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Salaam brothers and sisters, With the advent of Muharram, no doubt we are all busy commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussain (as) - each of us in our own way. At the same time, the enemies of Allah, The Prophet (saw), the Imams (as) and the Ahlul-Bayt (as) are also preparing to attack us – each of them in their own way. We have all witnessed their attacks on azadari and its various rituals and on the concept of Imamate. While we may have our differences on how to mourn Hussain and serve Hussain, no non-Shia has a right to tell us how we should commemorate the martyrdom of Hussain (as) or how we should mourn Hussain (as). Azadari is at the forefront in this battle of Haqq vs. Batil. They want to destroy azadari today, so they can destroy Imamate tomorrow. They want to destroy Imamate tomorrow, so they can destroy Prophethood the day after. Their last attack will be on Tauheed (Oneness of Allah) itself. The biggest example of this can been seen in Karbala itself. Imam Hussain (as) said, “One like me can never do bayah (allegiance) of one like Yazeed”. One of the many differences between them was that Yazeed was Caliph and Hussain (as) was Imam. This was the ultimate battle between caliphate and Imamate. Yazeed didn’t just attack Hussain - caliphate attacked Imamate; caliphate attacked “Aliyun Waliallah”. After caliphate thought it had defeated imamate, it turned towards Medina. Yazeed didn’t just attack Medina – caliphate attacked Prophethood; caliphate attacked “Muhammadur rasoolallah”. After caliphate thought it had defeated Prophethood, it turned towards Mecca. Yazeed didn’t just attack Mecca, caliphate attacked Tauheed; caliphate attacked “La Ilah Illallah”. Then caliphate sat back to enjoy fruits of its apparent victory. Little did caliphate know that: وَإِذْ يَمْكُرُ بِكَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا لِيُثْبِتُوكَ أَوْ يَقْتُلُوكَ أَوْ يُخْرِجُوكَ ۚ وَيَمْكُرُونَ وَيَمْكُرُ اللَّهُ ۖ وَاللَّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ {30} [Shakir 8:30] And when those who disbelieved devised plans against you that they might confine you or slay you or drive you away; and they devised plans and Allah too had arranged a plan; and Allah is the best of planners. It started off as a chant by a few hundred azadar, then a few thousand azadar, then a few million azadar to now over 250+ million azadar chanting “Ya Lisarat Ul Hussain” (Vengeance for the blood of Hussain) and “Labaik Ya Hussain” (we are at your service O Hussain). As long as there are azadar and azadari, there will always be Aliyun Waliallah. As long as there is Aliyun Waliallah, there will always be Muhammadur Rasoolallah As long as there is Muhammadur Rasoolallah, there will always be La Ilah Illallah

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم Assalam o Alaikum, Wa Rehmatullah, Wa Barakatuhu. The most important, the most fundamental belief of Islam and the thing that causes one to enter Islam is belief in Tawheed (Oneness of Allah). "La ilaha illALLAH", There is no deity (khuda, god) except Allah. But what is meaning of "illah"? what are the things or characteristics that make someone "illah". Have you ever pondered over this thing? Answer is given by Allah in Quran, Surah Naml ayah 59 to 64. If someone's belief in Tawheed is correct as per teachings of Quran and Sunnah, then his/her other beliefs and customs/practices will also be correct or will have only a little problem. On the other hand if belief in Tawheed becomes wrong in any manner, then all other beliefs and customs will also have some problems. Because its the foundation of Islam, all other things come after this. For example consider the Jews and Christians, their main problem is their belief in Tawheed. Similarly there are many muslims (from both shia & sunni) who have some problems in their Tawheed. Read carefully. Surah Naml, Chapter 27, Verses 59-64, Translation: Sahih International. - An-Naml: Verse 59 قُلِ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ وَسَلَامٌ عَلَىٰ عِبَادِهِ الَّذِينَ اصْطَفَىٰ ۗ آللَّهُ خَيْرٌ أَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ Say, [O Muhammad], "Praise be to Allah , and peace upon His servants whom He has chosen. Is Allah better or what they associate with Him?" - An-Naml: Verse 60 أَمَّنْ خَلَقَ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ وَأَنْزَلَ لَكُمْ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَنْبَتْنَا بِهِ حَدَائِقَ ذَاتَ بَهْجَةٍ مَا كَانَ لَكُمْ أَنْ تُنْبِتُوا شَجَرَهَا ۗ أَإِلَٰهٌ مَعَ اللَّهِ ۚ بَلْ هُمْ قَوْمٌ يَعْدِلُونَ [More precisely], is He [not best] who created the heavens and the earth and sent down for you rain from the sky, causing to grow thereby gardens of joyful beauty which you could not [otherwise] have grown the trees thereof? Is there a deity with Allah ? [No], but they are a people who ascribe equals [to Him]. - An-Naml: Verse 61 أَمَّنْ جَعَلَ الْأَرْضَ قَرَارًا وَجَعَلَ خِلَالَهَا أَنْهَارًا وَجَعَلَ لَهَا رَوَاسِيَ وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَ الْبَحْرَيْنِ حَاجِزًا ۗ أَإِلَٰهٌ مَعَ اللَّهِ ۚ بَلْ أَكْثَرُهُمْ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ Is He [not best] who made the earth a stable ground and placed within it rivers and made for it firmly set mountains and placed between the two seas a barrier? Is there a deity with Allah ? [No], but most of them do not know. - An-Naml: Verse 62 أَمَّنْ يُجِيبُ الْمُضْطَرَّ إِذَا دَعَاهُ وَيَكْشِفُ السُّوءَ وَيَجْعَلُكُمْ خُلَفَاءَ الْأَرْضِ ۗ أَإِلَٰهٌ مَعَ اللَّهِ ۚ قَلِيلًا مَا تَذَكَّرُونَ Is He [not best] who responds to the desperate one when he calls upon Him and removes evil and makes you inheritors of the earth? Is there a deity with Allah ? Little do you remember. - An-Naml: Verse 63 أَمَّنْ يَهْدِيكُمْ فِي ظُلُمَاتِ الْبَرِّ وَالْبَحْرِ وَمَنْ يُرْسِلُ الرِّيَاحَ بُشْرًا بَيْنَ يَدَيْ رَحْمَتِهِ ۗ أَإِلَٰهٌ مَعَ اللَّهِ ۚ تَعَالَى اللَّهُ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ Is He [not best] who guides you through the darknesses of the land and sea and who sends the winds as good tidings before His mercy? Is there a deity with Allah ? High is Allah above whatever they associate with Him. - An-Naml: Verse 64 أَمَّنْ يَبْدَأُ الْخَلْقَ ثُمَّ يُعِيدُهُ وَمَنْ يَرْزُقُكُمْ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ وَالْأَرْضِ ۗ أَإِلَٰهٌ مَعَ اللَّهِ ۚ قُلْ هَاتُوا بُرْهَانَكُمْ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ صَادِقِينَ Is He [not best] who begins creation and then repeats it and who provides for you from the heaven and earth? Is there a deity with Allah ? Say, "Produce your proof, if you should be truthful." If anyone apply/consider any of the above things/attributes as taught by Allah, for anyone except HIM then its like he/she has considered or taken that person/thing as an "illah" (deity). Thus he/she has commited shirk (i.e ascribed partners to Allah). Shirk is the only unforgivable sin, see Surah Nisa 48 and 116, except for those who repent, correct way of repentance is in Surah Nahl 119. It is the most important and basic obligation muslims owe to themselves, that to know and understand the meaning of shirk, its seriousness and its different types, so that our Tawheed become firm and complete. CAUTION: Beware of those among both the shias and sunnies who attribute such things to Ahlebait and other pious servants of Allah. Jazak Allah Khairan.

If a married woman has relations with her husband's best friend, she makes arguments that it is OK we are JUST friends, I did not make him my husband. He fulfills my needs whenever I ask him, he takes care of me. And yes, he's very close to my husband, my husband can't refuse his request. The same thing mostly people do with Allah. They say it's OK to supplicate to others, prostrate, making Niyaz/ nazar etc as far as we did not call them God. While Allah clearly says, Surah Al-Baqarah, Verse 186 ٢-١٨٦ ‌وَ‌إِ‌ذَ‌ا‌ سَأَلَكَ عِبَا‌دِي عَ‍‍نّ‍‍ِ‍ي فَإِنّ‍‍ِ‍ي قَ‍‍ر‍ِ‍ي‍‍بٌ ‌أُج‍‍ِ‍ي‍‍بُ ‌دَعْوَةَ ‌ال‍‍دّ‍َ‌اعِ ‌إِ‌ذَ‌ا‌ ‌دَع‍‍َ‍انِ فَلْيَسْتَجِيبُو‌ا‌ لِي ‌وَلْيُؤْمِنُو‌ا‌ بِي لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُد‍ُ‌ونَ “And when My servants ask you, [O Muhammad], concerning Me, indeed I am near. I respond to the invocation of the supplicant when he calls upon Me. So let them respond to Me [by obedience] and believe in Me that they may be [rightly] guided.” Surat Ghāfir (The Forgiver) - سورة غافرAnd your Lord says, "Call upon Me; I will respond to you." Indeed, those who disdain My worship will enter Hell [rendered] contemptible. Prophets (as) supplicated to Allah, other people too, mentioned in Quran. For Allah, fornicator and polytheist are on same level. Surah Noor, verse 3 The fornicator does not marry except a [female] fornicator or polytheist, and none marries her except a fornicator or a polytheist, and that has been made unlawful to the believers.

Tauheed and Capital Introduction Human beings are born with some distinctive traits which are absent in all other species. These distinctive traits not only form the basis of many philosophical debates, but are also of significance in this discussion. Our subject regards the topic of Tauheed (or, literally, the oneness of God). Then, practical relations of the concept of Tauheed to the notion of ‘capital’ are drawn. The concept of capital starts with a humanly trait of gaining more. Very broadly and crudely speaking, this quest for more may be present in the form of a human’s worldly or spiritual gains. In contemporary social terms, this trait of human can be defined as the practical demonstration in the form of the ‘free market economy’. In this economy, the rule of the thumb is to maximise own profits through the procedure of buying least expensively and selling most expensively possible. It forms the basis of the rationale of value and prestige to common man i.e. a man in this world is appreciated a great deal by his fellows as long as he can follow this pattern successfully. The logic present in the current world is the maximization of profits without a set limit for any end. In Marx’s terms, “capital does not abide a limit” (Marx, 1973) Alongside this limitless quest of human to reach the infinity of most profitable outcomes while using everything around him including his own self as a ‘tool’ to attain that objective prevails in the current age, Muslims are seen to recite in every prayer that God is ‘one’. The aim of this paper is to draw a theory that with the desires of attaining a limitless capital, a Muslim’s self-declared concept of Tauheed is challenged. We try to cover a debate of many pages in only a few words; it is inevitable that many concepts might remain ill-explained and incomprehensive conclusions may be drawn by this process of shortening, but we will try our best to capture some realities of the life here. There is no god but Allah Amongst the most commonly quoted words for any Muslim are the words of the Kalma. The literal translation of that oft-quoted phrase is ‘There is no god but Allah’ (Kalma Taiyyaba) One of the most common Surah’s of the Quran, arguably the second most common, opens up as follows: “Say, "He is Allah , [who is] One,”” (Quran Surah Ikhlas, 112:1) Another Surah not as commonly recited opens up as, “Craving for excess diverted you” (Quran Surah Takathur, 102:1) We start off by putting to question the literal meaning of the Kalma Tayyiba itself. When we say there is no god except Allah, is it merely numerical oneness meant by Tauheed? We wish to not debate on the topic that whether even numerical oneness is applicable to Allah or not. Not to mention that when we consider He is the creator of time, space, numbers and even infinity, there is none of these notions that can ‘limit’ Him. But what we want to bring to light is the notion that when we deny all other gods what is it that we really mean. Is it necessary for us to deny all other gods in order to accept Allah to be the ‘One’ and ‘Only’ praiseworthy Entity? Which perspective on this very Kalma is important to us. To use it as what it can be, i.e. the biggest weapon against so many ills including capitalism? Or just to repeat the word merely as a tongue exercise. Verily God is, as the Surah Ikhlas proceeds, indifferent (not indifferent in the sense that he does not care about us, but that he does not need our prayers for any benefit to Him). So all the implications of the concept of Tauheed must have a direct effect on primarily our betterment. It might be assumed at this point that the concept of Tauheed must be something of prime advantage to ourselves, individually and collectively, instead of God. While the positive effects of belief in Oneness of God are promised in Islam, practically speaking, we can be observed not to actively take as much advantages from it. On an average level, all of our lives revolve around the capital. When a child is born in any average Muslim family, his educational needs are met by his parents. The parents feel successful if their children go to schools, universities and colleges that are best known for generating the most capital. One of the most significant determinants of any marriage is the possession of or the ability to attain the most capital by the to-be spouse (commonly the male half). The mental and physical effort that one puts in attainment of his perceived ‘success’ in the form of this holy capital makes a person spend his entire life struggling, obsessing over, and achieving this capital. But it might make him regret in his deathbed that ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’ (Steiner, 2012). This process of starting schooling as soon as the ability allows, completing the educational career without any thoughtful breathers in the middle, being on the quest for the most paying jobs or making the best out of his present business, develops a person’s character in a way that his focus lies in approaching the one and only reality of his life: the capital. It is then sensed, that the capital is in fact the most significant variable that shapes our lives. While describing ‘Capital’, Ali Shariati very aptly calls it ‘the great idol of our age’ (Shar'iati, 1979). The above mentioned idol, however, is only one of the four idols around us. What was mentioned above is only the economic capital. According to Bourdieu (1994), there are three other kinds of capitals that humans engage in accumulating. Second to the economic form of capital, which Bourdieu brings to light, is the ‘social capital’. Human beings become worried about not having enough of social relations. This ends up in us spending most of our time looking for perfect social relations which may or may not be important to our character building. Thirdly, human beings strive to accumulate ‘cultural capital’, to blend into the highest forms of culture. This might include communicating in English to emphasize familiarity with the highest form of global culture (it being the internationally recognized language). Lastly, ‘symbolic capital’ is our way of attaining prestige and honor from the society around us. It essentially means that we want to acquire We struggle to gain as much of capital in the form of respect and glory as we possibly can so much so that we lose touch of our actual worth. All of these mentioned capitals divert a man from his main objective in life. They are powerful enough to prevent deep thinking from occurring. So with the presence of such powerful forces that drives almost everything in our lives, it might be argued that when we actually give up all other deities other than Allah, why the capital attains such a centrality in our lives? Could elevating the level of capital to such a primacy in our practical lives arguably be the modern form of ‘shirk’? Should capital be our main prayer when we are praying to ‘God’ while better life after death a secondary one? Whether it is material or Islam that we let occupy the central position in our lives explains a great deal about whether it is Allah that we are taking as our sole Diety or are we mixing our concept of Tauheed with the capital? All of this confusion is caused very fundamentally by the presence of the concept of ‘duality’ in our lives. Tauheed, as analyzed by Ali Shariati, is a concept which explains that everything moves in a ‘single direction’ and what does not move in that direction by its nature does not exist (Shar'ati, 1979). However the notion of duality is caused by looking at the world with two different views simultaneously. One is earthly while the other heavenly, one is applicable and the other is personal, one relates to action the other only relations to mere beliefs which occupy a lesser part of the practical life. What would exemplify this argument would be a Muslim teenager who spends his time in college and when he is asked what does he ‘believe in’ in terms of his god, he might succeed in saying Allah. But when asked about his main objective in life, he might change his tone to a completely earthly objective. What we see is that although practically his aims and objectives and ‘beliefs’ are different and do not center around the notion of God, his religious belief is God. This presence of duality can also be perfectly exemplified in the case of a non-practicing Christian celebrating Christmas superficially, as merely a cultural occasion that involves no practicality in his real life. This duality paves ways a great deal for manipulators to corrupt, impure and desensitize the strongest powers that any Muslim possesses, those of Tauheed. This process is done by the most used and tested method of all time: inject materialism into a religion and there shall be no ‘religious religion’. The only way to rid this duality is to bridge the gap between the ‘beliefs’ and ‘practicality’ and see it as one. This fundamentally means the internalization of beliefs so much so that they are noticeable in our externality. Conclusion So my argument is that the concept of Tauheed does not merely entail the belief in presence of Allah, the Almighty. It also entails the process of defying any other god that we might hold central to our beings. If by god we mean the entity which is most prior to us, occupies most of our time in practical as well as mental lives and matters the most to us and we place it as our first and foremost obligation while we are existing for an evidently ephemeral time on this earth, then there is no doubt capital has attained a much more elevated position than it deserves. Is saying there is no god but God only applicable if we think of the gods which were worshipped wrongly instead of Allah in the time when Quran was revealed? Consequently for a religion that thrives on its universality in terms of space and time, would the most fundamental concept be limited by time in the sense that only a renouncement of those certain gods would satiate the purpose behind worshipping Allah alone? What we experience in fact, is that this Kalma has lost its power in the contemporary Muslim community, although it is supposed to be perfectly universal. We have taken it for granted that to believe in God’s numerical oneness and not taking any other deities (only those which were present in other religions) instead of Him satiate the necessity of this Kalma to be a Muslim. There are no more idols made of sand or clay to challenge our belief in Allah anymore. It is not the worshipping of those physical idols which were present in the time before Prophet Muhammad (SAWW) initiated the revolution in Arab that are applicable to the challenges faced by Muslims of today. The contemporary idol is the capital, which shapes our behavior, is ‘made’ to exert so much power on us by the portrayal of images on media which depict a practically unattainable status of beauty, power and wealth, prestige and relations which keeps us busy in our entire lives striving to attain those statuses. It is this capital that needs to be removed from its central position given by us, the believers of the One and Only God. It needs to be removed from its primacy of being at a level which ‘diverts us’ (Quran 102:1) from our main purpose of existence. Bibliography George Ritzer, J. S. (2009). Sociological Theory. McGraw Education. Marx, C. (1973). Grundrisse (English Translation). Shar'ati, A. (1979). On the Sociology of Islam. USA: Mizan Press. Shar'iati, A. (1979). Marxism and Other Western Fallacies. Islamic Foundation Press. Steiner, S. (2012). Top five regrets of dying. www.guardian.com. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying

Salaam, I am doing research on the concept of Unity of Existence since few days and this is what i have understood: - Everything is God, i.e. God has given us his powers - All the attributes belong to Him. - Evil is just the distortion of his attributes by us. Recently someone told me that in the concept of Wahdat al Wujud everything is considered as GOD.. I am God, you are God, if you see a dog then he is also God, etc etc... He said Wahdat al Wujud is nothing but Sufiism. Now can someone please explain me in a plain and simple language? [Plz don't provide me links of other discussions because i went through many of them and all are explanations are going above my head]