never doubted that Allah is the Creator and Lord of everything; had they regarded this as divinity, they would have said, “There is no deity but Him.”
(1) This is an exceedingly important point that must be understood, for the very foundation of Islam has been obscured to many groups. They have engaged in grave matters that constitute shirk—matters that nullify Islam—yet they do not regard them as shirk. They have admitted into tawhid and Islam false notions they imagined to belong to tawhid even though they contradict it, and they have excluded from Islam and tawhid weighty matters they never thought to be part of tawhid, although those matters are its very essence. Most of these scholastic theologians restrict tawhid to what pertains to speech, speculation, and the beliefs associated with them, while ignoring what concerns action, will, and their accompanying convictions. In reality, the indispensable tawhid is found only in unifying one’s will and intent—the tawhid of worship (2)—which is the true fulfillment of the testimony that there is no deity but Allah: that one directs his worship to Allah (3) alone, seeking Him thereby to the exclusion of all others. This is Islam, for Islam comprises two fundamental principles: