Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

The term‘kalimah tawhid’ is generally understood to mean as an act of negating only ex- ternal entities, which were claimed as Gods. As a matter of fact, those external gods can be taken as physical illustration of God, i.e. hawa which is found in human nafs (soul) it- self. The divinity of these external gods does not emanate from themselves. In another words, their divine nature is a mere attribution given by some conscious being. Therefore, it may not be wrong to say that real idol is not external gods but hawa itself. In this re- gard, one of the vital characteristics of the negation, which was stated in tawhid, is to posses a power and a capacity to refute all perceived external deities. This negation pro- gressively goes up from tongue to mind, later it makes its own way till heart. To be more precise, pure tawhid refers to the transformation from taqlid (imitation) to tahqiq (cer- tainty). It means the main problem in tawhid caused from the lack of the tahqiq (certainty), i.e. an essential element of the faith (iman). Therefore, it is necessary to focus on empowering the notion of pure tawhid, i.e the belief in God’s unity with certainty. In fact, this change was envisaged in the semantic field of tawhid. In the same way, this also forms the introduction to the true and authentic description of God. In relation to this perception, the Quranic teachings and prophetic life style of Mohammad became the means to attain essence of the real tawhid. On the other hand, these instruments also secure the human nafs (soul) from impurity of hidden conditions of associating partners to God