Islam - Personalism to Pantheism and back again?

[lightgigantic]

Here's a lecture by Dr Naik (8 minutes) drawing parallels between the quaran and vedic literature.

He begins by establishing that the distinction between islam and hinduism (or more specifically the advaita vada interpretation of the vedas) is that advaitavada states everything is "God" and that Islam states everything is "God's".

I though this was unusual since I have always understood islam to slide more towards the pantheistic side of monotheism.

This confounded me even more when the vedic arguments that he supplied to support the Islamic understanding of god are the bastions of the advaita school ("god has no form" "god has no image" etc etc).

(For those who don't know, the advaita school of hinduism is very much pantheistic in its outlook).

The critical issue is this :

How can one talk of everything being "God's" if god has no form. no image, etc?
How can a deity that is pantheistic fulfill the criteria of personal worship?
How can a deity that is personal (ie lay claim to "God's) be bereft of form, image, etc?

 

[S.A.M.]

Dr Naik is not an authority on Islam except by self profession.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakir_Naik

I suggest you consider him as merely a point of view.

The essential Islamic belief of God is centered around Tawheed.

Tawheed is an Arabic word that means both unique and unification, which is what describes Islamic belief in God as monotheistic.

What it means is that there is no way to describe any quality of God; this is frequently used as a licence to say that every quality can be ascribed to Him.

Does that make sense?

 

[lightgigantic]

Dr Naik is not an authority on Islam except by self profession.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakir_Naik

I suggest you consider him as merely a point of view.

The essential Islamic belief of God is centered around Tawheed.

Tawheed is an Arabic word that means both unique and unification, which is what describes Islamic belief in God as monotheistic.

What it means is that there is no way to describe any quality of God; this is frequently used as a licence to say that every quality can be ascribed to Him.

Does that make sense?

so it's more like god is the reservoir of form/quality as opposed to being bereft of form/quality?

 

[S.A.M.]

so it's more like god is the reservoir of form/quality as opposed to being bereft of form/quality?

Is there any way to decide between the two?

I think it interesting that the word Tawheed encompasses either

 

[lightgigantic]

Is there any way to decide between the two?

if something is the reservoir of all qualities, it should be qualifiable, even if it can't be quantified
for instance if we agree that the earth is the reservoir of all the oceans, I should be able to indicate at least a drop of it.

If something has no qualities, there is no possibility of producing even a drop of it, since it is not actually locatable

I think it interesting that the word Tawheed encompasses either

actually if you use the drop of water to the ocean analogy, it also fulfills the same requirements

in one sense it is unique (by quantity), being a drop, but in another sense it is unified (by quality), since both the drop and the ocean have the quality of saltiness