“There is no god but Allah; Allah is the Greatest” is dearer to me than everything over which the sun rises.’ He also said, ‘Whoever’s last words are “There is no god but Allah” will enter Paradise,’ and the like.
Because of such reports, a group of people imagined that uttering the Divine Name by itself is a sanctioned form of remembrance. Some of them even considered it superior, for the spiritual elite, to saying ‘There is no god but Allah’ and similar complete phrases. Others went further and claimed that invoking the hidden pronoun—“hu,” meaning “He”—is better than pronouncing the manifest Name.
Satan then drove them to pronounce words that yield neither faith nor guidance. In fact, they thereby slipped into the doctrine of the heretical nihilists and unbelievers who espouse the notion of the ‘unity of being,’ equating the existence of the creation with the existence of the Creator; one of them will boldly state, ‘There is nothing but Allah—Allah alone,’ and the like.
Some of them even cite as proof the Almighty’s words,
“Say, ‘Allah,’ then leave them to their idle speculation, playing” (Q 6:91),
imagining that the verse commands one to voice the Name in isolation. Yet it is merely an answer to a question, for the context reads:
“They did not esteem Allah as He deserves when they said, ‘Allah has revealed nothing to any human being.’ Say: ‘Who sent down the Book that Moses brought, a light and guidance for mankind, which you make into parchments, showing some of it and concealing much, while you were taught what neither you nor your forefathers knew?’ Say: ‘Allah’” (Q 6:91–92).
That is, Allah is the One Who sent down the Book brought by Moses.
Once it is understood that a lone word or a bare logical definition can never deliver what a full sentence conveys, it becomes clear that a definition is actually the predicate of an omitted subject, thereby forming a complete proposition. We have already demonstrated the falsity of their position—whether they treat the definition as a single term or as a compound clause—for on neither assumption does it furnish an accurate conception of the thing defined, which is the very aim of definition in the first place.