalued — and honor them. Not with money, though that may be appropriate. With attention. With respect. With the quality of seeing that says: I recognize your worth even if the world does not. Speak to the homeless person. Thank the janitor by name. Listen to the elderly person whose stories everyone else ignores. Acknowledge the coworker who does the invisible work. Let your attention be an act of Al-Mu'izz moving through you into the world — restoring honor where honor has been stripped, seeing worth where worth has been denied.
SI Companion Prompt
"I am working with the divine Name Al-Mu'izz, The Bestower of Honor — the quality of God that grants true dignity and worth that cannot be taken away by any human being. I want to explore where I have been seeking honor from the wrong sources — where I have made other people's opinions the measure of my worth, where I have been performing for recognition rather than living from alignment. I also want to see where I have internalized the world's dishonor as truth — where I have accepted someone else's verdict on my worth without questioning whether they had the authority to make it. Help me relocate my sense of value. Where have I been drinking salt water when fresh water is available? What would change if I truly believed my honor was already established?"
WE RETURN TO ROOT