if you truly know.’ They will reply, ‘Allah.’ Say, ‘Then how are you so deluded?’” (Q 23:88–89)

—up to His words—

“Allah has never taken a child, nor is there any deity beside Him. Had it been otherwise, every god would have taken away what he created, and some would have lorded it over others. Exalted is Allah above what they describe.” (Q 23:91)

He also says: “Most of them do not believe in Allah without still associating others with Him.” (Q 12:106)

[The theologians’ concept of tawḥīd]

From this and other evidence, one sees where the confusion about the very term tawḥīd (monotheism) has arisen. The majority of the scholastic theologians who set out to establish tawḥīd in the books of kalām and dialectical reasoning reduce it to three kinds. They say: He is One in His Essence, having no division; One in His attributes, having no equal; and One in His actions, having no partner. The most famous of these three with them is the third: the oneness of actions—namely, that the Creator of the universe is one. They support this by what they call the proof of mutual obstruction (dalīl al-tamānuʿ) and the like, and they assume that this alone constitutes tawḥīd.