What a faith says about the divine

This lesson asks you to explain how a belief tradition understands the divine and the role of the divine. The curriculum names many traditions; the museum offers only how Islam is described in two of its records, so your class adds the others. ¹

Look at what each source puts first and what it leaves out. Compare a statement of belief with a statement of what must be done, and ask which one answers this expectation.

Al-Tahawi opens his statement of the creed of the people of the Sunna and the Community by saying: "We say of God's oneness, believing by God's guidance", then lists the articles: "God is one without partner; nothing is like Him; nothing overcomes Him; there is no god but He" ². Among his descriptions: "Imaginations do not reach Him; intellects do not grasp Him; He does not resemble mortals" ^{2 3}. He states that it is the creed of the jurists of the community, Abu Hanifa, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ⁴. So this is a creed text: it gives what its author says. Ibn Khuzayma, in his hadith collection, gives the two testimonies as the first thing the Prophet ﷺ mentioned in his saying "Islam is built on five" ⁵.

Who is called ahl al-tawhid? The Encyclopaedia of Islam says some authors used the expression for the whole body of Muslims. It names the Sunni traditionalist Ibn Khuzayma and the Imami al-Shaykh al-Mufid, who also uses the variant muwahhidun, and adds al-Ash'ari in his Maqalat ⁶. The article also records that some movements claimed to represent strict monotheism better than others and kept the expression for themselves. The Mu'tazila called themselves ahl al-tawhid wa-l-adl and sometimes simply ahl al-tawhid, and the Almohads, followers of the mahdi Ibn Tumart, did the same ⁶. The museum does not decide between the two uses.

There are three kinds of source here. One is a creed text, al-Tahawi's creed, which the museum's record describes as about 134 numbered articles ⁴. One is a hadith collection, Ibn Khuzayma's Sahih, which is where the two testimonies come from ⁵. One is a modern academic encyclopaedia, the Encyclopaedia of Islam, which notes that the noun tawhid does not occur in the Qur'an, nor does the verb wahhada, yet the principle that God is single is proclaimed there many times ⁶. The museum's record says the sayings of the Maturidis and of the remaining Sunni and non-Sunni schools, from their own books, have not yet been added, so this page is not all that has been said.

Al-Tahawi begins his statement of the creed with God's oneness, and Ibn Khuzayma gives the two testimonies first in the hadith of the five. If you were describing to a classmate what this tradition puts first, which of the two sources would you point to, why, and what would the other source let you add?

• The two testimonies: the word shahada and four uses of it in the Encyclopaedia of Islam.
• Tawhid: how particular Sunni creeds describe God's oneness, each attributed to its book.
• The Tahawi creed: the structure of the treatise from its first article to its last.
• The five pillars of Islam: the hadith that lists the testimony first, and how its versions order the rest.

Read the two testimonies and the page on tawhid. Write two sentences in your own words saying what each one tells a reader about the divine, and one question the other tradition you study would answer differently.