What is the precise boundary between tauhid and shirk (whether in theory or in practice)? What sort of thought is characterised by tauhid, and what sort of thought k characterised by shirk? What sort of action is characterised by tauhid, and what sort of action is characterised by shirk? Is belief in a being other than God shirk (shirk as regards the Essence)? And does tauhid as regards the Essence entail our having no belief in the existence of anything other than God (even as His creature)? (This is a form of the doctrine of unity of being [vahdat-i vujud].)

It is plain that the creature of God is the act of God; the act of God is itself one of God's modes (shu^’un, sing. sha'n) and not a second entity before Him. God's creatures are manifestations of His effulgence. To believe in the existence of the creature from the standpoint of its creatureliness does not contradict, but fulfils and complements, belief in tauhid. Therefore, the boundary between tauhid and shirk is not belief in the existence or non-existence of other things, given they are His creatures.

Is belief that creatures have a role in influence and impression, in cause and effect, shirk (shirk as regards creatorship and agency)? Does tauhid as regards acts entail our denying the system of causality if the universe, regarding every effect as stemming directly and without intermediation from God, and professing no role for secondary causes? For instance, are we to believe that fire has no role in burning, water, none in quenching, rain, none in promoting growth, and medicine, none in curing? Thus, God directly burns, directly quenches, directly brings about growth, directly grants healing. The presence or absence of these agents makes no difference. What exists is God's habit of performing His works in the presence of these phenomena.

As an analogy, if one is in the habit of writing letters while wearing a hat, the presence or absence of the hat has no effect on the writing of the letter, but the writer does not care to write a letter in the absence of the hat. According to this theory, the presence or absence of the phenomena that are called factors or causes amounts to this. If we profess otherwise, we have professed belief in a partner, or rather partners, with God in agency (the theory of the Ash'ari and predestination theologians).

This theory, too, is incorrect. Belief in the existence of the creature does not equal shirk as regards the Essence and belief in a second god or second pole vis-a-vis God but rather fulfils and complements belief in the existence of the One God. Likewise, belief that things have influence, causality, and a role in the system of the universe does not constitute shirk as regards the creation, but rather fulfils and complements belief in the creative agency of God. Just as beings have no independence in essence, they have no independence in influence, but exist by His existence and exert influence by His influence.

It might prove otherwise if we were to profess the doctrine of assignation and the independence of creatures, if we were to conceive if the relation of God to the universe as being the relation of the artificer to his artefact (like that of the maker of the automobile to the automobile). The artefact needs the artificer to come into being, but after it is made, it performs its work in accordance with its mechanism. The artificer plays a role in making the artefact, but not in its subsequent operation. If the maaker of the automobile should die, the automobile goes on functioning. If we thus suppose that the constituents of the world-water, rain, electricity, heat, earth, vegetation, animal life, man, and so forth-have such a relation to God (Mu'tazilites occasionally expressed such a view), this is categorically shirk. The creature needs the Creator in creation and in continuation.

The universe is pure emanation₃ pure attachment, pure connection, pure dependency, pure "from Him-ness." From this standpoint, the influence and causality of things is identical with the influence and causality of God. The creativity of the powers and forces of the universe, whether human or extrahuman, is identical with the creativity of God and the unfolding of His agency. In fact, to believe that it is shirk to hold that things have a role in the workings of the universe is itself shirk because such a belief arises from an unconscious assumption that things have an essential independence vis-a'-vis the Essence of the Truth. It would follow that if beings have a role in influence, the influences would be attributable to other poles. Therefore, the boundary between tauhid and shirk is not that we do or do not profess that things other than God have a role in influence and causality.

Is the boundary between tauhid and shirk belief in a supernatural power and influence? This view implies that belief that a being, whether angel or man (such as the Prophet or the Imam), has supernatural power is shirk but that belief that one has a power and influence within familiar and conventional limits is not shirk. Likewise, belief that a deceased person has power and influence is shirk in that a dead person is an in-animate being, and, according to natural laws, an inanimate being has no consciousness, power, or will. Thus, to believe that a dead man has perception, to greet him, honour him, venerate him, call upon him, and seek favours of him is shirk because it entails imputing a supernatural power to something other than God.

Likewise, belief in objects' harbouring an occult and mysterious power, such as belief that a certain kind of earth has an influence that can cure illness or that a certain place can be effective in obtaining an answer to prayer, is shirk because it entails belief in a supernatural power ma thing. Such a power cannot be understood, tested, sensed, or felt, as a natural force can. Thus, belief in the absolute that things have influences is not shirk (as the Ash'arites supposed). Rather, belief that things have supernatural influences is shirk.

Being is thus dichotomised into the natural and the supernatural. The supernatural is the special province of God, and the natural is the special province of His creation or the shared province of God and His creatures. A range of actions has a supernatural aspect, such as giving life, giving death, giving daily provenance, and the like; what remain are usual and normal actions. Paranormal actions are exclusively God's, and those that remain are the domain of His creatures. This part of the argument has to do with theoretical tauhid.

From the standpoint of tauhid in practice every kind of spiritual contemplation of other-than-God (that is, contemplation that does not take place by way of the face and tongue of the contemplator and the face and outward ear of the contemplated₃ but rather involves the contemplator's seeking to establish a kind of inner, spiritual bond between himself and his opposite number, calling upon that one to gain his attention, seeking that one's intermediation and granting of pleas) is shirk and worship of other-than-God, because worship is nothing if not such actions as these. Worship of other-than-God is impermissible according to the dictates of reason and the imperatives of the Shari’a and entails departure from Islam. Carrying out such practices, besides being an act of worship of other-than-God, just like the acts the mushriks carried out for their idols, entails belief in the possession of a supernatural power by the personality contemplated (the Prophet or the Imam).

So runs the theory of the Wahhabis and crypto-Wahhabis of our time. This theory has grown so widespread, amid one stratum in particular, that it is accounted the very mark of an intellectual. But measured on the scales of tauhid, this theory is as shirk-tainted as the Ash'aris' theory in respect to tauhid as regards the Essence and is among the most shirk-ridden theories in existence in respect to tauhid as regards creatorship and agency.

I said earlier in refutation of the Ash'aris' theory that it denies the influence and causality of things, arguing that belief in the influence and causality of things entails belief in poles and origins alongside God. I said that things would emerge as such poles only if they possessed essential independence. Here it grew clear that the Ash'aris unconsciously assumed a kind of essential independence of things that entailed essential shirk. But they failed to note this; they sought to affirm tauhid as regards creatorship by negating the influence of things. Accordingly, in the very act of rejecting shirk as regards creatorship, they unconsciously affirmed a kind of shirk as regards the Essence.

This same objection applies to the theory of the Wahhabis and the crypto-Wahhabis. They too have unconsciously professed a kind of essential independence for things and so have regarded any belief in a role for them beyond the limits of normal factors as entailing belief in a pole or power alongside God. They fail to note that, given a being is dependent on the will of the Truth in its whole being and has no independent aspect of its own, its supernatural influence, like its natural influence, prior to being predicated to the being itself, is to be predicated to God, and the being is nothing but a conduit for the transmission of the emanadons of God to things. Is it shirk to believe in Gabriel's being a medium for the emanation of revelation and knowledge, in Michael's being a medium of provenance, in Seraphiel's being a medium of reanimation, or in the Angel of Death's being a medium for the emanation of spirits?

From the standpoint of tauhid as regards creatorship, this theory is the worst kind of shirk because it professes a kind of division of labour between the Creator and the creation it makes supernatural acts the special province of God and natural acts the special province of God's creatures or the shared province of God and creatures. To profess a special province for creatures is precisely shirk as regards agency, just as it is to profess a shared domain.

Contrary to widespread opinion, not only is Wahhabisrn as a theory against the Imamate, but, prior to that, it is against tauhid and against humanity. It is against tauhid in that it professes a division of labour between Creator and creation, in addition to which it professes the kind of hidden shirk as regards the Essence I have previously explained. It is against humanity in that it does not perceive the human capacity of man that has raised him above the angels, made him God's vicegerent, as is stated in the text of the Qur'an, and obliged the angels to prostrate before him-it brings him down to the level of a natural animal.

In addition, it distinguishes between the living and the dead, such that the dead are not seen as living even in the next world, and it advances the idea that all of man's personality is constituted by his body, which ends up as an inanimate form. This is a materialistic and antidivine conception.

The distinction between unknown, occult effects and recognise, evident effects, along with the conception that the former, as opposed to the latter, are supernatural, constitutes another kind of shirk. Here we begin to discern what the Most Noble Prophet means in saying that "The progress of shirk is more hidden than the passage of an ant over a stone on a dark night."

The boundary between tauhid and shirk lies in the relation of man and the universe with God of "from Him-neess" and "to Him-ness." What demarcates tauhid from shirk in theory is "from Him-ness" (inna lillah): Whenever we have recognised any reality, any being, in its essence, attributes, and actions, as having the quality of "from Him-ness)" we have understood it rightly and in accordance with the vision of tauhid. It is immaterial whether that thing has no effect, or one, or several effects, and whether those effects have a supernatural aspect or not, because God is not just the God of the supernatural, the God of heaven, the God of the Realm of Spirits and the Realm of Power; He is God of all the universe. He is just as close to nature and has just as much a relation of immediacy and sustaining toward it as He has to the supernatural realm. That a thing should have a supernatural aspect does not confer an aspect of divinity upon it.

According to the Islamic worldview, the universe has from Him-ness for its essence. In numerous verses, the Noble Qur'an ascribes miraculous acts to some of the prophets, such as raising the dead and curing congenital blindness. But it appends the phrase "by His permission" (biidhnih) to these ascription’s. This phrase reveals the essential from Him-ness of these acts so that no one might suppose the prophets have an independence. Therefore, from Him-ness demarcates theoretical tauhid from theoretical shirk. To believe something exists whose existence is not from Him is shirk. To believe that something has an influence that is not from Him is likewise shirk, whether that influence is supernatural, like the creation of the heavens and the earth, or is small and inconsequential, like the tumbling of a leaf.

tauhid is demarcated from shirk in practice by to Him-ness (inna ilayhi raji'un) Whenever any being, whether it be outward or spiritual contemplation, is contemplated as being a road to God and not an end in itself God himself is contemplated. In any undertaking or journey, to contemplate the road from the standpoint that it is the mad, to attend to the signs, arrows, and indications of that road so as not to be lost or wander far from the destination, from the standpoint that these are signs, indications, and arrows, is to be headed toward the destination and to be going toward the destination.

The prophets and awliya 'are roads to God-"You are the greatest road and the straightest road." They are the signs and indications of the journey to God-"and guideposts to His servants, and a tower in His lands, and guides upon His path." They are guides and show the way to the Truth-' 'the summoners to God and the guides on the way of God's satisfaction."

Therefore, the question is not whether it is shirk to seek intermediation o{ to make pilgrimages to, and to call upon the Awliya and to expect some supernatural act of them. The question is whether the prophets and awliya' have ascended so far through the stages of closeness to God as to have gained such gifts from Him. The Noble Qur'an testifies that God has indeed bestowed such stations and degrees upon certain of His servants.

Another question is whether, from the standpoint of tauhid, the people who seek intermediation, go on pilgrimages, and petition the awliya have a correct perception. Do they go on pilgrimages with to Him-ness in mind, or do they go unminded of Him but having for their object the person whose tomb they visit? The majority of the people go on pilgrimages with an instinctual regard to tauhid, but there may be a minority who lack this sense of tauhid (even instinctually). One must not for this reason regard pilgrimage as shirk; one must teach these people tauhid.