Khutba: Tawhid
First Khutba
18th June 1999
"Say: He is Allah, Absolute Oneness,
Allah, the Everlasting Sustainer of all.
He has not given birth and was not born.
And no one is comparable to Him."
I doubt whether there is anyone here who does not recite these ayats several times during the course of every day of their lives. We are utterly familiar with them and there is a danger that that very familiarity may cause us to lose sight of the crucial importance of their meaning to our lives. How many of us really consciously reflect on what these ayats actually mean or have they merely become a kind of formula we repeat by rote.
The Prophet, salla'llahu Ôalayhi wa sallam, said that surat al-Ikhlas was equivalent to one third of the Qur'an because it encapsulates all the knowledge of tawhid to which one third of Allah's Book is devoted. But if we think of it, tawhid is in fact the foundation of our whole deen and not only of Islam, as we now know it, but also of all the past deens brought by all the previous Prophets and Messengers of Allah. So understanding of tawhid lies at the very core of human existence: if we grasp it we have got the point of what it is to be a human being; if we fail to do so we are no better than animals, in fact a good deal worse off.
The Prophet , salla'llahu 'alayhi wa sallam, said, 'Do you know what Allah's right over His human creatures is? That they worship and do not commit shirk by associating anything else with Him.' As we know shirk, the failure to affirm Allah's unity, is the one thing that Allah cannot forgive and it is, therefore, absolutely vital for our well-being in both the dunya and the akhira to make sure that we really do understand what the kalimatu 't-tawhid, the words la ilaha illa llah, really signify.
The mutakallimun, the 'ulama 'of this science, have taken great pains to define tawhid for us in the most comprehensive possible way. Al-'Ashari, for instance, described the unity of Allah by giving us a list of Divine attributes derived from Suratu'l-Ikhlas and elsewhwere in the Qur'an. He said that Allah has existence which is pre-eternal and goes on for ever; that He has absolute independence; that He is disconnected from everything in-time; that He is One in His Essence, His Attributes and His Actions; and that He has Life, Power, Knowledge, Will, Hearing, Sight and Speech. The problem with this and similar descriptions is that, while it is true that if we do really grasp them we will be absolutely safe from committing shirk, language has become so debased for us that all too often the deep meaning of the definitions escapes us and they remain just words.
What they are in fact saying and what the Qur'an itself makes abundantly clear, time and time again, is that in reality nothing in existence has any power whatsoever except for Allah. La hawla wala quwwata illa billah. There is no power or strength except with Allah. La fa'il fi'l wujud siwa'llah. There is no active agent in existence apart from Allah. This is the truth and it means that everything which happens happens by Allah alone. The problem for us is that all of us, from a very early age, have had precisely the opposite drilled into us, that in the so-called real world Allah has nothing to do with what goes on and that, in fact, it is secondary causes which really make things happen. Do not underestimate how deeply the scientific materialist world view has penetrated into human consciousness, Muslim and non-muslim. It is a thorough and continual indoctrination process with which we are being bombarded every day of our lives.
Wind and rain are brought about by pressure changes in the atmosphere and the rain cycle; the cause of plant growth is the nitrogen cycle; flight occurs through the science of aerodynamics; our own birth is the result of the human conception and gestation process; illnesses are cured by the science of medecine; the examples are endless. But it is simply not true. It is not that these things do not take place. They do. But they are not the reason for anything; they are not the cause of anything. Nothing makes anything happen except Allah. Wa Huwa ladhi anzala mina's-sama'i ma'an fa akhrajna bihi nabata kulli shay. "It is He who sends down water from the sky from which We bring forth growth of every kind." He makes the rain fall; He makes the plants grow. Alam yaraw ila't-tayri musakhkharatin fi jawi's-sama'i ma yumsikuhnna illa'Llah. "Do they not see the birds suspended in mid-air up in the sky? Nothing holds them there except Allah." Flight is by Allah alone. Huwa ladhi khalaqakum min turabin thumma min nutfatin thumma min 'alaqatin thumma yukhrijukum tiflan. "It is He who created you from earth, then from a drop of sperm, then from a clot of blood, then He brings you out as infants." Allah is responsible for bringing us into the world. Wa idha maridtu fa huwa yashfin. "And when I am ill, it is He who heals me." Allah ta'ala is the curer of illness.
You may say, 'Oh yes, of course!' to these words but look into your heart to see what you in fact believe about how things come about. To what do you actually attribute things when they happen. Do you really see them as coming from Allah or does your conditioning get in the way so that you in fact ascribe them to the process by which they happen. We live in this world of secondary causes so it is natural for us to see existence in those terms. The difference between us and our forebears is that they were taught the truth, it was their bedrock, and it was, therefore, much easier for them to cut through appearances and see things as they really are. We, on the other hand, have been indoctrinated in a lie to the extent that it has become almost impossible for us to see things as they really are. Shortly after I became Muslim when I was living in Morocco I remember a man greatly respected for his knowledge saying to me, "The difference between you and me is that I believe that if I am given a cup of deadly poison and say Bismillah and drink it, Allah can protect me from harm, but you believe it is bound to kill you." The gulf between these two perspectives is very difficult to bridge.
We are in fact in grave danger because by attributing effects to their apparent causes we are giving effective power to something other than Allah which is clearly shirk. We may have the formulae of tawhid on our tongues but do their meanings actually penetrate our beings; is it in the light of them that we really perceive the world. We must beware of having tawhid in the head but not the heart. A story is told by the people of Allah of a terrible man who spent his life indulging his appetites and committing every kind of wrong action. He gave instructions that when he died his body should be cut up into small pieces and each piece separately burned and all their ashes scattered in a different areas so that Allah would find it all but impossible to put him together again and he might by doing that avoid the punishment of the Fire. On the Last Day Allah will, of course, have no difficulty in restoring him to life and he will be brought before his Lord in a state of abject terror. But Allah will say to him, "Because of your absolute belief in the reality of My Power, I have Today forgiven you so enter My Garden with those who enter it."
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