by Karoly

Created on: May 27, 2009

Islamic monotheism (Tawhid)

As is well known, Tawheed (Islamic monotheism) is the basis of Islam, expressed by its fundamental declaration of faith: There are no gods, but The God. This means that there is and there is only one true God, who alone deserves to be worshipped.

According to Islamic view, and as is evident from a careful study of the history of religions, the concept of monotheism existed aforetime Islam. In fact there is virtually no major world religion which doesn't claim to be monotheistic today. In fact this supports the Islamic claim that prophets were sent by God during all eras to teach man monotheism, and hence Islam is not a new religion founded by Prophet Muhammad.

All major world religions were originally monotheistic and their deviations from real Tawhid occurred gradually and subtly over the ages, even though they all always claimed to be on the true path. This led them to adopting bizarre doctrines such as pantheism, trinity, idol worship, saint worship, intercession and others; all these are manifested as the worship of creation rather than the creator. In Islam too the various heretical sects broke off from the main body of Islam diverging from the point of Tawhid.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of Islam in the ideological realm is its concept of monotheism. Even though it can be argued today that all religions accept the same One God, he is obscured by innumerable gods, goddesses, idols, avatars, god men, deities, angels, fairies, demons, spirits and trinities in other religions. This gave rise to the myths, which are prevalent even today and which were perhaps reinforced by the influence of atheism, that each religion has its own god or gods and religions are hence mutually exclusive doctrines evolved by circumstances and superstitions.

Islamic monotheism has served to shatter these myths. More than just that God is One, it has helped popularize the concepts that this God is the same whom all the religions accepts in common and that he doesn't belong to any race or group or possesses any form we can perceive. Thus Islam has helped the world to rediscover the true God.

However it must be clearly understood that monotheism in Islam doesn't imply that Islam's view of the supernatural is identical to that of the atheists except for a belief in one God, and that one should not believe in any unseen thing or process as directly affecting man other than God. Islam in fact does recognize the existence of mysterious forces in

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