Tawhid: the oneness of God
Islamic Studies · Key Stage 3 · The School
The central belief
TAWHID is the belief that God is one, without partner, parent or offspring, and unlike anything created. It is the first half of the shahadah and the idea every other Islamic belief is arranged around. Surah al-Ikhlas states it directly, and it is why Muslim theology insists God cannot be pictured or compared to created things.
What follows from it
Because God is unlike creation, Islamic art developed away from depicting God entirely, and much religious art turned to geometry, pattern and calligraphy. Because worship is owed to God alone, prayer is directed to no intermediary. Because God is one, the moral order is understood as one — the same standard applying everywhere rather than varying by place.
Shirk
SHIRK means associating partners with God, and in Islamic teaching it is the opposite of tawhid and the gravest wrong. It covers worshipping another being and also, in the discussion of scholars, treating anything as an equal object of ultimate devotion. Muslims disagree with other traditions on this point, and that disagreement is stated here as a difference of belief rather than settled.
WHO CREATED AND SUSTAINS? Allah alone. WHO IS WORSHIPPED? Allah alone — and this is where it bites, because someone can accept the first and still direct hope, fear or ultimate trust elsewhere. WHAT IS HE LIKE? Nothing like anything created; 42:11 states there is nothing like Him. Now see why mosques carry pattern and calligraphy rather than images: no picture could answer the third question rightly.