There Is No God But Allah

“There is no god but Allah’! Is it all over now?” You have not said anything, my friend.

My well-educated friend said:

Don’t you agree with me that you overdo the use of the phrase ‘there is no god but Allah’ as if it were a key that opens every door? You bury your dead and receive your newborn babies while repeating this phrase. You engrave it on seals, decorate necklaces with it, print it on coins, and hang it on walls. You say that whoever pronounces it from your number will have his body saved from Hellfire. If anyone utters it a hundred thousand times, he will go the Paradise, as if it were a magic talisman, a charm to scare the jinn away, or a fairy tale bottle for holding giants captive.

There are, moreover, those mysterious letters with which many Quranic suras open and which have no apparent meaning for you: A.L.M., K.H.Y., A.S., T.S.M., H.M., A.L.R., etc.

Will I escape torment if I uttered ‘there is no god but Allah’? Well, if yes, then I now speak it in your presence as a witness along with those who are present with us today:

‘There is no god but Allah’! Is it all over now?

You have not said anything, my friend.

This phrase benefits those who act its meaning out; it is not for those who pronounce it with the tip of their tongue. It implies a method of action and a life plan; it is not just the aggregate of some letters. Let us study its meaning.

When we say ‘there is no god but Allah,’ we mean that none is to be worshiped except God. Our entire creed can be found in the negator La (no) and the exceptive Ilia (but), in the negation and affirmation that both words indicate. Between negation and affirmation lies our whole creed.

‘La’ denies divinity to anything. It denies it to all the worldly pleasures we worship: wealth, splendor, power, lusts, fine living, gorgeous women, luxurious affluence, pomp. We refuse to be enslaved by these or worship them.

We deny divinity to them. By ‘La,’ we also restrain ourselves that desire them. For man is wont to worship himself, his own opinion, prejudice, will, and whim. He is naturally prone to adoring his intelligence, talents, and fame and imagining that with them, he can control events and people and even the entire society around him. He, thus, deifies himself without knowing it. It is against such aggrandizement of self that we say ‘no’ or la; we refuse to worship or confer divinity on it.

We say ‘no’ to the director, to our superior, and to the ruler. We decline to accept them as gods, for ‘god’ here means an agent or doer, and the true agent, in our belief, is God alone. All else are mere means or causes. We, therefore, say ‘no’ to the director, the minister, and the president; to wealth, splendor, power, and the self with all its talents and intelligence. We refuse to confer divinity on them.

By ‘ilia’ (but), on the other hand, we except only One Being from the attitude outlined above, a Being concerning whom we confirm such agency and potency: God.

As I said, our entire creed falls between La and Ilia, between negation and affirmation. Anyone who is preoccupied with accumulating money, heaping wealth, flattering the rulers, ingratiating himself with superiors, seeking pleasures, following his prejudices and whims, narcissistically clinging to his opinions, and fanatically upholding his viewpoint has not said ‘no’ to all these objects of his worship. He is prostrating himself before their altar unknowingly.

If he says ‘there is no god but Allah,’ he is lying; he is merely uttering with his tongue that he does not confirm by the actions of his limbs.

‘There is no god but Allah’ really means that there is no reckoner or observer except God. He alone is worthy of being feared and watched. Whoever fears sickness, the microbe, the policeman’s baton, or the ruler’s soldiers has not truly said ‘no’ to all such false gods. He remains in their service joining a host of fake gods with his Creator. He lies even if he utters ‘there is no god but Allah’.

All this proves that ‘there is no god but Allah’ is a covenant, a constitution, and a way of life. It is intended to be enacted. It becomes a talisman opening all recalcitrant doors to whoever acts according to its full implications. It will save him in this and the next world and be his gateway to Paradise. A mere utterance of that phrase with the tongue without heartfelt belief or bodily actions confirming it is pretty useless.

In addition, ‘there is no god but Allah’ expresses a philosophical attitude. This testimony implies the admission of three facts: that the utterer or witness exists, that the entity indicated by the witness exists, and that the persons before whom the testimony is delivered also exist. To put it more simply, it is a clear admission that the self, God, and others have a real existence.

Islam, thus, rejects both philosophical idealism and materialism. It repudiates both the right and the left, choosing a mediate position. It rejects philosophical idealism because it does not recognize the existence of others or that of the objective world as an external fact independent of the mind.

According to this philosophy, everything occurs in mind, just like dreams or thoughts. You, as a person, the radio set, the street, society, the newspaper in my hand, and all the wars around us are only events or visions that take place in mind.

The external world does not really exist.

This extremist idealistic position is rejected by Islam and denied by the testimony of ‘there is no god but Allah’; for that testimony, as I said, is a frank admission that the witness, the entity attested for, and those present when it is delivered- the self, God, and others- are all accepted facts.

Islam similarly rejects philosophical materialism because that creed accepts only the objective world and denies anything beyond it; it denies the unseen and God.

In this attitude, Islam advances a realistic philosophy and manner of thinking. It recognizes the existence of the objective world and, then, adds to that world all the magnitude that the unseen existence of God confers. It presents a synthetic structure combining the ideas of both lefts and right within a comprehensive philosophy that still challenges the efforts of thinkers by surpassing their probabilistic theories, which are not established on any certainty.

The testimony of ‘there is no god but Allah’ implies a way of life and a philosophical stance. You’re my friend as a materialist; lie twice when you utter that testimony. Firstly, you are admitting what your materialistic philosophy denies.

Secondly, you do not act according to the implications of the testimony, even for one second of your life.

As for the mysterious letters — A.L.M., K.H.Y., A.S., H.M., A.L.R., etc.

First, let me ask you about the y’s and x’s in algebra, the logarithms, and the energy equation: E = mc2.

All these are mysterious riddles for anyone ignorant of mathematics and algebra. For those, however, who are well versed in such studies, they carry essential meanings. Similarly, the Quranic letters will be found to have profound significance when their meanings are revealed to us.

My well-educated friend interrupted sarcastically:

And have their meanings been divulged to you?

I replied, dropping a bombshell:

This is a fascinating subject. It needs a lengthy exposition that may amaze you.