Islam best manifests the monotheistic simplicity. Sitting within man’s disposition, it is the logical conclusion of any sound mind, so rationally accessible that a child can understand and follow it, while simultaneously so profound that its meanings perpetually hold the greatest scholars and philosophers in wonderment and awe.
God is One, and only He is. He is the Absolute Reality, and all else fades into nothingness beside Him. He is Transcendent and independent of creation, though creation depends on Him. He is Eternal, unchanging, Ever-Existing before the beginning of Time and after its end.
Within the modern reductionist worldview, which reduces all reality to an atom (or a quark), today, ‘One’ is often synonymous with singularity and monotony. In relation to the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, ‘One’ represents Completeness and Totality, without deficiency; ‘One’ represents Perfection. Within Islam’s sacred texts, God describes Himself to us with many names or qualities. These are not separate entities, but the same One reality that projects within different domains of creation.
God is infinitely beyond all the limitations of human language, imagery, or comprehension. The modern mechanical man would naively think of God as composed of these qualities. But in reality, the names are simply projections of the same perfect reality—the One within the different domains of creation.
The ancient world understood that ‘the Greater precedes the lesser’ i.e. In the Beginning was the Greatest, – God and all proceeded from Him and by His Will alone. Creation, with its differentiation and multiplicity, is simply a projection of the Infinite Perfect One within the limited, created domain.
The contemporary perverse narrative posits that ‘the lesser proceeds the greater’, exemplified by Evolution and the current fascination with the unbounded realm of science. Within this fallacious narrative, quarks and atoms are purported to give rise to Beauty, Harmony, Balance, and Justice; the simple is believed capable of producing the complex. Ironically, this assertion contradicts one of the most fundamental principles in science—the Second Law of Thermodynamics—which dictates that all systems naturally experience an increase in Entropy (disorder and degeneracy) over time, indicating that the complex ultimately devolves into the simple, and discriminations diminish into degeneracy. Local order can occur at the expense of global disorder by God’s Will for it to exist.
The ancient world recognised that white light represented the original, while its projections into various realms (mediums or frames of reference) resulted in the manifestation of light colours. In contrast, the modern paradigm perceives white light as a composite of the various wavelengths (colours) within the visible Electromagnetic Spectrum – the rainbow.
The ancient world also understood that the Law of Entropy is periodically reversed by Divine Intervention – principally Revelation.
God – Being and Beyond Being
God is the Creator, the Sustainer, and the ultimate destination of all existence. He embodies all knowledge, possesses unparalleled power, and exemplifies boundless compassion. These attributes characterise God, the Mover of all entities – the essence of Reality itself. Such qualities resonate within the human experience, rendering them relatable. God permits these descriptions of Himself so that His creation may draw near to Him; however, it must be acknowledged that nothing is like unto Him.
“˹He is˺ the Originator of the heavens and the earth. He has made for you spouses from among yourselves, and ˹made˺ mates for cattle ˹as well˺—multiplying you ˹both˺. There is nothing like Him, for He ˹alone˺ is the All-Hearing, All-Seeing.”[1]
Simultaneously, God is the Truth, Absolute, Eternal, Unbounded and ultimate Reality – the Beyond-Being reality. These are the Transcendent qualities which are not reflected within the human condition.
Good is Godliness, and the absence of Good is evil; in fact, evil has no independent reality of itself and is simply the darkness in the absence of Light, nothingness in the absence of Reality. What we often refer to as evil is the ‘nihilistic tendency or pathway to oblivion, self-destruction, or nothingness.’
It is the Beyond-Being reality that punishes evil and protects us from evil, and it is the Beyond-Being reality that ordains for evil (the nihilistic tendency) to exist. God – the Beyond-Being Reality has power over all creation and can do what He wishes,
“To Allah is your return, and He hath power over all things.”[2]
And,
“Surely Allah does what He wills.”[3]
God – the Necessary Existent, the Pure and Infinite Source of Being is the Truth and cannot be untruth; He is Unbounded and Unlimited and cannot be bounded or limited; He is Uncreated and cannot be created. God cannot be ‘ungod’; anything besides Himself.
The Judaic-Christian tradition reduces God to the ‘Being’, which, in turn leads to anthropomorphism. The Dharmic tradition of Hinduism and Buddhism emphasises the Beyond-Being aspect, namely Brahman within Hinduism and Nirvana within Buddhism that can in turn lead to remoteness and detachment from God and ultimately Deism which is discussed later. Allah, within the Islamic framework perfectly conveys the most correct expression of God within the limits of human comprehension and language.
Man’s Fall -Entropy- from Monotheism
The following narrative delineates the spiritual erosion and decline from a genuine comprehension of God and man’s direct relationship with Him, transitioning into erroneous beliefs that elevate created entities to the status of Divinity. This shift introduces intermediaries and intercessors between humanity and God, ultimately instigating a sense of distance and alienation from Him, which often culminate in total detachment from God and the emergence of atheism.
Theism, Deism and Atheism and Agnosticism
Broadly speaking, ‘Theism’ is the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deity with an associated revelation in the form of a prophet and book to guide creation.
Deism postulates the existence of One God who created the world, but considers him a passive observer of his creation, who does not act to influence events,[4] but rather presiding over it in so far as the laws and nature are concerned. In Deism, the personal nature of God is absent, hence the ever-present reality of God is lost and worship has no meaning.
Moreover, Deists reject divine intervention in the form of prophets, miracles, and divine revelations. Instead, Deism holds that religious beliefs must be founded on human reason and observed features of the natural world, and that these sources reveal the existence of a supreme intelligence or Creator. Some Deists choose to deify the Laws of nature in the form of ‘Mother Nature’, a non-personal entity. This paradigm falsely elevates time as a pseudo-deity by placing the God – the Creator before time, allowing time preside over and sustain creation rather than himself, effectively denying that God is the sustainer and Creator of every instant of time.
Atheism is commonly understood as the complete non-acceptance of God, or the rejection of theism in the broadest sense of the term theism, which claims to reject both the One God and polytheism – many gods. The claim that the existence of any deity is unknown or unknowable is agnosticism. This is in contrast to Gnosis, which is direct knowledge of vision of God.
Within the religious traditions of the world, the concept of the Supreme Being or Ultimate Reality is labelled with different names such as Deity, Great Spirit, God, The One, Reality, Truth, Atma (Brahman), Nirvana and so on.
Monotheism
Monotheism (Tawhid) comes from the Greek word ‘monos’, meaning ‘single’ is the theological belief that only one deity exists. Many modern-day religions claim to be monotheist such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Baháʼísm, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism and so on.
This simple yet immensely deep comprehension of God was the religion of Adam, the father of mankind and early man. Today, Islam best manifests the monotheistic simplicity. Sitting within man’s disposition, it is the logical conclusion of any sound mind, so rationally accessible that a child can understand and follow it, while simultaneously so profound that its meanings perpetually hold the greatest scholars and philosophers in wonderment and awe.
“Allah ˹Himself˺ is a Witness that there is no god ˹worthy of worship˺ except Him—and so are the angels and people of knowledge…”
The Classical Abrahamic Religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Although all these religions claim to be monotheist and that God is the Creator of all, Judaism and Christianity make God remote by wrongly over-emphasising his Holiness and Pure Goodness at the expense of His All-Encapsulating Wisdom and Compassion. Islam is the only religion that expresses the direct relationship between man and God without intermediary or intercessors.
Polytheism, on the other hand, is not just the belief that there are multiple gods but usually includes belief in the existence of a specific pantheon of distinct deities, and its beginnings can usually be traced to one of two things:
- The over-veneration of God’s servants into deities in and of themselves, whether they be angelic beings or Prophets sent by God, resulting in the placing of these personas as objects of worship, or divine-like intermediaries and intercessors between man and God.
- The deification of God’s attributes into separate, distinct beings, which are all equivalently ‘god’, or divine intermediaries and intercessors between man and God.
Though Islam makes no such distinction, calling any degree of polytheism ‘Shirk’ which is the gravest abomination man can commit, so called ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ polytheism reflect the degree of degeneration within the belief system.
Soft polytheism views the gods as being subsumed into a greater whole with themselves being subordinate to a Supreme Entity. Certain Hindu traditions—such as Smartism and some interpretations of Dvaita Vedanta—offer examples of this approach.
Hard polytheism views the gods as being distinct and separate beings; this unsustainable paradigm ultimately leads to chaos with deities in conflict with one other until the Supreme Entity emerges victorious. Examples of this include certain schools of Hinduism as well as Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, Roman, Norse and Celtic Mythologies.
It can be argued that the modern, secular world expresses this paradigm as it sees all entities as being independent, equivalent and self-sufficient. As such, ‘Atheism’ is the hardest form of polytheism for not only its deification of multiple beings, but for its deification (affirming the self-sufficiency) of even the most dependent and disintegrated objects and beings.
From that perspective, atheism resembles Pantheism which formally holds that the physical universe is equivalent to God, and that there is no division between a Creator and the substance of its creation. This is a form of Deism where the physical universe takes on some of the roles of a theistic God, and other roles of God viewed as unnecessary. The Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy is an example of Pantheism.
Other manifestations of the degeneracy of the simple and pure monotheism found within the Islamic paradigm include those who believe in many deities, but affirm only one for worship, known as Monolatrism, often resulting from the deification of angels.
A Henotheist on the other hand will worship one of a pantheon of gods, depending on circumstance, while a Kathenotheist worships one god at any given time, each becoming supreme in turn! Others, known as ‘Autotheists’ consider divinity as being inherently within oneself and can be uncovered through a spiritual awakening. Although practiced by many who claim it to be selfless, it opens pathways into egoism, or ‘egotheism’ and ultimately self-deification and the denial of the Creator.
As history shows, humanity has often strayed from the pure way of monotheism, introducing intermediaries and fragmenting the notion of the One Creator into multiple or competing entities. Whether through over-veneration of God’s servants, deifying His attributes, or dissolving the Creator into creation itself, these distortions culminate in paradigms far removed from the original simplicity of God’s Oneness, embedded within the cognisance of every man. Deism, Atheism, polytheism, and beyond each represent a gradual fall from true monotheism. Despite these deviations, the core Truth remains: God Alone is Absolute, Independent, and Ever-Present.
“Or have they associated with Allah partners who ˹supposedly˺ produced a creation like His, leaving them confused between the two creations? Say, ‘Allah is the Creator of all things, and He is the One, the Supreme.’”[5]
References:
[1] Qur’an 42:11
[2] Qur’an 11:4
[3] Qur’an 22:14
[4] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/deism
[5] Qur’an 13:16
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