Tawheed ul-Asmaa was-Sifaat: This is to have the knowledge of Allaah’s Names and Attributes. To have belief and conviction in what He has described Himself with and the Names Has has mentioned in His Book and upon the tongue of His Messenger in the Sunnah. We have to believe them in the right way, as we have been commanded, as did the Companions of Allaah’s Messenger. We have already covered the topic of Allaah’s Attributes in Lesson 2 and we covered how to believe in His Attributes in such a way so that it does not nullify the Tawheed of Allaah. In a future lesson (Lesson 5) we will look at the Names of Allaah and discuss the principles behind understanding them aswell.

So the above two categories are related to knowledge.

Tawheed ul-Uloohiyyah: This is to worship Allaah alone in ones inward and outward actions. Allaah has informed us of all the actions that He loves and is pleased whether they are inward actions (i.e. of the heart) or whether they are outward actions (i.e. of the tongue and limbs). So this aspect of Tawheed is to do with knowing and acting upon everything that Allaah has commanded and refraining from everything that He has forbidden. Allaah has also explained everything that constitues Shirk (such as fortune-telling, wearing talismans etc..) so a part of perfecting this aspect of Tawheed, is knowing what actions constitute Tawheed and what actions constitute Shirk. And we shall look at this in Lesson 6 inshaa’allaah.

IMPORTANT POINTS

We will now discuss a number of points related to this topic.

1. Where did this categorisation come from:

Some one might ask - where did this categorisation come from? Isn’t this an innovation. Because the companions never explained this?

The answer to this is that this categorisation is not an innovation at all. And by looking at Tawheed at this way it does not mean we have innovating anything new. And also we are not claiming that looking at Tawheed in this way is an act of worship. (which is the definition of Bid’ah - i.e. inventing something new and seeking to worship Allaah by it). And even if we did not have these terms then the Qur’aan explains these principles anyway.

In other words, Allaah has mentioned what we mean by Tawheed ur-Ruboobiyyah, Tawheed ul-Asmaa was-Sifaat and Tawheed ul-Uloohiyyah in the Qur’aan already.

• There are many verses where Allaah mentions that He is the Rabb of all the Worlds and other verses related to this where He says He created the heavens and the earth, that He is in control of everything etc. All of these indicate His Ruboobiyyah

• There are verses in which Allaah says there is nothing like Him (see Lesson 2) - i.e. the underlying principle in Tawheed ul-Asmaa was-Sifaat, and verses in which He mentions His Names and Attributes etc.. So all of these indicate His Names and Attributes AND the way we are supposed to believe in them.

• There are verses in which Allaah asks the creation to worship Him alone and not to worship another god along with Him whether that might be in ones inward actions, or outward actions. So all of these such verses indicate His Uloohiyyah

So the basis of all of this is in the Qur’aan anyway. Nothing new has been innovated. To illustrate this : Go back to Lesson 2 and remember how we said that we have to believe in Allaah’s Attributes without resembling them to the creation in other words we must not do ‘Tashbeeh’. Someone might say, but this word Tashbeeh, the Companions never used it so where did you get it from? The issue is that the principle is in the Qur’an, it doesn’t matter what we call it. Allaah said: "There is nothing like Him’ [42:11]. So this tells us that we cannot do ‘tashbeeh’ i.e. resemble His Attributes to those of the creation. So the meaning is already in this verse, all we have done is to identify this principle and give it a label to make it easier to understand. We have not invented or imposed any new concept or meaning upon the Qur'aan.