Dr. Murtaza Hameer is a medical doctor turned teacher. He pursued his medical degree in India and did the United States medical licensing exams in the USA. He also has a postgraduate diploma in education from the University of Dar es Salaam. He is the author of the book, “Learning How To Learn: Doing well in school, college and beyond”. He is passionate about education and teaching with interests also in philosophy, science, theology and spirituality.
T
he Islamic proclamation of faith states, La Ilaaha Illa Allah, Muhammad Al Rasulallah, usually read as ‘There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.’ The first part of this proclamation has another more deeper meaning, one that is in accordance with the God of the mystics of the Islamic as well as other faith traditions and that is:
There is no reality except the Divine Reality.
The notion of the Oneness of God, in contrast the notion of there being One God, is at the heart of several philosophies of the religions of the East and West. The Upanishads for example, which are among the Holy Scriptures of Hinduism, mention in the Chandogya Upanishad that everything is God. In fact, the Vedanta Philosophy of Hinduism states that there is nothing but God and that everything emanates from God and is indeed part of God.
In Islam, we have the Sufi mystic Muhideen Ibn Al Arabi, who espoused the idea that there is only God’s Being, that God is both immanent as well as transcendent to the physical universe of reality. This concept was later termed by his students as Wahdatal Wujood – the Unity of God’s Being.
The idea of God being immanent in nature as well as transcendent to nature is also known as panentheism. This is different from pantheism which states that nature is God. In panentheism, everything emanates from God’s Being and is contained in God.
Is the above idea suggested by the Quran as well? It turns out it is. In the 57th chapter of the Quran, in the third verse it reads,
He is the First and the Last, and the Outer and the Inner, and He has knowledge of all things.
If God is the First and the Last, then He encompasses the whole of Time. If God is the Outer and the Inner, then He encompasses the whole of Space as well as Matter. In other words, Time, Space and Matter – the three core aspects of physical reality as per modern physics and cosmology – are contained in God.
In the first three opening verses of the Quran we read,
In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds. The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Now the word Ar Rahman, which is usually translated as the Gracious or the Compassionate can also mean the Womb, as in the Womb of Creation. In Hebrew, the word Rakhmanu, similar to the Arabic word Rahman, means just that as well. In humans, the womb of a mother gives rise to the development of the baby, protecting it and nourishing it. The baby depends on its mother’s womb for its existence and survival as well as its ultimate flourishing to become a fully formed human. Indeed, seeing Ar Rahman to mean the Womb of Creation goes hand in hand with the second verse following the Basmallah which praises God as the Rabb of the Universe. Rabb while translated as Lord also means Nourisher or Sustainer. In chapter 17, verse 24 we read,
And lower to them the wing of humility, out of mercy, and say, “My Lord (Rabbi), have mercy on them, as they raised me (kamaa rabbayani) when I was a child.”
This beautiful prayer for one’s parents uses the word rabbayani to mean raised or cared for which is related to the word Rabb that has to do with nourishing and sustaining.
Seeing God as the Womb of Creation as well as a Being in whom Time, Space and Matter are contained makes us appreciate the simplistic and yet profound beauty of Tawheed which means not that God is One but rather that there is nothing but God and that just as the waves arise out of the ocean and are not separate from the ocean and ultimately return to become one with the ocean, the whole of existence arises out of God, is sustained by God, and returns back to God.
Dr. Murtaza Hameer is a medical doctor turned teacher. He pursued his medical degree in India and did the United States medical licensing exams in the USA. He also has a postgraduate diploma in education from the University of Dar es Salaam. He is the author of the book, “Learning How To Learn: Doing well in school, college and beyond”. He is passionate about education and teaching with interests also in philosophy, science, theology and spirituality.
