Dear Br. Student,
Salaamun Aleikum,
You share as an analogy:
“Suppose someone invited you to his place with great promise and sure enough he perfectly received you and honored and bestowed you with all the gifts, served you (through his servants) the most delicious dishes and exotic drinks you ever imagined and entertained you with all the comforts during your stay and after all done you're asked to leave without meeting the host. Will you still be all satisfied and content? Can you call this a meeting?”
I take it that this is presented in an effort to respond to my previous parting short where I said “I can’t unequivocally surmise from the Qur’anic verses that there is no better reward than that, or mention of a particular greatest reward.”
Respectfully, I can’t connect a conflict between the two views. From a Qur’anic perspective, I find it as a matter of fact that believers shall see Allah in the hereafter, in an understanding shared in my earlier post. In my humble opinion, if it is to be insisted that our great ‘desires’ have to be satisfied because Allah promises that in Paradise is whatever the soul desires, (43:71) , it still has to be appreciated that this shall be in a nature the details of which we are not aware or informed (56:61). Allah better understands our entire souls hence desires. Thus He rewards the believers in a way He deems appropriate and fit, an analogy of an earthly situation would just sound superfluous considering the Omniscience and Omnipotence of Allah with respect to His rightful power to satisfy 'desires' of His creatures or rewarding accordingly.
If the point is that seeing Allah should be the all-satisfactory and all-content final aspect of the rewarding to believers in Paradise, hence the greatest reward, then where in rank should we place that great victory mentioned by such verses as 9:72 and 5:119, among others, and how should we reach the conclusion that ‘seeing' Allah is the greatest reward/victory while that could have been selectively mentioned in 32:17 if such a notable distinction would have been deemed fit any worthy of mention?
If in any case it is the greatest reward for the believers, what is it to those deniers of that Day of "meeting" with Allah (all of mankind, 19:95, 3:9, 3:25) for Judgement given that you rightly deduce from 83:15 that they shall be barred from that 'Blissful joy' while on the other hand implying that the meeting with Allah is necessarily implicative of 'seeing' as quoted below?
"And what is a meeting without seeing? How is it even debatable in the Hereafter?"
While you kindly use 7:143 to support the idea that Moses actually did see Allah, somebody would still use the same verse to prove the contrary. For instance, one would suggest that if the condition for "seeing" Allah was the still standing of the mountain, and that the mountain was ultimately destroyed, then Moses didn't see Allah, for the mountain had not been still. In my humble perspective, that was just a worldly illustration by Allah for Moses and the entire posterity of humanity to show that the Sovereign Presence of Him doesn't fit our earthly world. After all, Moses is said to have repented after the incident. I hope the repentance could 'partly' be attributed to what just transpired as of the great earthly impossible 'desire' by Moses, which amounted to such an incident.
You respectfully share:
"...He manifest Himself (27:8, 28:30) to the fortunate ones who long and strive for it, I've supported it with few Quranic verses (18:110, 29:5, 10:7)..."
Now, if it is to be inferred from 27:8 (from your perspective) that Allah did 'physically' become manifest in that occasion, what could be the actual manifestation? The mountain in 7:143, the blessed spot - from the tree (al buq’atil mubarakati mina shajarah) in 28:30, or which other mentioned physical thing?
Regarding '(18:110, 29:5, 10:7),' the scope of the contexts is clearly comparable to that of 29:23 as I have carefully tried to share earlier as captured below:
"The former is suggestive of those disbelievers denying both signs of God and the possibility of there being a day of Resurrection when all creatures including themselves (mankind) shall be gathered (‘...the meeting with Him.’)"
You then said:
"Since God remains eternal before or after, according to your interpretation we cannot ever get the joy of meeting Him (Liqa)."
I don't think this is what has been the premise underlying Br Hamzeh's arguments nor mine. In fact "seeing" Allah is what has been asserted in my arguments above, but only in the context of re-creation in the Hereafter and explicitly by believers in Paradise. "Meeting" Allah is guaranteed for all (3:9) 17:72 doesn't imply that the disbelievers of the Day of Judgement shall not be gathered to Him
(Liqaihi) on that Day (for Judgement) just because they don't believe in it. Notwithstanding the nuance that could be derived from the use of either of "...Liqa, Ra'a, Nazar, Basar and Idrak." as you suggest, the context in which it is used is what would essentially remain key in underpinning an underlying nuance, as Br. Hamzeh clearly intimated above.
You finally concluded:
"Did we blindly nodded Qaalu Bala then and would remain blind now and deprived forever?"
I would just kindly advise you to verify your assertions, and accord others' arguments sincere deserved considerations, before summing up your view. I think that's an unwarranted and clearly unnecessary contention to part with.
I hope you shall consider my views In sha Allah.
Regards,
Athman.