Tawhid in the context of "Muhammad"

Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number 2 billion worldwide and are the world's second-largest religious population, after Christianity.

Muslims believe that there is a primordial faith that was revealed many times through earlier prophets and messengers, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and they believe that Islam is the universal and complete version of this faith. Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God and the unaltered, final revelation. Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous revelations, such as the Tawrat (the Torah), the Zabur (Psalms), and the Injil (Gospel). They believe that Muhammad is the main and final of God's prophets, through whom the religion was completed. The teachings and normative examples of Muhammad, called the Sunnah, documented in accounts called the hadith, provide a constitutional model for Muslims. Islam is based on the belief in the oneness and uniqueness of God (tawhid), and belief in an afterlife (akhirah) with the Last Judgment—wherein the righteous will be rewarded in paradise (jannah) and the unrighteous will be punished in hell (jahannam). The Five Pillars, considered obligatory acts of worship, are the Islamic oath and creed (shahada), daily prayers (salah), almsgiving (zakat), fasting (sawm) in the month of Ramadan, and a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. Islamic law, sharia, touches on virtually every aspect of life, from banking and finance and welfare to men's and women's roles and the environment. The two main religious festivals are Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The three holiest sites in Islam are Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Prophet's Mosque in Medina, and al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Fitra or fitrah (Arabic: فِطْرَة; ALA-LC: fiṭrah) is an Arabic word that means 'original disposition', 'natural constitution' or 'innate nature'. The concept somewhat resembles natural order in philosophy, although there are considerable differences as well. In Islam, fitra is the innate human nature that recognizes the oneness of God (tawhid). It may entail either the state of purity and innocence in which Muslims believe all humans to be born, or the ability to choose or reject God's guidance. The Quran states that humans were created in the most perfect form (95:4), and were endowed with a primordial nature (30:30). Furthermore, God took a covenant from all children of Adam, even before they were sent to Earth's worldly realm, regarding his Lordship (7:172–173). This covenant is considered to have left an everlasting imprint on the human soul, with the Quran emphasizing that on the Day of Judgment no one will be able to plead ignorance of this event (7:172–173).

Fitra is also associated with the divine spirit that God, according to the Quran, breathed into Adam (15:29, 32:9, 38:72). This means that the fitra represents the true essence of Adam, who was taught all the names by God (2:31). In the Quran, fitra is linked to the concept of hanif (30:30); a term that is often associated with Abraham but it also includes individuals who turn away from erroneous beliefs and instead embrace faith in the unity of God.

In Islam, Jesus (Arabic: عِيسَىٰ ٱبْنُ مَرْيَمَ‎, romanized: ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, lit. 'Jesus, son of Mary'), referred to by the Arabic rendering of his name Isa, is believed to be the penultimate prophet and messenger of God (Allāh) and the Messiah. He was the last of the messengers sent to the Israelites (Banī Isra'īl), and carried a revelation called the Injīl (Evangel or Gospel). In the Quran, Jesus is described as the Messiah (Arabic: المسيح, romanized: al-Masīḥ), born of a virgin, performing miracles, accompanied by his disciples, and rejected by the Jewish establishment; in contrast to the traditional Christian narrative, however, he is stated neither to have been crucified, nor executed, nor to have been resurrected. Rather, it is stated that it appeared to the Jews as if they had executed him and that they therefore say they killed Jesus, who had in truth ascended into Heaven. The Quran places Jesus among the greatest prophets and mentions him with various titles. The prophethood of Jesus is preceded by that of Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā (John the Baptist) and succeeded by Muhammad, the latter coming of whom Jesus is reported in the Quran to have foretold under the name Ahmad.

Most Christians view Jesus as God incarnate, the Son of God in human flesh, but the Quran denies the divinity of Jesus and his status as Son of God in several verses, and also says that Jesus did not claim to be personally God nor the Son of God. Islam teaches that Jesus' original message was altered (taḥrīf) after his being raised alive. The monotheism (tawḥīd) of Jesus is emphasized in the Quran. Like all prophets in Islam, Jesus is also called a Muslim (lit. submitter [to God]), as he preached that his followers should adopt the 'straight path' (Ṣirāṭ al-Mustaqīm). Jesus is attributed with a vast number of miracles in Islamic tradition.

In Islam, God (Arabic: ٱللَّٰه, romanized: Allāh, contraction of ٱلْإِلَٰه al-’ilāh, lit. 'the god', or Arabic: رب, romanized: Rabb, lit. 'lord') is seen as the creator and sustainer of the universe, who lives eternally. God is conceived as a perfect, singular, immortal, omnipotent, and omniscient deity, completely infinite in all of his attributes. Islam further emphasizes that God is most merciful. The Islamic concept of God is variously described as monotheistic, panentheistic, and monistic.

The Islamic concept of tawhid (unification) emphasises that God is absolutely pure and free from association or partnership with other beings, which means attributing the powers and qualities of God to his creation, and vice versa. In Islam, God is never portrayed in any image. The Quran specifically forbids ascribing partners to share his singular sovereignty, as he is considered to be the absolute one without a second, indivisible, and incomparable being, who is similar to nothing, and nothing is comparable to him. Thus, God is absolutely transcendent, unique and utterly other than anything in or of the world as to be beyond all forms of human thought and expression. The briefest and the most comprehensive description of God in the Quran is found in Surat al-Ikhlas.

In Islam, Muhammad (Arabic: مُحَمَّد) is venerated as the Seal of the Prophets who transmitted the eternal word of God (Qur'ān) from the angel Gabriel (Jibrīl) to humans and jinn. Muslims believe that the Quran, the central religious text of Islam, was revealed to Muhammad by God, and that Muhammad was sent to guide people to Islam, which is believed not to be a separate religion, but the unaltered original faith of mankind (fiṭrah), and believed to have been shared by previous prophets including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The religious, social, and political tenets that Muhammad established with the Quran became the foundation of Islam and the Muslim world.

According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad was sent to the Arabic community to deliver them from their immorality. Receiving his first revelation at age 40 in a cave called Hira in Mecca, he started to preach the oneness of God in order to stamp out idolatry of pre-Islamic Arabia. This led to opposition by the Meccans, with Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl as the most famous enemies of Muhammad in Islamic tradition. This led to persecution of Muhammad and his Muslim followers who fled to Medina, an event known as the Hijrah, until Muhammad returned to fight the idolaters of Mecca, culminating in the semi-legendary Battle of Badr, conceived in Islamic tradition not only to be a battle between the Muslims and pre-Islamic polytheists, but also between the angels on Muhammad's side against the jinn and false deities siding with the Meccans. After victory, Muhammad is believed to have cleansed Arabia from polytheism and advised his followers to renounce idolatry for the sake of the unity of God.

The Shahada (Arabic: الشَّهَادَةُ aš-šahādatu; Arabic pronunciation: [aʃʃahaːdatʊ], 'the testimony'), also transliterated as Shahadah, is an Islamic oath and creed, and one of the Five Pillars of Islam and part of the Adhan. It reads: "I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God."The Shahada declares belief in the oneness (tawhid) of God and the acceptance of Muhammad as God's messenger. Some Shia Muslims also include a statement of belief in the wilayat of Ali, but they do not consider it as an obligatory part for converting to Islam. A single honest recitation of the Shahada is all that is required for a person to become a Muslim according to most traditional schools.

Mu'tazilism (Arabic: المعتزلة, romanized: al-muʿtazila, singular Arabic: معتزلي, romanized: muʿtazilī) is an Islamic theological school that appeared in early Islamic history and flourished in Basra and Baghdad. Its adherents, the Mu'tazilites, were known for their neutrality in the dispute between Ali and his opponents such as Mu'awiya after the death of the third caliph, Uthman. By the 10th century the term al-muʿtazilah had come to refer to a distinctive Islamic school of speculative theology (kalām). This school of theology was founded by Wasil ibn Ata.

The later Mu'tazila school developed an Islamic type of rationalism, based around fundamental principles: the oneness (Tawhid) and justice (Al-'adl) of God, human freedom of action, and the creation of the Quran. The Mu'tazilites are best known for rejecting the doctrine of the Quran as uncreated and co-eternal with God, asserting that if the Quran is the literal word of God, he logically "must have preceded his own speech". This went against a common Sunni position (followed by the Ashʿarī and Māturīdī) which argued that with God being all-knowing, his knowledge of the Quran must have been eternal, hence uncreated just like him. The school also worked to resolve the theological "problem of evil", arguing that since God is just and wise, he cannot command what is contrary to reason or act with disregard for the welfare of His creatures; consequently evil must be regarded as something that stems from errors in human acts, arising from man's divinely bestowed free will.The Mu'tazila opposed secular rationalism, but believed that human intelligence and reason allowed Man to understand religious principles; that good and evil are rational categories that could be "established through reason".