We believe that Allah is One (Wahid), Alone (Ahad), peerless (laysa kamithlehi shay’), eternal (Qadim),

without beginning or end; He is the first and the last (al-awwal wal-akhir). He is the All-knowing (al-alim), the Wise (al-hakim), the just (al-adil), the living (al-hayy), the Omnipotent (al-qadir), independent of all things (al-ghaniyo), the All Hearing (as-sami), the All-seeing (al-basir),He is not to be likened to His creatures, therefore He has neither body nor appearance nor substance nor form; He has no place nor any time and no-one can point to Him as there is no-thing like Him. Nothing is equal to Him, nor has He any opposite. He has no wife, no child, no partner and there is none comparable to Him, vision does not perceive Him, yet He perceives everything. Anyone who likens Him to His creatures, for example one who supposes that Allah has a face, hands and eyes or says that He comes down to moon, and so forth, he is as one who does not believe in Allah and is ignorant of the true nature of Allah. Who is above all deficiency. Yet everything we imagine will be a creature like ourselves.

As Imam Baqir (a.s.) said:

He is far greater than the explanation of the wise, and far beyond the reach of discriminative knowledge (ilm daqiq).

Similarly, one who believes that He will be seen by His creatures, on the day judgement is an unbeliever, even though he does not liken Allah to anyone in appearance. Such pretenders have merely accepted the letter of the Qur’an and the hadith without using their intelligence. Indeed, they have chosen to ignore their intelligence, for they have not taken note of the use of figures of speech which the nature of language necessitates. Thus they have misunderstood the true meaning of the Qur’an and the hadith.

Doctrine of Divine Unity (tawheed)

We believe that the Unity of Allah (tawheed) must be in all respects, just as for His Unity of Essence and in the Necessity of His Existence (wajib al-wujud). Secondly, His Essence must be one with His various attributes, as we shall explain below. likewise, nothing is similar in its attributes to Him. His knowledge and Ability are unparalleled and he has no partner in creation nor in providing for His creatures; therefore none is like Him in any of His perfections Thirdly, his unity must exist in the worship of him, and worship of any other than Him is not permitted. Nothing must be made a partner to him in worship, whether the worship be obligatory (e.g. salat) or not (e.g. du’a). One who ascribes a partner to Him worship is a polytheist, like one who pretends to be worshipping for the sake of Allah but is in fact worshipping for the sake of some other being. In the eyes of Islam he is akin to an idolater, and both of them are polytheists.

However, pilgrimages to sacred place, such as the graves of the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.a.) (s.a.) or the Imams (a.s.) and mourning are kinds of polytheism, as some people who have attacked the Shi’a have alleged. These people have not looked to the reason behind the pilgrimages, for they are a way of approaching near to Allah through good deeds, in the same way as we can approach near to Allah by the performance of such good acts as visiting the sick, escorting a funeral, visiting a sick person is a good act through which a believer obtains nearness to Allah. It is not for the glorification of the sick person himself; therefore it is not an act of polytheism. In the same way, other good acts, such as pilgrimage, mourning, attending a funeral and meeting with our brothers are not a kind of polytheism. Moreover, it is known from religious jurisprudence (ilm al-fiqh) that pilgrimage and mourning are among the good deeds of the religion, but this is not a place to go into an exposition of this. In brief, these actions are not a kind of polytheism as some people suppose, neither is the intention behind them that of worshipping the Imams (a.s).Rather, their meaning is to bring the deeds of the Imams (a.s.) to life again, to renew their memory in the minds of the people and to glorify the rites of religion.

And whosoever venerates the rites of the religion, that is of the godliness of their hearts.

(23 :32) Qu‘ran.

It has been shown in the law (shar’) that these acts are recommended. If a man performs these actions with the intention of pleasing Allah, he deserves to be rewarded for them.

Doctrine of the Attributes of Allah

We believe that Allah’s primary, positive attributes (as-sifat aththubutiyyah al-haqiqiyyah), which we call the attributes of Beauty and perfection (al-jamal wa al-kamal), such as omniscience (‘alim), omnipotence (qudrah), Self-sufficiency (ghina), Divine Will (iradah), Everlasting Life (hayah), are identical with His Being and are not in addition to him, and that His attributes are not apart form His being Thus His Omnipotence is dependent on His Omnipotence. He is powerful because He is living, and he is living because he is powerful. In fact, there is no duality either between Him and His attributes, or between the attributes of perfection themselves; they must be considered as a unity. They differ in their meaning and their sense, but not in their substance and existence. For, if they differed in their substance, and given that they are eternal in the same way as is His Essence, it would became necessary to assume that the Self-existence of Allah had number and the very foundation of tawhid would be destroyed. However, the positive attributes other than the attributes of perfection (the secondary, positive attributes, as-sifat ath-thbutiyyah al-idafiyyah), such as those of being the creator (khaliqiyyah), the Provider (raziqiyyah), being Without beginning (taqaddum) and being the First Cause (‘illiyah), are all contained within one attributes which is His Self-subsistence (qayyumiyyah), and we extract these other attributes from the central attribute when we observe the several effects (athar) of its manifestation (e.g. when we observe His self-subsistence in its Creating aspect, we call Him the Creator.

In contrast to this, negative attributes, which are called attributes of Majesty (jalal), are contained in only one negative attribute, which is the negation of the possibility (imkan) of these things. This means that he has no heaviness, nor any lightness, etc.; in reality He has no imperfection. The result of the negation of these possibilities is a return to the Necessity of His Being (wajib al-wujud), which is one back to the positive attributes of perfection. So the negative of Majesty ultimately refer back to the positive attributes of perfection, and Allah is one in all respects; there is no number in His Holy Existence, and there is nothing compound in His Essence.

It is not surprising that some persons, accepting that the positive attributes are, as it were, reflected in the negative attributes, but failing to understand that Allah’s attributes are One with Essence, have imagined, in order to reassure themselves of the Unity of Allah, that the positive attributes depend on the negative ones. However, in this they have committed a great wrong, for they supposed that Allah’s Essence which is Absolute Being without the possibility of imperfection, is complete negation and therefore non-existence. Neither is it surprising that some persons say that His attributes are in addition to (idafah) His Essence, therefore saying that His attributes are pre-existent like His Essence, the result being that they are partners of His Being. Similarly. Others say that Allah is a compound of his attributes, but Allah is far above these things. As the Imam , Hazrat Amir al-Muminin, Ali (a.s.) said:

The perfection of His purity is to deny His attribute, because every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is attributed, and everything to which something is attributed is different from the attribute. Thus, whoever attaches attributes to Allah recognise His like, and whoever recognises His like regards Him as two, and whoever regards Him as two recognises parts for Him, and whoever recognises parts for Him has mistaken Him. (Nahj al-balaghah, khutbah 1)