Tawheed - Part four of four-series

Tawheed - Part Four of Four-Series

This is going to be our final session, inshallah ta'ala. And now that we've talked about the fundamental principle of tawhid, we've said that this is the foundational axiom of the Islamic worldview. We've talked about the rational arguments for its acceptance and the meaning of its declaration of God's oneness and his right alone to be worshipped.

Then we said how this has implications for how we understand God, how we understand the universe, and how we understand humanity. The question then becomes, how do we translate this into action? So in this final portion, we're going to explore a bit about the practical and ethical implications that come from the principle of tawhid. As we said, this isn't a passive belief, but instead it's something that is dynamic, it's life-altering, it's an engine for righteous action.

And each and every one of us, we should ask ourselves, I kind of alluded to this yesterday in the khutbah, that Allah promises those people that are remembrant of him and adhere to seeking his pleasure, he promises them a good life. We will give him a good life, enliven him with a wholesome life. Ibn al-Qayyim, rahimahullah, commenting on this, he said:

Every time the heart is weaker in its tawhid and veers more towards shirk, recognizing others as objects other than Allah, the person will be more inclined to lewdness, more inclined to evil.

From Knowledge to Action

So I think the most important thing that we can walk away with today, and I think that this is one thing that happens with a lot of discussions about this topic, is that instead of us worrying what is it that will bring about our salvation, what is it that will bring about our, you know, will gain us good deeds, what is it that will gain us the favor of We many times veer into topics, textual or philosophical, that don't serve a purpose. They don't actually bring about goodness in our lives. Now, are there philosophical discussions and theoretical discussions that have their place? Yes, they have their place, but for myself and for most of us, we need to be concerned about how are we going to take the knowledge that we have and translate it into good, beneficial deeds in this life that gain us God's pleasure and allow us to reach Him in the next life.

So the ethic of the Muslim should not be content with just personal piety. It should also not be content only with otherworldly station, you know, where are we going to be in the next life, but it should be holistic. How can I be a good person, create a good environment, and be granted a good final abode in the next life? How can I use my individual actions to create an environment that brings about a civilization of righteousness and of benefit?

The Seven Conditions of the Shahada

So I want to talk a little bit about what the conditions of the shahada, how the conditions of the shahada create or create a framework for ethical character, and how the concept of worship expands beyond mundane rituals, or should I say rituals, to encompass all of life.

So for the shahada to be valid, there are seven internal and external commitments that build character. How does the simple declaration of لا إله إلا الله, there's no one worthy of worship but God, become an engine for ethical action? It's to realize that it's not just a phrase to be uttered. Someone could say the words and not believe them and not become Muslim and not be guided to any good action.

But for it to be valid and transformative, it should be accompanied by seven conditions. These aren't a condition, these aren't a checklist that should just be checked off once in life, done that once and I'm done, but they're really deep-seated states of the heart. They are practical commitments that inherently will bring about good character.

They transform the statement from a word on the tongue to a reality in one's life. So the first of them is knowledge. So we generally say we have to know that there is no one worthy of worship but God, so we negate all false deities and we affirm Allah's sole right to be worshipped.

But the knowledge here isn't just knowing the definition, it's understanding that tawhid is a unifying principle for all reality and truth. We know that God is separate than man, creator is not created, that the source of all value, the orderer of the cosmos, the foundation of all history goes back to the one who brought everything into existence. So in order for us to have a coherent worldview, we need a necessary foundation that there is goodness, that God is good and that he wants from us goodness.

In fact the Prophet ﷺ said: God is good, he does not accept anything that except which is good.

Secondly is yaqeen, we have to have certainty about the meaning of لا إله إلا الله, we are certain that there are no other deities worthy of worship but God. But this certainty is not blind faith, it's the rational conclusion that we reached after we went through our rational, teleological and theological proofs.

After we said we know that there could be no other cause for this existence other than God, when we see the signs of God's work in everything that's in creation and when we see the signs of that even in ourselves. We know that there's perfect order, logical structure to existence, perfect order of the universe and a moral compass in our soul. So this provides us the hard data and the intellectual courage to have a consistently ethical life.

When we are certain of these things, then nothing stands in our way to bring about good and to be productive. Thirdly is ikhlas, sincerity to God alone. So this purifies our intention so that all of our actions are done purely for Allah alone.

This connects back to the idea of the core of normativeness that we talked about earlier. Sincerity means orienting our life and our actions towards the one ultimate source of all that is valuable which is God and rejecting all other competing relative or man-made claims. So it's the core of our ethical motivation because it aligns the human will with divine will.

So ikhlas, sincerity, is aligning our human will with divine will. Ibn Taymiyyah, he has a very interesting book. It's called Qa'idatun Fil Mahabba, an epistle or a treatise on love.

And in that, he makes a very interesting observation. He says all of creation operates on one principle, the love of Allah. Love makes the world turn.

It's not a Hallmark card. It's what he says in the book. He said the only beings that go against this principle of love are man and jinn because they have been given volitional free will.

Whether they will fall in line with the rest of creation and operate on this principle or if they'll go against it. So our struggle is we know that we have desires that we want to fulfill, and our desires are not bad, but how we fulfill them is what we are tested with. So the more we bring ourselves in line with what God wants from us, the more we are in line with the entire ecosystem, with the entire environment.

And the more in sync things are in an ecosystem or an environment, the more efficiently they run and the better it is for everyone. So we have to ask ourselves, do we want to be a cog in the machine and keep things running, or do we want to be a wrench that's thrown and upset everything? Ikhlas, being sincere, allows us to be that cog in the machine, to play our part in bettering things for everyone.

Sidq, or truthfulness, this ensures that our words and our deeds truly reflect the belief in our heart, the opposite of hypocrisy.

So since Allah is one and truth is one, our inner state, our outer words, our physical actions must be unified and consistent. Hypocrisy is a violation of this unity. So sidq is the integrity of a human being who reflects the integrity of creation or reality itself.

Love or muhabba, this is the primary emotional driver for us. Love for Allah, love for his messenger, love for the message. So we should love that we recognize that there is no one worthy of worship but God, and we should make the worship of Allah the focus of all of our love.

It's not a passive, sentimental feeling. It's a motivating force for ethical striving. If you love Allah and you love the guidance that he has sent down, then you want to see it realized in the world.

You will go against your own desires in order to see that happen. I'll give you a very small example. You're not feeling very well today, but you still smile at someone.

You still greet them. You're still kind even when somebody's not kind to you. Why are you kind when somebody is not kind to you? Because you want to see kindness in the world.

That's an expectation that you have of yourself because you know that that is what betters the situation. So the idea of love fuels our desire to fulfill our purpose as trustee, as khalifa. That means when we obey Allah, we don't look at it as a burden, but it's a joyful act of realizing good and beautiful things in our life.

So think about that next time when it's time to pray and you're like, ah, it's time to pray. Do you feel it's a, are you saying, ah, it's a burden? Or maybe you're just tired. We've all been there.

But when you, what are you actually thinking of? I have to pray now, or yeah, I have to pray. It's a perspective. Every action that brings about good and beauty in life.

God is beautiful. He loves beauty. God is wholesome.

He loves wholesomeness. All of these things are where we're trying to align what we are, what we do, what we say with what is in line with Allah's will.

Submission or inqiyat. This is our practical follow through. If we really believe in لا إله إلا الله, we really believe that there's no one worthy of worship than Allah, then we actively submit to God's commands. Faith without action is meaningless.

So submission is the necessary translation of internal belief into the external world, into the external world transforming work that we want to do. So we look at every instance of our prayer, of our fasting, of our charity, of our good character, of our good speech, of our good thoughts as an act that brings us closer and that much more of the world closer to what Allah wants from us. So inqiyat here is what makes a Muslim an agent of history.

You are creating the better world that you want to see around you by bringing yourself in line with the ecosystem that loves and submits to God. And then lastly is acceptance or qabool. Accepting all that the shahada entails without arrogance, without rejecting part of it, we accept all that it entails.

The good of it, the bad of it, the sweet of it, and the bitter of it. As the Prophet ﷺ told us about belief, that part of belief is believing that Allah has destined certain things to happen and that we accept the good of it, the bad of it, the sweet of it, and the bitter of it.

You might say, how could there be something that's destined to happen and that it's distasteful and bitter to me but it's good for me? I would ask you, have you ever tried Robitussin? It's horrible.

Personal, it's my go-to. You get sick, sometimes you have to take medicine that is bitter but you know that that's going to benefit you. Sometimes you have to go through difficulties in life but you know that those difficulties are character building and they drive you to a greater purpose.

So when we accept that tawheed is relevant to every aspect of our life, social, economic, political, and personal, we want to look at a divine pattern in everything. Not in a woo-woo sense of reading too much into everything, but in the sense that we know that we've been given guidance that if we act upon that guidance it will bring about the good that we want to see in this world and guide us to the best of this life and the next.

So we don't want to compartmentalize our lives into religion and world, the secular and the sacred. Acceptance and qiyat, or qabool sorry, means that we embrace the mission to implement Allah's will comprehensively, trying our best to be servants of Allah.

The Comprehensive Definition of Worship

Through integrating this, these seven conditions are the essential spiritual and psychological toolkit for being a trustee of what Allah has entrusted you with in this world. What we're trying to do is we're trying to be believers who are intellectually convinced, emotionally motivated, and practically equipped to be agents of change for good in the world.

Now what this means is that we have a more expansive definition of ibadah of worship than simply prayers and fasting and charity and so on. But the definition that we that the Farooqi he mentions here is that ibadah or worship is:

A comprehensive name for everything that Allah loves and is pleased with of statements and actions apparent and inward.

So apparent actions are things like prayer and fasting and honesty and justice and kindness. Inward actions are things like love and fear and resilience and hope and patience, having good thoughts of someone. So this allows us to transform our daily life and the mundane things that we do like working to provide for our family to become acts of worship in and of themselves with the right intention.

Now I need to point this out. This does not replace the acts of worship that you have because we have there are some in our community they'll say الدين هو العمل. Deen is work.

As long as I'm going to work I'm doing my deen. Don't ask me to pray. This is incorrect.

You still have to worship Allah. You still have to pray your five daily prayers but you still have to go to work and support your family as well. The difference is is that if you change your intention that I'm I know that I'm I'm responsible to care for my family so when I work I work with the intention of fulfilling that responsibility for the sake of Allah then you're rewarded for that materially through your salary or or or whatever you earn as well as spiritually from God.

So a comprehensive name for everything that Allah loves and is pleased with looks at worship in total and it's a practical application of tawheed in all things in our life. It dissolves this false difference between sacred and secular. There's no part of life that falls outside the purview of God's will and therefore no part of life that cannot be an act of worship.

So this brings us to the two categories of inward and apparent. So notice the list of apparent actions right. This is what some people might call you know rituals things like prayer and fasting ethical act outward acts like honesty and justice and kindness.

So this shows us the unity of Islam Islamic thought. These aren't separate categories but they're equally acts of ibadah. The inward actions like love and fear and resilience and patience these are essential eternal internal states that we just discussed when we talked about the conditions for the shahada.

So we say the shahada it brings about a certain internal state that motivates us to act externally in the world. So they're the internal fuel for the outward world shaping work and this brings us to the most crucial point of this and that is the transformation of our daily life. This is where our role as a Muslim as a trustee as a khalifa comes to life.

Transforming Daily Life

So in a world that denies faith and denies religion working in an office or working out in the field being on the job might be seen as a distraction from real worship and I know that I and I'm sure that many of you as well fall into this sometimes right we think oh if I could if I could only get away then I would have more time to pray more time to fast more time to do the things that I think are important.

For example in the field that I work in in financial advice I find a lot of Muslim men will hold back on caring for their family financially. They provide the basics but they don't go above and beyond.

Why? Because they think by providing the basics for their family they're not giving enough sadaqa and they're not getting enough reward. So I'm gonna go give lots of sadaqa but then your child doesn't have money saved up for college. You don't have an emergency fund.

If you were to die your wife wouldn't be able to support herself or even find money to push forward. That's a problem. Why is it a problem? It's a problem because it fundamentally neglects what Islam itself wants us to do in that situation.

The Prophet ﷺ said: money that you spend to fight in the path of Allah, money that you spend to free a slave, money that you spend to give in charity, money that you spend on your family. The best of these four is the money that you spend on your family. When a man spends on his family when a man spends on his family with the intention of it being for God's sake it is counted for him as charity.

So all you have to do is reorient your own intention and everything, all the bills that you're paying, all the money that you're spending automatically becomes sadaqa as well as maintenance for your family. So you're not missing out by doing your obligation. You simply have to make sure that your intention is aligned to all of the good that you could be achieving except and instead of just part of it.

So these mundane actions they're the arena for are striving to be better. So if you're an engineer and you're designing a building or a bridge or you're a child who's educated, I'm sorry, you're a teacher that's educating a child or you're a parent that's working to provide for your family or you're a parent who's staying home to care for their family these are not just worldly tasks. When you do them with the intention of fulfilling your purpose, contributing to society and seeking the pleasure of Allah, they become profound acts of ibadah in and of themselves.

As vital and pleasing to Allah is prayer in the mosque. So the point here is that ibadah is not about escaping the world. It's a blueprint for engaging with it, transforming it, and fulfilling the divine purpose within it.

World-Affirming Ethics

So we take this traditional comprehensive definition of worship and we project it onto the world. So the ultimate and logical consequence of tawheed, of affirming God's oneness, is an ethic of taking action and affirming the world around us. Not slinking back from it, not running away from it, but instead engaging with the world in a way that's positive.

So the Muslim, the one who believes in one God, should be compelled to act in history. So the totalitarianism of the divine will leaves no human being outside of its relevance, outside of its relevance. This means that there's no aspect of life that is non-religious.

There's no separation between sacred and secular, sacred and profane, religious and secular. Every field of human endeavor, politics, economics, social relations, even art, are not neutral fields to be governed by other principles, but they're the very platforms where divine will is to be actualized. So a just economic system is an act of worship.

A compassionate social order is an act of worship. Establishing the Friday prayer is an act of worship. A political system that upholds Allah's laws is an act of worship.

This leads us to the purpose of civilization building. Not to just produce pious individuals, but to collectively realize the divine pattern on earth. It's not enough to say I'm going to be a pious person and live in a secular society.

Because the competing claims of what is good, what is moral, and what is to be authoritative will inevitably lead to the tension that will bring about the injustice that you fear. So aligning ourselves to that which is good and moral and that which is pleasing to God brings about a society that is as well. So the grand ethical project can't be undertaken by isolated individuals.

It's a collective mission. I often tell people Islam is a personal faith. Islam as a faith is a personal faith.

You accept it as an individual, but it's a faith that's supported by community. I can pray on my own, but I can't have Juma on my own. I can't do the Friday prayer on my own.

I can pray on my own. I can't have Eid on my own. There are certain things that community must be there for.

Realizing a just society means that you have to be part of his society and you have to strive to make that society better. So there's no Islam without the Ummah. The Ummah is the corporate organic civic body through which the principle of Tawheed becomes a living historic reality.

So the Islamic ethical worldview, so the Farruqi presents, begins with the individual's recognition of God's oneness, but it doesn't end there. It propels you as an individual onward and outward with a comprehensive definition of what is worship so that you can engage with the world, be in concert and work with the communities that you live in, and to strive to transform every aspect of human life in a way that is pleasing to the Creator. So it's an ethic of ultimate responsibility and world transforming purpose.

Interactive Discussion: The Fruits of Tawheed

So I want to take a moment here. So I want to give each and everyone, we're going to do something called Think, Prayer, Share. I'm going to talk about the fruit of Tawheed.

So for 30 seconds, I want you to think silently. If a community truly built their society on the principle of Tawheed, what are three practical characteristics or values you would expect to see in their politics, economics, and social relations? So I want you to think about this individually for 30 seconds. And then from there, I want you to turn to the person next to you and discuss for one minute, come up with your top three ideas, and then we're going to take about two, three minutes and share those ideas.

[Interactive discussion with audience about justice/fairness, balance in distribution, freedom of expression, mercy and empathy, dignity for all creation including animals, people coming together without barriers, etc.]

But I think what's important with everything that you all have mentioned, whether it's dignity, or balance, or justice, or equitable social relations, is these are the natural fruits of an ethic that's rooted in the idea that there's a single, just, and transcendent God.

So this means that to realize this is what it means to realize the divine patterns that we that are expected of us on earth. So I believe God is good. And I believe I should be good for God.

That means I should also be good for my fellow man. If you'll notice that the Prophet ﷺ, when the angel Gabriel came to him, and he said to him, what is Islam? And you mentioned the five pillars of Islam. What is Iman? You mentioned the six fundamentals of faith.

He said, what is Ihsan? What is excellence, or beautiful excellence? He said:

That you worship God as if you can see him. But because you cannot see him, you know that he sees you.

Meaning that if your idea of faith is only predicated on the fact that you have a personal relationship with God, but you can't be good to your fellow man, then it's no faith at all. So the idea of a transcendent God brings about a sense of responsibility in the actions of interacting with other people.

Love, Allegiance, and the Collective Mission

So this brings us to this grand ethical project, right? How does this grand ethical project that we're talking about, how is it guided on a practical day-to-day basis? So yes, we talked that there's a clear compass.

It's oriented by core principles. But what are those principles? Those principles are love and allegiance. We find the ultimate expression, they find their ultimate expression in the collective mission of our community, of our ummah.

So first is the primacy of the love of Allah.

But those who believe are stronger in love for Allah. So this is not a secondary virtue, but it's our primary emotional and motivational force for ourselves as believers.

So the love of Allah is the fuel for our obedience. Our obedience brings about the good that we're talking about in society. So it shifts the motivation from a cold sense of duty to a warm and willing desire to please who we love, who is Allah.

And this love naturally makes us reorder our loyalties. So this is a principle known as al-wala' wal-bara', allegiance and disavowal. And it simply means that we love what Allah loves and we hate what he hates.

And practically, it dictates that we have priorities and relationships based on those priorities. It means we have allegiance to justice, to truth, to compassion, to the community of believers. We disavow things like injustice and falsehood and oppression.

Becomes the core compass for navigating our complex social and political affiliations. Don't deny who we are, but we focus on the principles that are most important to us. Look at what Allah told the Prophet himself to say when he was calling people to the principle of tawheed.

Say, I don't ask you for any reward for what I'm saying to you. Just the love for family. He was talking to his family members.

I'm your family member. The least that you can show me is the love that you show a family member. I'm not asking for anything else beyond that.

I'm not asking you for anything. So there's a recognition of the human connection that have with each other. But that human connection doesn't override the principle of worship of Allah alone.

Ibrahim said to his people and his own father, I have freed myself and disavowed myself from everything that you worship, except the one who created me, he will guide me. And so in the story of Ibrahim and his father, there's a lot of lessons that can be learned along these lines.

The Collective Mission of the Ummah

So this brings us to a crucial concluding point. Where does this ethical action take us? It's not individualistic. It's the collective mission of our ummah. We shouldn't be focusing only on our personal salvation, but we should be looking for our personal salvation and the web of relationship and the nature of the persons that we deal with day in and day out.

Because our ummah is not a race. It's not a nation. But it's a body.

It's a corporate, organic and civic body whose sole purpose is to actualize Allah's will in history. Fundamentally change the way that societies function. There's a lot of, I'll tell you something that's, it seems to us benign.

So right now there's a political candidate in New York who's of Muslim background. And there's a video of him eating with his hands. Right? Now everyone's focusing on, you know, making racist remarks about his background, his ethnicity and all of this other stuff.

Many people are having like aneurysms about the fact that he's eating with his hands. And they're saying things like, I bet you he scratches his behind five times a day and then goes and eats with his hands. And the simple reaction from any Muslim is what? No, we're actually commanded to wash our hands before we eat.

So even if someone did do something which was unhygienic, they would still be ordered by Islam to become hygienic before eating with one's hands. But reason why I'm mentioning that is because even very basic things of personal hygiene are transformative for society as a whole. What happens when you have a society where nobody washes after they use the restroom? Nobody washes themselves throughout the day.

Well, people don't have a problem of using the bathroom anywhere. And there's countries around the world where that's still a norm, even in places, parts of this country. But what happens when you have everybody saying, no, no, no, no, there are certain things which are pure and impure.

I'm going to avoid the impure. I'm going to only do things which are pure. There are certain things that if I have to touch myself or touch part of my body that's impure, then I have to wash myself afterwards.

Even if I'm not impure, to purify myself spiritually, I have to wash with water. What does that do for individual action, social action? The mere fact of supplying the water to the people that need that. Just put yourself in a village and say to yourself, here's zero, how do we get to 10? How does that change the lives of everybody in that village, even somebody who doesn't wash like everyone else? What does it do? It raises the level of hygiene.

It lowers the level of disease. It spreads the access to water. That's a simple example.

So the ummah is the social vehicle for our ethics. So it is not about numbers. It is not about just coming together, but it is about coming together for purpose.

So tawhid moves us from abstract ideas to do a living historical reality through the collective action of the ummah. So the individual recognizes the truth of tawhid that orients their heart through love and allegiance, and that propels them to join the community in a shared world transforming project of building a civilization that reflects Allah's divine will. So it's a complete system from individual conviction to civilizational action, all flowing from the single radical principle of God's oneness of tawhid.

Conclusion

So with that, inshallah ta'ala, we will conclude. And so in conclusion, we say we began with the universal human search for a moral compass. We talked about tawhid providing the comprehensive answer of authority through a single transcendent, all-wise God, epistemology, which unites revelation, reason, and nature in the natural world, and ethics through a world-affirming, purposeful, universalist, and action-oriented way of life.

It's not a belief that leads to escapism, but one that hurls the Muslim onto the stage of history, be an agent for good in everything in this life, and to lead to the best in the next. So I appreciate all of your attentiveness and your interactiveness. We always appreciate everyone's feedback.

So if there are ways that we can improve this or make it better for you, or if there's topics that you think that are necessary for the entire community to hear, please share those with us. We really value your presence. May Allah bless each and every one of you.

As-salamu alaykum wa-rahmatullahi wa-barakatuh.