Tawhid, literally "Oneness" or "to make one", refers to the principle of monotheism, which is Islam's single most important and central concept, upon which a Muslim's entire religious adherence rests. It unequivocally holds that God (Allāh) is indivisibly one (ahad) and single (wahid). Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession of submission.D. Gimaret, "Tawhid", Encyclopedia of Islam. The first part of the Islamic declaration of faith (shahada) is the declaration of belief in the oneness of God. To attribute divinity to anything or anyone else is considered shirk, which is an unpardonable sin unless repented afterwards, according to the Quran. Muslims believe that the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of tawhid.Tariq Ramadan (2005), p. 203.
From an Islamic standpoint, there is an uncompromising monotheism at the heart of the Islamic beliefs (aqida) that is seen as distinguishing Islam from other major religions.Turner (2006), p. 75.
The Quran teaches the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world, a unique, independent and indivisible being that is independent of all of creation.Vincent J. Cornell, Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol 5, pp. 3561–3562. God, according to Islam, is a universal God, rather than a local, tribal or parochial one and is an absolute that integrates all.Asma Barlas (2002), p. 97.
Islamic intellectual history can be understood as a gradual unfolding of the manner in which successive generations of believers have understood the meaning and implications of professing tawhid. Islamic scholars have different approaches toward understanding it. Islamic scholastic theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, Sufism, and even the Islamic understanding of natural sciences to some degree, all seek to explain at some level the principle of tawhid.Tabatabaei (1981), p. 23.
Chapter of the Quran, titled al-Ikhlas, reads:
Etymology The word 'tawhid' (), which means "assertion or declaration of oneness (of God)", is derived from the Arabic verb 'wahhada' (), which can have a causative meaning, "to make one, to unite", or a descriptive meaning, "to consider to be one, to see as one". This term signifies the belief in absolute oneness and uniqueness of God. This reflects the struggle of monotheism against polytheism.
Name of God in Islam
In order to explain the complexity of the unity of God and of the divine nature, the Quran uses 99 terms, which are referred to as "Excellent Names of God" (). The divine names project divine attributes, which in turn project all the levels of the creation down to the physical plane. Aside from the supreme name "Allah" and the neologism ar-Rahman (referring to the divine beneficence that creates and maintains the universe) and a few other specific names like Malik al-Muluk ("King of Kings") in an authentic narration of Muhammad, other names may be shared by both God and human beings. According to Islamic teachings, the latter is meant to serve as a reminder of God's immanence, rather than being a sign of one's divinity or, alternatively, imposing a limitation on God's transcendent nature. Attribution of divinity to a created entity, shirk, is considered a denial of the truth of God and thus is a major sin.
Shirk
Associating partners in divinity of God is known as shirk and is the antithesis of tawhid. Although the term is usually translated as "polytheism" into English, it is thought to be more complex.Mark, Durie. "Semantic decomposition of four Quranic words." Russian Journal of Linguistics 26.4 (2022): 937-969.Mulia, Siti Musdah. "Muslim Family Law Reform in Indonesia A Progressive Interpretation of The Qur’an." Al-Mawarid: Jurnal Hukum Islam (2015): 1-18. Alternatively, the translation 'associating [with God]' has been suggested.Sinai, Nicolai. "Key terms of the Qur'an: a critical dictionary." (2023): 1-840. The term includes denial of attributing any form of divinity to any other thing but God, which includes the self by elevating oneself above others and associating attributes of God with a created being.Faruki, Kemal. "TAWḤĪD AND THE DOCTRINE OF'IṢMAH." Islamic Studies 4.1 (1965): 31-43. That has caused Sunni scholars to accuse Salafis and Wahhabis of depicting God as a created object ruling from the sky.Shagaviev, Damir A., and Venera N. Khisamova. "Islamic theological literature of the Salafi sect in the modern Tatarstan." Journal of Sustainable Development 8.7 (2015): 83.
Shirk is classified into two categories: al-Shirk al-akbar (; ): open and apparent al-shirk al-khafi; ): concealed or hidden. It is when people perform the necessary rituals but not for God but for the sake of others, including social recognition.Winter, Timothy, ed. The Cambridge companion to classical Islamic theology. Cambridge University Press, 2008. p. 233 Hidden shirk might be unwitting, yet punishable, although to a lesser extent than greater forms of shirk.
Chapter 4, verse 48, of the Quran reads:
Chapter 4, verse 116, of the Quran reads:
Discerning unity of God According to Hossein Nasr, Ali, the first imam (Shia view) and fourth Rashid Caliph (Sunni view), is credited with having established Islamic theology. His quotations contain the first rational proofs among Muslims of the Unity of God.
Ali states that "God is One" means that God is away from likeness and numeration, and he is not divisible even in imagination.
Vincent J. Cornell, a scholar of Islamic studies quotes the following statement from Ali:
The perception of tawhid laid the foundation of Muslim ethics.Al-Bar, M.A., Chamsi-Pasha, H. (2015). The Sources of Common Principles of Morality and Ethics in Islam. In: Contemporary Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18428-9_2 According to Islam, the world is sustained by God as the ultimate reality, unique in his attributes, distinct from everything else. Tawhid denies any affinity between the creator and its creation. That includes that invisible entities (jinn) do not partake in creation but are created, rejection of an avatar or offspring of God, or a partner in creation in form of a sibling or consort. The uniqueness of the creator is expressed in the Daily Prayer's (ṣalāh) phrase Allāhu ʾakbar (Takbīr).
Arguments for Oneness of God Theological Theologians usually use reason and deduction to prove the existence, unity and oneness of God. They use a teleological argument for the existence of God as a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, design or direction or some combination of them in nature. Teleology is the supposition that there is a purpose or directive principle in the works and processes of nature.يك برهان لمّی نيز در اين باب مطرح شده است: يكدستی و يكتايی عالم (خَلْق) از يك پديدآورنده و مدبّر حكايت می كند. ...«ذهن سليم متنبه میشود از شدت ارتباط عالَم، بعضی به بعض ديگر، بر وحدت خالق توحيد در كلام Encyclopedia Islamica
Another argument that is used frequently by theologians is reductio ad absurdum, which they use instead of positive arguments as a more efficient way to reject their opponent's ideas.. استدلال بر توحيد، مسبوق به پذيرش وجود خداست و طبعاً در صورتبندی آن، غالباً مواجهه با مدعيان و معتقدان به دو يا چند خدا در نظر بوده و نظريه ثنويها و مجوس و نصارا ابطال میشده است. به همين سبب از قديمترين زمان، متكلمان برای دفاع از آموزه توحيد و اثبات آن، احتجاج به روش خُلف را كارآمدتر از ارائه ادله اثباتی میدانستهاند. آنان بيشترِ دلايل توحيد را با اين رويكرد ارائه كرده اند. توحيد در كلام Encyclopedia Islamica
God as cause of causes
Against the polytheism of pre-Islamic Arabia, the Quran argues that the knowledge of God as the creator of everything rules out the possibility of lesser gods since these beings must be themselves created. For the Quran, God is an immanent and transcendent deity who actively creates, maintains and destroys the universe. The reality of God as the ultimate cause of things is the belief that God is veiled from human understanding because of the secondary causes and contingent realities of things in the world. Thus, the belief in the oneness of God is equated in the Quran with the "belief in the unseen" (). The Quran summarises its task in making the "unseen" become, to a greater or lesser degree, "seen" so that belief in the existence of God becomes a master truth, rather than an unreasonable belief. The Quran states that God's signals are so near and yet so far, demanding that its students listen to what it has to say with humility (, ). The Quran draws attention to certain observable facts to present them as "reminders" of God, instead of providing lengthy "theological" proofs for the existence and unity of God.Fazlur Rahman (1980), p. 2
Ash'ari theologians rejected cause and effect in essence but accepted it as something that facilitates humankind's investigation and comprehension of natural processes. The medieval scholars argued that nature was composed of uniform atoms that were "recreated" at every instant by God. The laws of nature were only the customary sequence of apparent causes (customs of God), the ultimate cause of each accident being God himself.Robert G. Mourison (2002) Other forms of the argument also appear in Avicenna's other works, and the argument became known as the Proof of the Truthful.
Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being in which he distinguished between essence (Mahiat) and existence (Wujud). He argued that the fact of existence may not be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be caused by an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence.
God as necessary existent
An ontological argument for the existence of God was first proposed by Avicenna (965–1037) in the Metaphysics section of The Book of Healing. Other forms of the argument also appear in Avicenna's other works, and the argument became known as the Proof of the Truthful. Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence (Mahiat) and existence (Wujud). He argued that the fact of existence can not be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be caused by an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and co-exist with its effect.
That was the first attempt at using the method of a priori proof, which uses intuition and reason alone. Avicenna's proof of God's existence is unique in that it can be classified as both a cosmological argument and an ontological argument. "It is ontological insofar as 'necessary existence' in intellect is the first basis for arguing for a Necessary Existent". The proof is also "cosmological insofar as most of it is taken up with arguing that contingent existence cannot stand alone and must end up in a Necessary Existent". Another argument Avicenna presented for God's existence was the problem of the mind–body dichotomy.