Tawhid — Rawzat

The Shahada: The Beginning of Tawhid

Every Muslim’s entry into the faith begins with the declaration:

لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ اللَّه “There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”

The first part — la ilaha illa Allah — is the declaration of tawhid. It is structured not as a positive statement but as a negation followed by an exception: first “there is no god” (la ilaha) — clearing away all false objects of ultimate devotion — and then “except Allah” (illa Allah). This grammatical structure is not accidental: the Quran’s approach to tawhid is via tanzih (transcendence, negation) before ta’dil (positive statement).

What Tawhid Is Not

Before articulating the Bohra understanding of tawhid, it helps to understand what tawhid is NOT:

Tawhid is not monotheism in the abstract philosophical sense — as if to say “out of many possible gods, we believe there is only one.” The Quran does not merely assert a smaller number; it asserts a qualitatively different category of reality.

Tawhid is not the assertion that Allah is “the biggest thing” — a kind of cosmic maximum. Allah is not the biggest, most powerful, most knowing thing in a universe of things. Allah is the ground of being — the Wujud (Existence) from which all other existence derives.

Tawhid is not anthropomorphism — Allah does not have hands, eyes, or emotions in the physical, literal sense. When the Quran says Allah’s “hand is extended in generosity,” this is metaphor pointing toward a reality that surpasses human language’s capacity to describe.

The Ismaili-Fatimid Understanding: Absolute Tanzih

The Fatimid Ismaili tradition — the theological heritage of the Dawoodi Bohra Dawat — developed one of Islamic thought’s most rigorous approaches to divine transcendence, articulated by great philosophers and scholars including Syedna al-Qadi al-Nu’man, Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, and later codified in the curriculum of the Dawat’s scholarly institutions.

The Apophatic Approach

In the Ismaili philosophical theology, the first and most important thing to understand about tawhid is that Allah transcends all attributes — even positive ones.

When we say “Allah is powerful,” we are using a human category (power) to describe a reality that infinitely exceeds that category. The statement helps us direct our devotion correctly, but it should not be taken to mean that Allah’s power is like human power, only more so.

This approach is called apophatic theology — knowing the Divine more truly by what it is NOT than by what it is. The Ismaili scholar Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani (d. approx. 411 AH) taught:

“The most perfect tawhid is to negate all qualities from Him — for if you say ‘He is knowing,’ you have equated His knowledge with created knowledge. If you say ‘He exists,’ you have equated His existence with created existence. The truest statement is the negation of the negation: He is not knowing as we understand knowing; He is not existing as we understand existing — He is beyond both knowing and its absence, beyond both existence and its absence.”

This is the doctrine of ta’til al-ta’til — the negation of negation — which guards tawhid from any anthropomorphism, even subtle philosophical anthropomorphism.

Wujud and Ibda’ — Being and Creation

In Ismaili cosmology, Allah’s relationship to creation is articulated through the concept of Ibda’ (divine command/emanation, from the root bada’a — to innovate, to create from nothing):

Allah does not create by an act that takes effort or time
Allah does not “decide” to create in the way a human decides
Rather, all existence flows from the divine reality in the way light flows from the sun — not as a product manufactured outside the sun, but as an expression of the sun’s nature

The Quran describes this as: “When He decrees a thing, He says only ‘Be’ — and it is.” (Quran 36:82) This kun (Be!) is not a temporal command but the eternal outflowing of divine Wujud (Being) into the forms of creation.

The hierarchy of existence, in this understanding:

Allah — absolutely beyond all categories, unknowable in essence (dhat)
Al-Aql al-Awwal (The First Intellect) — the first emanation, through which the divine will is communicated to creation
Al-Nafs al-Kulliyya (The Universal Soul) — the principle of creation
Material and spiritual creation

This cosmological framework is not mere speculation — it has practical implications for the Bohra understanding of the Imam and the Dawat, as we will see.

Tawhid and the Imam

The Ismaili theological understanding draws a crucial connection between tawhid and the Imam’s function in the Dawat:

Allah in His essence (dhat) is absolutely unknowable. No human mind can grasp the divine essence directly. The Quran itself says: “Vision cannot encompass Him.” (Quran 6:103)

But Allah makes Himself known through the Prophets and Imams. The divine manifestation — the expression of divine qualities in the world — flows through the chain:

Allah → Prophet → Imam → Dai → Mumin

The Prophet (SAW) said: “Whoever knows himself has known his Lord.” In the Ismaili ta’wil, “knowing oneself” means recognising one’s own spiritual reality — the divine amana (trust) placed in the human soul — which is only possible through the Imam’s guidance. And: “Whoever has seen me has seen Allah” — not a statement of identity, but of manifestation: the Prophet was the clearest possible mazhar (manifestation) of divine qualities in human form.

The Imam continues this role after the Prophet: the Imam’s nass (divine appointment) means that the divine guidance does not leave the world with the Prophet’s passing but continues through the Imam. To know the Imam is thus to engage with the divine manifestation in the world — and this is not shirk (associating partners with Allah) but the proper understanding of tawhid: absolute transcendence at the level of essence, manifestation through the hierarchy of guidance at the level of names and attributes.

The Shahada’s Full Meaning in the Dawat

The Dawat reads the two parts of the shahada as a unified statement of tawhid’s full scope:

“La ilaha illa Allah” — affirms divine absolute transcendence: there is no ultimate reality, no ground of being, no worthy object of total devotion except the Absolute (Allah).

“Muhammadun Rasul Allah” — affirms divine manifestation: but this Absolute does not leave creation without guidance; it reveals itself through the Prophet (and by extension, through the Imams). To deny the Prophet’s mission would be to claim that the Absolute remains utterly hidden — a form of agnosticism that the Dawat rejects. The Prophet’s mission is the divine response to the human need to know God — not through pure reason alone, but through the Imam’s living ‘ilm.

This is why the Bohra Shahada recitation includes not just the two standard phrases but the addition of “Ali-un Wali-ullah” — “Ali is the Wali (guardian/friend) of Allah.” In the Dawat’s understanding, this is not a third proposition alongside tawhid but the implication of tawhid: if Allah manifests through the Prophet, and if the Prophet’s mission is completed through the Imam, then acknowledging the Imam’s walayah (Imam Ali’s guardianship as the first Imam) is the proper completion of the tawhid declaration.

Tawhid in Daily Bohra Practice

The theological depth of tawhid finds its expression in the simplest daily acts:

Bismillah

Every action begun with Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim is an act of tawhid: dedicating the action to the divine name, subordinating human will to the divine will, acknowledging that the action’s fruit depends on Allah and not on the human agent alone.

Salah

The five daily prayers are structured around tawhid: each rak’ah contains Surah al-Fatiha (“Guide us to the straight path”) — a declaration of dependence on divine guidance that re-centres the soul around tawhid. The Tashahhud (final sitting) re-affirms the shahada. The Ruku’ (bowing) and Sujud (prostration) are physical enactments of tawhid — the body’s submission to the One.

The Prohibition of Shirk

Tawhid’s opposite is shirk — associating partners with Allah, or directing any form of ultimate devotion to other than Allah. The Quran calls shirk the only unforgivable sin if maintained: “Allah does not forgive that partners be associated with Him, but He forgives whatever is lesser than that to whom He wills.” (Quran 4:48)

The Dawat is careful to teach that the love of the Prophet, the Imams, and the Duat — and the visitation of their mazaraat — is NOT shirk but ta’zim (veneration), which is entirely consistent with tawhid. One can honour the divine manifestations without making them into independent objects of worship — the key is that one’s ultimate devotion remains directed to Allah alone, while the Prophets, Imams, and Duat are honoured as the wasita (intermediaries) through which divine guidance reaches humanity.

Ta’wil of Tawhid

The batin of tawhid:

The zahir of tawhid is the theological assertion that Allah is One — studied in kalam (theology) and expressed in the shahada and daily practice.

The batin of tawhid is kashf (unveiling) — the experiential recognition that all of reality is an expression of the One divine reality, that the multiplicity of creation is a veil over an underlying unity. This is not pantheism (Allah is not identical to creation) but tawhid al-haqiqi (real tawhid): the recognition that everything that exists does so only by virtue of the divine Wujud, and that the human soul’s deepest longing — its fitra (primordial nature) — is oriented toward this One Reality.

The Imam’s ‘ilm is the path to this experiential tawhid: through the Imam’s guidance, the mumin’s soul is gradually freed from attachment to the multiple (dunya) and oriented toward the One. This is why the Dawat’s spiritual path is understood as the path of ma’rifa (gnosis) — not the mere intellectual acceptance of tawhid but its lived realisation in the depths of the heart.

Tawhid — The Bohra Understanding of Divine Unity