Surah Al-Ikhlas - The Unity
(Revealed at Mecca)
4 Verses in 1 Section
Sections of Surah Al-Ikhlas
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Unity of God.
Al-Ikhlas - Unity Of God
God is One (alone) He is Needless, besides Him there is no other God.
بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ
“In the name of God the Beneficent the Merciful”
قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ
“Say: ‘‘He, God, is ONE (alone)” (112:1)
اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ
لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ
“He begetteth not, nor is He Begotten” (112:3)
وَلَمْ يَكُنْ لَهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ
“And there is none like unto Him” (112:4)
Commentary
Verse 1
The Jews asked the Holy Prophet to describe the identity or to relate the genealogy of God and the Messenger Angel brought this Surah.
There is a vast difference between the two Arabic words ‘‘Ahad’ and ‘Wahid’ both commonly thought to mean Oneness. To indicate the Unity of God, it is said in this verse that God is ‘Ahad’ i.e., One, One in the sense of the Absolute Oneness of His Essential Existence, not in the numerical sense of the numeral which has its second and third but the One which has no second of it. The expression one, is in the sense of being the ONLY in conceiving Whose existence all the faculties of the human intellect are helpless. He is such a one that even His attributes are His Essence and not separate and never separable from Him. It is a death-blow, Islam rendered to all imaginary conception of any kind of polytheistic doctrines and the phenomena of plurality about the All-Divine2. He is One with none comparable to Him, without any beginning or end, Unlimited by time, space or circumstances. A reality before which all others have no existence. He is the Creator, One and everything is His creation.
This chapter with all its brevity is considered to contain the gist or the spirit of the Absolute Unity of God which is the fundamental of the fundamentals of the faith, Islam. It is considered that one third of Qur’an is revealed as an explanation to this Synthesis. It is said that the Holy Prophet was asked to give the idea of Godhead which he preached, and this Chapter was revealed.
It begins with pronoun - third person - Singular - Ar. ‘Hu’, i.e., He which refers to something- known to all but not identified with any, as against the usual reference in the term of first-person singular ‘I’ of the conception of the Absolute in the Aryan creeds - saying the ‘Athma’ and the ‘Brahma’ both are one. For the word Refer to: 1:1 - ‘Ahad’ stands for Unity of His Essence, i.e., He is not of composite nature. ‘Samad’ stands to denote that He is all-compact in His Unity in the sense that He cannot be described or defined to be void of any excellence or any excellence to be void of Him. Thus, He is all in all in the true sense of the term discarding every possibility of incarnation. Thus proves His all-pervadingness and all-comprehensiveness which means His being infinite - as such the question of His being in the sense of something separated from Him as his issue or His being separated from anybody from any origin, i.e., His being born - does not at all arise - and it is self- evident that there cannot be a second or a match or a rival for such a being. It is unimaginable because the very idea of the existence of two, implies the finiteness and the limitation of both which is contradictory to the very idea of the Absolute unity of the Essence. (A.P.).
Verse 2
‘Samad’, i.e., independent of any one - All perfect - The One to Whom recourse is made by everything Eternal for its needs, both for existence and for perfection. The One who needs no subsistence of any kind – Self existing to understand Whose existence every mind is drowned in marvel and wonder. Nothing is hidden from His all-enveloping Knowledge - Is not accommodable in anything not even in intellect, Infinite in all aspects of the existence and attributes.
In fact, the names or the attributes mentioned to describe His existence or its nature, are unconveyable in their fullness hence cannot be translated to give the correct or the fullest sense or the meaning of the terms.
All the meanings attached to this term ‘Samad’ are the necessary properties of the actual meaning given in the note on the authority of Holy Imam Ali Ibn al-Husayn Az-Zain al-Abideen of the Ahl Al-Bayt. (A.P.).
Verse 3
Nothing has come out of Him, i.e., He has not begotten any issue. There is no son or daughter born of Him. To assign a son or a daughter to Him, is the greatest blasphemy. Nor is He born of any other being. There is no match or equal to Him in any aspect, in any meaning or in any sense of any of the divine qualities. To assign any wife or mate to Him is a gross blasphemy against His All-Divine Being.
Since man is a limited being and he with his inherent limitations cannot correctly conceive of things unknown to him but through some examples in the terms used for the things physical, certain terms have to be helplessly used, otherwise the essence or the qualities of God are beyond any description or definition with any amount of human knowledge with the maximum wealth of the linguistic expressions which man can ever coin in the mine of his intellect. Anything man coins would be incomparably insignificant and hopelessly imperfect and miserably inadequate to deal with the matter connected with the knowledge of the Infinite.
