as the object of the will, it is not the object of desire itself, but only part of it. What is only part of the object of desire cannot bring soundness to souls. Allah is the object of desire without whom no being moved by will can attain soundness. Whoever seeks something other than Allah through his knowledge cannot be seeking Allah through his deeds. Whoever does not have Allah as his object of desire will not attain soundness; rather, the outcome is his corruption through associating partners with Allah, which is not forgiven, unlike lesser sins.

The best of all utterances is:

“There is no deity but Allah.”

A deity is one whom hearts rightly worship with love and veneration, reverence and honour, fear and hope. Thus, the word has the passive sense of “one who is worshipped”: one who rightly deserves such worship.

However, the speculative theologians who thought that tawhīd (affirming Allah’s oneness) meant merely affirming His oneness in lordship—that is, believing that Allah alone created all things—held that ilāh (“deity”) had the sense of ālih, an active participle, and that divinity meant the power to originate things. This is the view of al-Ash'arī and others who regard the power to originate things as the most distinctive attribute of a deity.

Those who say that the most distinctive attribute of a deity is being without beginning, as some of the Mu'tazilah say, explain divinity in terms consistent with that view. The same applies to others. This has been discussed at length in its proper place.

The purpose here is to draw attention to these matters and to the fact that these people erred in understanding the true nature of tawhīd and the ways the Quran explains it. They thought it meant merely believing that the world has one Maker.

Some of them added to this the negation of the divine attributes, or some of them, making that negation part of what tawhīd means.

Including this within the meaning of tawhīd is a grave error.