On The Oneness of God

Quranic Evidence

{So know, that there is no deity except Allah and ask forgiveness for your sin and for the believing men and believing women. And Allah knows of your movement and your resting place.} 47-19

42_11

{There is nothing like unto Him, and He is the All-Hearer, the All-Seer.} 42-11

1.

At the heart of existence[1] stands the reality of God, the One,[2]: the Absolute and Infinite, the Infinitely Good and All-Merciful, the One Who is at once transcendent and immanent[3], greater than all we can conceive or imagine, yet, as the Quran, the sacred scripture of Islam, attests, closer to us than our jugular vein:

{And when My servants ask you concerning Me, then surely I am very near; I answer the prayer of the suppliant when he calls on Me, so they should answer My call and believe in Me that they may walk in the right way.}[4]

The one God, known by his Arabic Name, Allah, is the central reality of Islam in all of its facets, and attestation to this oneness, which is called tawhīd , is the axis around which all that is Islamic revolves. Allah is beyond all duality and relationality, beyond the differences of gender and of all qualities that distinguish beings from each other in this world. Yet He is the source of all existence and all cosmic and human qualities as well as the End to Whom all things return.[5]

However, there is more at stake than philosophy, it is ”fleeing to God (Quran 51–50), which in the context of Islamic doctrine[6] is the essence of existence (´ain al-wujūd ). It is not a 'flight away from one thing towards another'[7], since in reality there is nothing in existence but God…”

Muhyiddīn Ibn ’Arabi then asks, “From whom do you flee and there is nought in existence but He?”[7]

The point is not fleeing to a divinity of one’s own imagining, while not paying attention to what is mentioned in the verse which follows:

The cosmos, all of it, is a book inscribed (كتآب مَسطُور - Su 52–2),
since it is an orderly arrangement, parts of which
have been joined to other parts. Instant by instant in
every state it gives birth. There is nothing but the
appearance of entities perpetually.[8]

Original text has: At the heart of Islam ↩
He is One…/ On Wahdat-ul Wujūd, Allah’s ‘Being’
The Term Oneness of Being Means
The Necessary Existence Of Allah, by Ustadha Umm Sahl ↩
See for example: On the absolute unlikeliness of Allah with anything created ↩
Quran, Sura 2–186 also 50–16
{We verily created a man and We know what his soul whispereth to him, and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein.} ↩
HIN3 The Heart of Islam, S H Nasr p.3 ↩
doctrine: ONLY in the original, etymological meaning of (Latin) doctrina 'teaching, learning'. ↩
The Beauty of Oneness Witnessed in the Emptiness of the Heart ↩
In The Horizons and Within Themselves ↩

On The

Oneness of God

1.

2.

3.