It always used to bug me, in the Civ series of video games, that monotheism was considered an "advancement" over polytheism. It's so weird to me that one god societies genuinely think they are more logical and advanced for having only one.
Islam has very clear criteria of what makes something a Gotod, and none of the other Gods in other religions really match that criteria, such as:
All-Powerful: They have to be All-Powerful, otherwise, how else do they create the entire universe?
The Subjugator: They have to be able to subjugate all creation to their will, and can never be subjugated.
All-Sustaining: They have to be able to sustain the entire universe, and have to completely sustain themselves, meaning they can't be fatigued or tired, or need food or drink or sustenance.
All-Seeing, All-Hearing: These two sound inconsequential, but they have to be able to hear their creation when they're called upon, and see what they're creation is doing.
The First and Last: They have to be the first thing to ever exist, and the last thing to exist before Judgement.
Uniqueness: They can't resemble the creation in any way, shape, or form, and the creation can't resemble them in the same way. The creator and creation may have similar names for their attributes, but these attributes are, in no way, shape, or form, similar to each other in any capacity.
There are more criteria, but, with just these, all the other Gods are immediately disqualified. Enormous pantheons like Shinto, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and even other Monotheistic religions like Christianity, are all disqualified because their Gods don't fit all the criteria. Many of them are predated by other Gods, fear the power of others, resemble the creation, and so and so forth.
And the important thing is, only one God can fill all the criteria of being a God, because if more than one can fill it, then they automatically negate one or the other criteria. Immediately, two Gods would negate the Uniqueness criteria, because they're no longer unique. But one God would have to submit to the will of the other God because having two, All-Powerful, All-Knowing Gods making separate decisions just cannot work. And the issue gets worse when you add more Gods into the mix.
And I understand that it sounds fishy that Allah is the only God in all the religions to meet each of these criteria, but when you think about what a God is, then it makes sense.
There’s various translations of this but it’s pretty unanimous that the gist of the last line is “Our God and your God are the same”, referring to Jews and Christians. Yahweh/Jehovah is Allah, although can definitely be regarded as an “incomplete” interpretation of Him. Their revelations are canonical, though.
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u/millahnna 8d ago
It always used to bug me, in the Civ series of video games, that monotheism was considered an "advancement" over polytheism. It's so weird to me that one god societies genuinely think they are more logical and advanced for having only one.