yet they fold into that single phrase the denial of His exaltedness above the Throne, His separation from His creatures, His absolute distinctness from them, and other notions that inescapably amount to negating and nullifying Him—then they label all of this “tawḥīd.”
It is therefore evident that what they call “tawḥīd” contains elements that are true and elements that are false. Even supposing it were entirely true, if the idolaters were to affirm every bit of it they still would not emerge from the polytheism for which Allah condemned them in the Quran and against which the Messenger ﷺ fought them; they would still have to confess, “There is no god but Allah.”
[The meaning of “ilāh”]
The word ilāh does not mean “the One capable of originating creation,” as some leading scholastic theologians imagined. They supposed that divinity consists in the power to originate things, and that anyone who acknowledges that Allah alone possesses this power has thereby testified that there is no god but He. The idolaters, however, granted this very point while they remained