Islam

Here is the first paragraph of a paper I did for a "Witness to Muslims" class:

Malise Ruthven states decisively, “If there is a single word that can be taken to represent the primary impulse of Islam, be it theological, political, or sociological, it is tawhid – making one, unicity…”[1] The Muslim doctrine of God (Allah) underlies this noticeably strong emphasis on the oneness of Islam: it forms the very first part of the Islamic creed – “there is no god but Allah…” All subsets of Muslim belief and practice including the authority structure, the law, and the community subserve the aim of submitting to the one will of the one God Allah. Ruthven further asserts that “the overwhelming stress on God’s uniqueness reflects the polemical context in which early Islam was forged. Tawhid simultaneously challenges Arabian paganism, Zoroastrian dualism, and the Christian doctrine of divine incarnation.”[2] Indeed, one of the first visible acts of Muhammad was his destruction of all the pagan idols set up in Mecca, save one: Allah. Perhaps metaphorically this is how adherents of Islam might like to conceive of its status: a force that has dispersed all competitors and established itself as the supreme religion above all others. For fourteen centuries Islam, despite all its internal turmoils, has sought to remain committed to tawhid, zealously guarding it against pagan polytheism and Christian Trinitarianism.
[1] Malise Ruthven, Islam: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 1997), 49.
[2] Ibid, 50.