RKUD 3190

Al-TAWHID

AS WORLDVIEW

Conviction and witnessing that there is no

god but God
In fact, a general view of reality, of truth, of
the world, of space and time, of human
history, of destiny

 Duality
Ideationality
Teleology
Capacity

of man
and malleability of
nature
Responsibility and
judgment

The
reality

Description of reality; dual entities

God-non god & Creator-creation/creature
Creator Transcendent, beyond time and
space, beyond human experience, absolute,
devoid of partner and associates
Creation the order of time-space, of
experience of creation, includes living-non
living things
Creator and creation are disparate as far as
their being, ontology, experience, careers
are concerned
No way that the creator transform into
creation nor creation transfigure itself to be
Creator

 Explain

the relationship between the

Creator and the Creation
Its point of reference in man is the
faculty of reasoning
The faculty is strong enough to
understand the will of the Creator either
directly from His words or from His laws
of nature

 Purposiveness;

serving the purpose of

its Creator
The creation is not created in vain,
The world is an orderly cosmos not
chaos, the law of order is innate in them
by God
Man however, is created with freedom of
will and action to realize the purpose of
his creation
The realization of his purpose is what
gives values, makes his action the moral
values

 Mans

capacity for moral action Creations other than man to serve man;
the fulfillment of their purpose by the
virtue of innate law; fitrah, this is
indeed the significance of their creation
No cynicism/pessimism in the creation
of man and other creations. (original
sin, creation by accident, predestined)

 Humans

freedom makes him

responsible
Moral obligation come with responsibility
Moral imperativeness/judgment is the
necessary condition of the
consummation of responsibility

 Duality
Ideationality

Teleology
Capacity

of man
and malleability
of nature
Responsibility
and judgment

The
reality

 Gives

Islamic culture and civilization its identity

Binding disparate elements together in
harmony
Tawhid as highest commandment for Allah
promise to forgive all sins but the violation of
al-tawhid al-shirk (associating other gods to
Allah) when the Quran says; 21:22

had there been in heaven or on earth

any deities other than God, both [those
realms would surely have fallen into
ruin! But limitless in His glory is God,
enthroned in His awesome almightiness
far] above anything that men may
devise by way of definition!

 Without

tawhid there is no Islam, and

certainly the institution of prophecy
Tawhid explicates and substantiates the
transcendence of Allah, the ultimate
principle of all creation, being life and all
religion.

 Islam

relate itself to both religions

However in the case of Judaism, the
divine transcendence has been violated
by ascribing human behavior and
character to God
Also, by ascribing themselves as special
to God by the virtue of the covenant
they made regardless of their
immorality, hardship.
A bound god is not a transcendent God

 In

the case of Christianity; the idea of

unity of substance between God and
Jesus violates the very Transcendent of
God
Let us create man according to our
image Genesis 1:28

 Transcendence

of God is everybodys

business
Human is capable of knowing Him in His
transcendence
This is innate endowment, fitrah
Transcendence in art

The mosque; no sensory images of God

Only decorations of verses of the quran and
abstract arabesques, geometrical figures
An aestaethic intuition of infinity

 Transcendence

in language

By means of arabic, the language in which

the quran is revealed.
Quran expresses 99 names or more names
of God
Anthropomorphic verses are understood
through allegorical interpretation, not
tashbih
The preservation of arabic language, used
by muslims all over the world

 The

essence of Islam is tawhid

No being of whom godhead is
predicated is God except God, thus
rejecting the gods of Christianity and
Judaism
Christian trinitarianism postulated three
persons in the deity
Judaism addressed God in the numerical
plural Elohim, calling Ezra the son of
God

Pluralism is derived from the word plural, which basically means many. In
this context, it refers to the state of more than one or more than two facts
or entities, for example plural marriage or plural societies
the philosophical perspective on pluralism, it is found that the entry of
pluralism in philosophical dictionaries usually recommends monism as the
relevant antonym. It is discovered that the first idea of pluralism actually
refers to the disputation of the One and the Many in Greek antiquity.
Pluralism opposed monism (the idea of an unitary organic whole) in its
view about the nature of ultimate reality. Pluralism is also against dualism
in the latter argument that nature is composed of two substances, such as
world and God, natural and supernatural, temporal and eternal, material
and mental, particular and universal, or two principles of Manichaeism such
as good and evil, darkness and light Thus, pluralism in this sense is
claimed to be an old philosophical argument in Greek antiquity regarding
the problem of the One and the Many. In brief, this problem refers to the
disagreement between the Eleatic School (represented by Parmenides)
who taught that reality was an impermeable unity, an unbroken solidarity.
This is opposed to the pluralist Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Hereclitus and
the Atomist school, of Leucippus and Democritus who claimed that reality
was made up of a multiplicity of entities. For further reading refer to Colin
E. Gunton, The One, The Three, and the Many, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, First edition, 1993.

Pluralism, in this sense, may be concluded as

meaning the awareness of the legitimate coexistence of systems of thought, life, and action,
which on the other hand, are judged incompatible
among themselves. For this reason, pluralism is
claimed as a response towards the diversity and
multiplicity that challenge human life. To accept
pluralism, is to acquiesce in diversity and to tolerate
dissension. In view of this, pluralism could be
perceived as the middle ground between absolutism
that admits only one possible position, and
skepticism that dissolves every sort of position into
indifferentism Raimundo Panikkar, Philosophical
Pluralism and The Plurality of Religions, Religious
Pluralism and Truth, Thomas Dean (edit), New York:
State University of New York Press, 1995, p. 34.

 Religious

pluralism in its simple meaning

refers to the multiplicity of religions or
diversity of religions
on the surface, religious pluralism may
be perceived as a description of the
worldwide phenomenon of diverse
religious groups. However, in a narrow
and technical sense, the philosophy of
religious pluralism refers to an
interpretive theory concerning how one
should handle the many competing
truth-claims made by various religions.

Another way of understanding religious

pluralism is to compare it with exclusivism and
inclusivism
Religious exclusivism celebrates the absolutist
claim that only one religion is correct and all
others are mistaken. Inclusivism opposes the
former by holding that there is only one true
religion, but other religions participate or
partially reveal some of the truth of the one
correct religion. As against both positions,
religious pluralism suggests that all world
religions are correct in the sense that each
religion makes a common reference to a single
sacred, transcendent or ultimate reality
indifferent perspectives and thereupon every
religion may be considered as offering a way of
salvation or path to God.