Jafar Shaikh Idris
Tawhid, or Islamic Monotheism
The Wahhabi Movement Today
Every Muslim says la ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadur rasulu Allah. This witnessing of the fact that there is no deity worthy of worship except God, is the fundamental pillar of the whole edifice of Islam. ‘Abd Al-Wahhab said that it is not enough to profess this statement verbally; it is not enough to understand its true meaning, not enough to admit its truth, not enough even to actually worship none but God: one must add to all this one's denial of every other object of worship. One must also abstain from any belief, speech or act which violates one's profession of that belief. But he realized[5] that the belief of most Muslims of his time with whom he came in contact, including the ‘ulama (scholars of religion), did not satisfy all those conditions.[6] Fundamentalists of his persuasion would say the same about Muslims of our day. To be a true believer in the Islamic sense of the word, one must: a. Believe in God as the only creator and sustainer of every thing that exists. But this was admitted even by the idolatrous Arabs before the advent of Muhammad, and is accepted by the majority of human beings all over the world, so by itself this does not make a person a believer in the sense in which all messengers of God wanted them to be.[7]
b. Believe that no one other than God deserves to be worshipped. To do so, one has to fulfill two main conditions:1. Believe that God alone is worthy of worship, which means that it is not enough to worship Him, but you have to worship none besides Him. This, he explained, is the core of tawhid, it is the tawhid which all messengers of God advocated and the tawhid over which there was enmity between them and those who denied it. However, the majority of those who call themselves Muslims, including the ‘ulama, are ignorant of this and do not therefore satisfy this condition, i.e., they do worship others besides God. But those Muslims would indignantly and emphatically deny such an accusation and insist that they worship none but Allah. The crucial question then becomes: what does worshipping consist of? Explanation of this point is a recurring theme of ‘Abd Al-Wahhab's writings. Here are examples of the feelings and acts which, he explains, are expressions of worship and which, as such, are God's, and no one else's due:
i. Love. It is natural for a person to love many people and many things besides loving God. But he does not become a believer in God if he loves anything as much as or more than he loves Him. A person's utmost love must be for God only. The Qur’an says, "There are some people who associate partners (with God), whom they love as deeply as they love God. But those who believe love God more deeply (than they love anything else)." Commenting on this verse ‘Abd Al-Wahhab observes that "God stated that they love God as they love those they took as equal to Him, which means that their love for God was great, but that did not make them Muslims. What, then, about one who loves a compeer more than He loves God? And what about the one who loves the compeer only, to the exclusion of God?"[8]
ii. Fear. The Sheikh counts fear among acts of worship,[9] and quotes the Qur’an: "Do not fear them; fear me" [2:150]. But this should not be taken to mean that one should not fear anything besides God - it is impossible to do so; rather, it should be taken to mean that one should not fear anything other than God as much as or more than one fears God, because only in this case would it interfere with one's obedience to God. The Qur’an itself says, "Surely we will try you with something of fear and hunger, and diminution of goods and lives and fruits" [2:155].[10]
iii. Supplication and invocation. "Call on those whom you claimed (to be gods) apart from Him. They have no power to remove affliction from you or to transfer it. Those they call upon are themselves seeking the means to come to their Lord, which of them shall be nearer; they hope for His mercy, and fear His chastisement. Surely your Lord's chastisement is a thing to beware of" [17:56-7].[11] ‘Abd Al-Wahhab says that this is a clear indictment of the associationists who pray to the righteous, and that the verse states clearly that this supplication is a form of the major shirk (violation of tawhid).[12]
iv. Obedience. Referring to some of the Christians and Jews the Qur’an says that they took their rabbis and monks as well as Jesus as lords besides God, whereas they were commanded to worship none but God [9:31]. In what way did they take them as gods? Only in the sense of obeying them in doing what God forbade.[13] This means that absolute obedience is due to God only. To obey anyone other than Him in such an absolute way is to take that one as a god besides God.
2. The Islamic State. It is because of this principle of obedience being due to God only that Muslims reject the Western, secular idea of the separation of church and state. Divine commandments are to be obeyed irrespective of the aspect of life to which they pertain. No one, not an individual dictator, an elected national body, or a scholar of religion, has the right to make any legislation that contradicts what is stated in the Qur’an or the Hadith of the Prophet. If they do so they are putting themselves in God's place, and are as such committing an act of grave shirk..[14] And the same goes for those who voluntarily obey them or believe that they have such a right.
The Qur’an describes as taghut any one or any thing that is worshipped besides God. Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab says that there are many taghuts, but that the main ones are five: Satan, because he invites people to worship gods other than God; the unjust ruler who distorts God's rulings; one who rules in accordance with other than what God sent down, because God says "Anyone who judges according to other than what God sent down is an unbeliever,"[15] one who claims to know the ghayb (that which is beyond human senses), and one who approves of being worshipped besides God.[16] We see from this that three of the five main forms of violations of tawhid are related to government.
i. Sacrifice. Because animal sacrifice is a form of worship, slaughtering them for the sake of anyone other than God is a form of shirk. The Qur’an says to the Prophet, "Pray to your Lord and sacrifice."[17] And the Prophet himself says, "May God curse anyone who sacrifices to other than God."[18]
Many of those who venerate saints in any of these or similar ways would emphatically deny that they are thereby worshipping them. Rather, they would say, as they used to say at the time of Ibn ‘Abd Al-Wahhab, and as they are still saying, we know that they are not gods, that they do not have any power independently of God's, but we turn to them because they have a special place with God. They are not our gods, but our intermediaries to God. ‘Abd Al-Wahhab replied by saying that that was exactly the argument of the idolatrous Arabs. They claimed that they worshipped idols only so that they "bring them nearer and closer to God" [39:3].
"Remember," says the Sheikh, "that the form of shirk committed by the associationists whom the Prophet battled against was that they made supplication to God, but also to idols and saints like Jesus and his mother, and to the angels, saying that they were their intermediaries with God. They did believe that God, exalted He is, is the One Who benefits and harms and disposes (of all affairs). God stated this about them in His saying, "Say: 'Who provides you out of heaven and earth, or who has power over hearing and sight, and who brings forth the living from the dead or the dead from the living, and who disposes of affairs?' They will surely say, 'God'" [10:31][19],[20]
ii. Believe that God must be worshipped in the manner prescribed by His Prophet. Here comes the importance of professing faith in Muhammad's prophethood. The meaning of this profession, according to the Sheikh, "is to obey his orders, to believe what he says, to avoid what he forbids, and not to worship God except in the way He prescribes."[21]
iii. Believe in the names and attributes which God ascribed to Himself: "To God belong the names most beautiful; so call Him by them, and leave those who blaspheme His names" [7:180].[22] A true believer is, therefore, one who takes these names and attributes as they are, without likening them to the attributes of created things (otherwise one would be an anthropomorphist), and without explaining them away as being only metaphorical, which amounts to denying them.[23]
source: islamic awakening
