Concept

Tawhid

Overview

Tawhid, literally "Oneness" or "to make one", refers to the principle of monotheism in Islam, which is the single most important and central concept, upon which a Muslim's entire religious adherence rests. It unequivocally holds that God (Allāh) is indivisibly one (ahad) and single (wahid).

Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession of submission. The first part of the Islamic declaration of faith (shahada) is the declaration of belief in the oneness of God. To attribute divinity to anything or anyone else is considered shirk, which is an unpardonable sin unless repented afterwards, according to the Quran. Muslims believe that the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of tawhid.

From an Islamic standpoint, there is an uncompromising monotheism at the heart of the Islamic beliefs (aqida) that is seen as distinguishing Islam from other major religions.

The Quran teaches the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world, a unique, independent and indivisible being that is independent of all of creation. God, according to Islam, is a universal God, rather than a local, tribal or parochial one and is an absolute that integrates all affirmative values.

Islamic intellectual history can be understood as a gradual unfolding of the manner in which successive generations of believers have understood the meaning and implications of professing tawhid. Islamic scholars have different approaches toward understanding it. Islamic scholastic theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, Sufism, and even the Islamic understanding of natural sciences to some degree, all seek to explain at some level the principle of tawhid.

Chapter 112 of the Quran, titled al-Ikhlas, reads:

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

Again, what reaches unto its Perfector and attaches itself to Him is safe against corruption, all the more so if even during disconnection from Him it has not undergone corruption. Wherefore the soul after death shall ever remain and continue unwavering [and undying] and attached to this noble essence, which is called generic universal mind, and in the language of the lawgivers the Divine Knowledge. As to the other…
Avicenna, A Compendium on the Soul
States what Tawhid is; the author is tied to Tawhid in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
She unifies each of her productions only by contemplation of the One, just as she produces man only by contemplating Man-in-himself, although adding to that idea the implied unity. Each of the things that are called "one" have a unity proportionate to their nature ("being"); so that they participate in unity more or less according as they share essence[188] (being). Thus the soul is something different from unity…
Plotinus, Plotinos
States what Tawhid is; the author is tied to Tawhid in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
The higher life which belongs to this sphere, this supreme enjoyment of truth, which as feeling is called "blessedness," and as conscious thought "contemplation," we may describe generically as the life known to religion. For religion is just this universal domain[184], in virtue of which the _one_ concrete totality of the World comes to each man in union with himself, as his essential substance, while it remains no…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
States what Tawhid is.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Tawhid

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Ali Shariati

Place in the tradition

Part of Gnosticism.

Explore Tawhid in the interactive graph →