Aqeedah is our compliance with divine law and the starting point in Islam. Its is the conviction and belief about your Lord and the foundation and declaration of faith. Tawheed means unification ie. making something one or asserting oneness. So Aqeedah e Tawheed means conviction and belief about your Lord and realizing and affirming Allah’s unity in all of man’s actions which directly or indirectly relate to Him.
It is the belief that Allah is One, without partner in His dominion (ruboobeeyah).
One without similitude in His essence and attributes (asmaa was sifaat),
and One without rival in His divinity and in worship (ulooheeyah ‘ibaadah).
These three aspects form the basis for the categories into which the science of Tawheed has been traditionally divided. The three overlap and are inseparable to such a degree that whoever omits any one aspect has failed to complete the requirements of Tawheed. The omission of any of the above mentioned aspects of Tawheed is referred to as shirk (which literally means “sharing” but here signifies the association of partners with Allah. In Islamic terms this association is in fact idolatry.
For every Muslim the first and important belief to be accepted in Islam is “Laillahaillah Muhammad Rasulullah” which means “I bear witness that there is no deity but Allah, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
But simply declaration is not enough. One has to learn to have the correct belief as it is based on that belief, the all act of our worship we do. Be it Salah, Zakat, Hajj, Fasting all of this action originates from our belief and if our belief is not correct and have any deficiency in it then every act of our worship will be affected by deficiency.
Correct belief is the base layer upon which we built all the other act of the worship on it. So if our belief is correct than everything built upon it will be correct. So simply born in a Muslim family or self-declaring oneself as Muslim is not enough until we will learn to know what to believe on. Of course, No one is born with knowledge of it, one has to learn it. If our belief is incorrect than everything built upon it will be incorrect. So, it is very important for us to learn the correct belief, what the Sahaba believed in than we can learn the rest.
In general lot of things are focused on Islam like Salat, Fast, Haj, Zakat but Tauheed is taken casually and sometimes skipped. But this is something we have to focus and understand properly, who is Allah and what is our relation between him. And if we do not know this and do all the other things it is meaningless.
In Islam Tawheed is a must to comply with divine law. Scholars have explained three parts of it.
- Tawheed Ul Rububiyyah
- Tawheed Ul asma wisifaat
- Tawheed Ul Ibadah
1. Tawheed Ul Rubibiah: It declares the owner and master of existence is Allah. Everything in this existence requires Allah. But Allah do not require anybody/anything. Everything is dependent on Allah and Allah is independent of anything and everything in this world.
2. Tawheed Ul Asma Wisifaat: It is about the attribute, virtue and name of Allah.
- We have to describe Allah in the way in which Allah had described himself and Prophet had described about Allah. We cannot use our own imagination to descried Allah.
- The virtue of Allah are those which are being told by Allah himself and Prophet. We cannot give virtue to Allah.
- We cannot attribute the virtue of Makhlook (creation of Allah) to Allah. Like we cannot say Allah speaks lie. As it is the Attribute of Makhlook like human beings. Likewise, we cannot say Allah forgets.
- d. We cannot attribute the virtue of Allah to Makhlook. Like we cannot say someone to be immortal. It is an Attribute of Allah.
- We cannot give the name of Allah to any Makhlook. Like we cannot say or any one as Allah. We cannot call and name anyone as Allah, we have to prefix “Abd” before it and say Abdullah which means Slave of Allah. Also we cannot be slave of anyone other than Allah. Like we cannot name any body as Abdur Rasul.
3. Tawheed Ul Ibadah
Ibadah only to Allah. If we miss this Tawheed then its shirk, that means even if we follow first two Tawheed but associated someone else with Allah in Ibadah then there is a big problem. If someone does shirk and did not do Tauba(repent) or died in the state of Mushrik (those who practice shirk) then Allah will not forgive him. Lets ponder over following Ayats for the Quran in this context.
Allah says in Surah Zukhruf 43: Ayat 87
“If thou ask them, who created them, they will certainly say, Allah: How then are they deluded away (from the Truth)?”
Allah says in Surah Nisa 4: Ayat 48 and 116
48. “Allah forgiveth not that partners should be set up with Him; but He forgiveth anything else, to whom He pleaseth; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin Most heinous indeed.”
116. “Allah forgiveth not (The sin of) joining other gods with Him; but He forgiveth whom He pleaseth other sins than this: one who joins other gods with Allah, Hath strayed far, far away (from the right).”
Allah says in Surah Imran 3: Ayat 64
64. Say: “O People of the Book! come to common terms as between us and you: That we worship none but Allah; that we associate no partners with him; that we erect not, from among ourselves, Lords and patrons other than Allah.” If then they turn back, say ye: “Bear witness that we (at least) are Muslims (bowing to Allah’s Will).
Out of 73 sects 72 will go to hell, simple differences are not the issues , main issue is Aqeedah. People invent their own definition of Allah which is very risky and will be not acceptable to Allah.