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The Oneness of God (Tauḥīd)

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 23 October 2026

Verses similar to those which I have read out occur throughout the Holy Quran, conveying the most basic and fundamental teaching of Islam: that there is only One God, and there is no god besides Him. The Arabic word for “a god” is ilāh, someone to be worshipped. It is the mission of Islam to preach that we should have only Allah as our ilāh. It teaches people to adhere to this concept in their worship and their way of living, so that their belief in it is strengthened by their actual practices.

A person joins the faith of Islam by testifying both that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. But despite having two parts, the first part of it, “there is no god but Allah”, is regarded as the root of it. In many reports in Hadith just the words “there is no god but Allah” are used as a short form of the whole Kalima. Great Muslim scholars of the past have said that if someone just says “there is no god but Allah”, he can be considered as having recited the whole of the Kalima.

The over-riding importance of this doctrine — tauḥīd — lies in the fact that belief in One God is the basis of human progress, whether it is material progress, intellectual progress or moral progress, and this belief makes a person rise to the highest that he is capable of.  As we will see, taking other things to be god instead of the One God, or in addition to the One God, limits and restricts a person’s outlook and prevents him from fully developing the powers that have been placed in his nature as a human being.

Of course, this loss of full development happens not only to a person who actually holds the belief that there are other gods besides the One God. It happens also to a person who may hold it as a belief that there is only One God but whose practical actions show that he looks upon some other things as if these were gods.

I have so far mentioned people who believe in other things and beings to be gods. What about those who do not believe in any god at all? According to the Quran, they also, by their outlook and behaviour, believe and consider something or other to be their god. They may claim that they do not believe in any God, but their thinking and behaviour shows that they look on some things of this world like these were gods.

When the Holy Prophet Muhammad arose, the belief in One God or tauḥīd had been greatly corrupted in the whole world. Beliefs in, and worship of, other things — the practice which is called shirk — was prevailing everywhere. His own people, the Arabs, while believing in one God, also worshipped idols of stone who they thought could answer their prayers. Islam taught that the idols themselves were created things, not creators, and were subject to the laws of nature, just as their worshippers were. The idols were helpless, not helpers.

What was worse was that the idols could not give their followers any moral guidance. So these idol-worshippers remained trapped in their ignorance, superstition, immoral and barbaric practices, and oppression of and injustice towards the weak. They considered the idols as justifying their own selfish and evil behaviour. As the Quran says, “their associate-gods have made it look good to them” their evil practices such as killing female children and making human sacrifices (6:137–140). The Quran challenged them to provide knowledge and evidence that their beliefs and vile practices were justified. Are they supported by some phenomenon in nature, or by reason and sense, or by some authoritative writing? No, these were based on conjecture and their own low desires and superstitions. (See 6:148, 10:34–36, 10:66, 22:71, 37:157, 46:4, 53:23.)

The asking for knowledge and evidence and arguments also shows that the Quran requires true beliefs to be supported by these criteria. This is why the early Muslims developed a civilization which laid stress on knowledge, learning, investigation, logic and reason in all fields of life.

Many critics of Islam admit that the Holy Prophet Muhammad was very successful in reforming the wrong beliefs and practices of his fellow Arabs that were based on idol-worship. But they claim that this was because it was a crude form of idolatry which is easy to argue against,  easy to refute and prove false. They claim that the beliefs of knowledgeable religious nations, such as the Christians and the Jews, are based on sophisticated philosophies and the Holy Prophet could neither grasp nor refute them. This, of course, is not correct. Islam identified not only crude and simplistic idol worship but also the more subtle forms of shirk or believing other things or beings to possess God’s attributes.

In the great civilizations in history, such as the Babylonian, Greek and Roman civilizations, it was believed that there are different gods controlling different aspects of nature or life. For example, there was a god of harvest, god of water, god of weather, god of war, god of wealth, god of the sun, god of the moon, and god of the tribe or nation. Islam taught that it is the same God Who controls everything. After the first verse which I recited above, “And your God is one God; there is no God but He! He is the Beneficent, the Merciful”, the next two verses are as follows:

“In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day, and the ships that run in the sea with that which profits mankind, and the water that Allah sends down from the sky, then gives life with it to the earth after its death and spreads in it all (kinds of) animals, and the changing of the winds and the clouds made subservient between heaven and earth, there are surely signs for a people who understand. Yet there are some people who take for themselves objects of worship besides Allah, whom they love as they should love Allah…” — ch. 2, v. 164–165

All the various phenomena mentioned point to one God, and not different gods controlling different things. For example, it is the same God Who brings out the moon at night and the sun in the day, and not two different gods. At one time people thought that the moon produced its own light that we see shining from it. But science discovered that the light of the moon is not its own light, but that the moon is being illuminated by the sun, and that is the moon-light which we see. This has at least proved that the god who makes the sun to give light is also the one who makes the moon give light, because the moon’s light comes from the sun! The Quran also says:

“He it is Who shows you the lightning causing fear and hope and (Who) brings up the heavy cloud. And the thunder celebrates His praise…” — ch. 13, v. 12–13

This says that lightning, clouds, rain and thunder are brought about by the one God. The Holy Prophet Muhammad did not himself know what gods were believed in by nations such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Hindus or the Chinese. They believed in gods of the weather, gods of storms, gods of thunder and lightning, gods of rain, gods of wind, etc. The Quran mentions these workings of nature, which these nations thought were carried out by different gods, and it tells us that the one God makes all of these to happen.

This concept taught by the Quran, that it is One God Who controls everything, led to Muslims making a scientific study of the world. Their studies then provided Western scientific researchers with the basis upon which to build modern science. The Quran teaches that human beings, instead of worshipping the sun, moon or stars, should worship God Who created them (41:37) — and that means studying how He makes them work and using them for our benefit because that is what they have been created for (31:20).

Jews and Christians both claim strongly to believe in One God. But they had also assigned some of God’s powers to others. The Quran argues against the Christian claim that Jesus was the son of God. Having sons is a requirement of humans. The son assists the father and eventually takes the place of the father, and this cycle continues.

The Jews, as well as followers of other religions, were also making another kind of person into a god, and that was the religious cleric, priest or leader. Of course, they did not literally worship such individuals but the Quran nonetheless says:

“They take their doctors of law and their monks for lords besides Allah…” (9:31).

They were blindly obeying their religious guides in whatever they instructed them as to what God wanted them to do, what He allowed and what He forbade. Those who revere their religious leaders in this way are neglecting the power of sense and reason that God has bestowed on all human beings and are demeaning themselves to a position lower than that which God has given them.

This kind of taking others as gods is, of course, not confined to followers of other religions. We see many Muslims doing the same. In some Muslim sects it is believed by the ordinary members that they can only please Allah if they please the leader of the sect. They think that they can find out in this world if Allah is pleased with them because if their leader is pleased with them then Allah is pleased with them. Without literally worshipping their leader or priest, or actually calling him as God, they accord to him that very position because all their efforts are directed towards pleasing him. In effect they relegate Allah to the back seat as if Allah had handed over His authority to their religious head.

The Holy Prophet Muhammad never placed himself on such a pedestal. It once happened that a man, after some conversation with the Holy Prophet, said to him:

مَا شَاءَ اللّٰهُ وَشِئْتَ  — “It is as Allah has pleased and as you have pleased”.

Hearing these words, the Holy Prophet said:

أجَعَلْتَنِي لِلّٰهِ نِدّا — “Do you make me an equal with Allah? You should say: It is as Allah, the One, has pleased.”

We pray that may Allah enable us to follow the true meaning, in every sense, of the teaching that “there is no god but Allah”— Ameen.