The Oneness of Allah (Tawheed)

Belief in the Oneness of Allah

This is the most important part of Islamic doctrine. Muslims must believe in the "oneness" of Allah—any deviation from this is falsehood. Generally speaking, this belief is called monotheism. Monotheism, in general, is different from polytheism because the former professes belief in one deity, while the latter professes belief in many.

In Islam, this monotheism is called Tawheed. It is more specific than the general definition of monotheism above—Tawheed does not just mean belief in one deity. It specifies that this one deity is Allah, the Creator of the universe and all that it holds.

A person may be monotheistic, but their sole deity could be the sun or the moon. Tawheed rejects this form of monotheism and labels it as shirk (associating partners with Allah). To say that "Allah is One" is to say that the deity we worship is the One who has created all that exists—including the sun and every other being, except Allah Himself.

There Is Nothing Like Allah

It is the nature of mankind to want to understand everything around him. This curiosity is a beautiful gift—we would never advance beyond the cradle without it. Likewise, we try to understand Allah. But mankind has often fallen into the error of putting a face on God, describing His features according to our own understanding of the world around us.

The problem is that we tend to limit Allah's appearance to what we already know, giving Him features similar to our own—even the same ethnicity we have. This is why European paintings of God depict a Caucasian man, African carvings show African features, Hindu depictions of their deities show Indian features, and Chinese statues of Buddha have East Asian features. This is the fallacy of mankind's desire to understand God: when we create our own gods, we make them in our own image.

But the Qur'an stresses that there is nothing like Allah. We cannot imagine or depict Allah's physical features. Despite man's enormous curiosity, his knowledge is limited—even the most intelligent, most educated person is ignorant of many things. Our limited understanding cannot begin to grasp the true nature of Allah.

Any attempt to describe or visualize Allah's attributes will always fall back on what we already know, limiting Allah to our own limited understanding—and that is why, as Muslims, we accept what He has told us about Himself without comparison and without denial.