false deities. Thus, the noble verse makes it clear that the mission of all the messengers is focused on tawhid, from the first of them to the last.

As He, exalted is He, says: “We did not send any messenger before you without revealing to him: ‘There is no deity worthy of worship except Me, so worship Me.’” (al-Anbiya 21:25), and His words: “He sends down the angels with the Spirit by His command to whomsoever of His servants He wills, (saying), ‘Warn that there is no deity worthy of worship except Me; so fear Me.’” (an-Nahl 16:2).

Therefore, the call of all the messengers is to tawhid—to single out Allah, majestic and sublime, in worship—and to forbid shirk; this is their message. After tawhid come the laws governing the lawful and the unlawful, and the details of those laws differ according to each nation and its needs, while Allah abrogates from them whatever He wills. In the end they were all superseded by the legislation of Islam regarding what is lawful and unlawful, its rulings, acts of worship, commands, and prohibitions. As for the foundation, tawhid, there is neither divergence nor abrogation in it; it is one and the same religion, the religion of all the messengers from the first to the last.

He, the Exalted, also says: “For each of you We have appointed a law and a method.” (al-Ma’idah 5:48). The religion of tawhid is to worship Allah according to what He has prescribed at each moment in time; when a particular law is abrogated one must move to the abrogating law. Whoever insists on clinging to the abrogated while abandoning the abrogating is regarded as a disbeliever in Allah.