The Concept of Tawheed

JULY 14 The Concept of Tawheed Fundamental to the religious structure of Islam is the concept of tawheed, or monotheism. As the seed is to tree, so is tawheed to Islam. Just as the tree is a wonderfully developed extension of the seed, so is the religious system of Islam a multi-faceted expression of a single basic concept. For monotheism in Islam does not mean simply belief in one God, but in God’s oneness in all respects. No one shares in this oneness of God. Anthropologists would have us believe that the concept of God in religion began with polytheism; that polytheism gradually developed with monotheism. That is, the concept of tawheed was an evolutionary feature of religion which emerged at a later stage. But, according to Islamic belief, the concept of tawheed has existed since the beginning of human life on this earth. The first man—Adam—was the first messenger of God. It was this first messenger who taught human beings the religion of tawheed. It was in later generations that this religious system began to change. This happened principally because people began to make the assumption that divinity was inherent in natural phenomena. They wondered at the loftiness of the mountains, the unceasing flow of the rivers, and the extraordinary brilliance of the sun and moon, and took it that thing possessed of such awesome attributes must necessarily share in God’s divinity. Men gifted with special talents likewise came to be included in the category of the divine; they were supposed to be incarnations of God Himself. It was in this manner that the concept of polytheism crept into the religious system. In consonance with the view that human religions began with tawheed— with polytheism as a later development—the basic mission of all the Prophets who made their appearance at intervals in this world was to lead people away from the worship of many gods and back to the worship of the One God. In other words, to turn them away from the adulation of creatures and towards reverence for the Creator. As a proof of the Creator’s existence, the Qur’an advances the very fact of the existence of the universe. All studies of the universe show that it cannot be sui genesis: some other agent is essential for the universe to have come into existence. This means that the choice for us is not between a universe with God,