TERM 3 - TAwheed - CLASS 2
SHIRK IN RUBUBIYAH
This category of shirk refers to either the belief that others share Allah’s Lordship over creation as His equal or near equal, or to the belief that there exists no Lord over creation at all. Most religious systems falls into the first aspect of Shirk in Rububiyah while it is the philosophers and their man-made philosophies that tend to fill the second aspect.
Shirk by Association
Beliefs which fall under this sub category are ones in which a main God or Supreme Being over creation is recognized, how-ever His dominion is shared by other lesser gods, spirits, mortals, heavenly bodies or earthly objects. Such belief systems are commonly reffered to by theologians and philosophers as either monotheistic (having one God) or polytheistic (having more than one God). According to Islam, all of these systems are polytheistic, and many represent various degrees in the degeneration of divinely revealed religious systems all of which were originally based on Tawhid.
Within Hinduism the Supreme Being, Brahma is conceived as indwelling, all-pervading, unchangeable and eternal, the abstract, impersonal Absolute, in which all things have their origin and end. While the god Brahma is the personified creator of the universe who forms a trinity with the preserver god, Vishnu and the destroyer god, Shiva. Thus Shirk in Rububiyah is expressed in Hinduism by the delegation of God’s creative, destructive and preservative powers to other gods.
Christian belief states that the one God reveals himself in the three persons of Father, Son (Jesus Christ) & Holy Spirit. These three persons are nevertheless regarded as a unity, sharing one substance. Prophet Jesus A.S. is elevated to divinity, sits on the right hand of God and judges the world. The Holy Spirit, who in the Hebrew Bible is the means by which God exercises His creative power, in Christian thought becomes a part of God-head. Paul made the Holy Spirit the alter ego of Christ, the guide and help of Christians, first manifesting itself on the day of Penecost. Consequently Shirk in Rububiyah occurs in the Christian belief that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God’s partners in all of His dominion, in their belief that Jesus alone pronounces judgment on the World, and in their belief that Christians are helped and guided by the Holy Spirit.
Zoroastrians (Parsis) conceive of God, Ahura Mazda, as being the creator of all that is good, and is alone worthy of absolute worship. Fire is one of the seven creations of ahura Mazda and is considered his son or representative. But they also commit Shirk in Rububiyah by conceiving of evil, violence and death as being the creation of another god called Angra Mainyu whom they represent by the symbol darkness. Hence, God’s sovereignty over all creation is shared with an evil spirit elevated to the level of an opposing god due to man’s desire to not attribute evil to God.
In Yoruba religion, followed by over 10 million people in West Africa (mainly Nigeria), there is one supreme God, Olorius (Lord of Heaven) or Olodumare. Nevertheless, modern Yoruba religion is characterized by a great many forms of Orisha worship, so that it appears as strict polytheism. Consequently Yorubas commit Shirk in Rububiyah by turning over all God’s functions to minor gods & spirits.
The Zulus of South Africa believe in one God, Unlulunkulu, meaning the ancient, the first, the most revered one. The principal specifi tiltles for God are Nkosi yaphezulu (Lord of the Sky) anduMuvelingqanqi (the first to appear). Their Supreme Being is represented as a male, who along with the earth female, brings forth the human world. Thunder and lightening are in the Zulu religion acts of God, whereas sickness and other troubles in life may be caused by the ancestors, the idlozi orabaphansi (those under the earth). The ancestors also protect the living, ask for food, are pleased with ritual and sacrifice, punish neglect and take possession of fortune teller (inyanga). Thus Shirk in Rububiyah takes place in the Zulu religion not only in their concept of the creation of the human world, but also in their attribution of good and evil in human life to the work of ancestral spirits.
Among some Muslim people, Shirk in Rububiyah is manifested in theid belief that the souls of saints and other righteous humans can affect the affairs of this world, even after their deaths. Their souls, it is believed can fulfil one’s needs, remove calamities and aid whoever calls on them. Therefore, grave worshippers assign to human souls the divine ability to cause events in this life which in fact only Allah (S.W.T.) can cause.
Common among many Sufis (Muslim mystics) is the belief in “Rijal al-Ghyab” (men of the unseen) the chief of whom occupies the station “Qutub”from which the affairs of this world are governed.
Shirk by Negation
This sub-category represents the various philosophies and ideologies which deny the existence of God either explicitly or implicitly. That is, in some cases God’s non-existence, is stated (Atheism), while in other cases His existence is claimes, but the way in which He is conceived actually denies His existence (Pantheism).
There are a few ancent religious “systems” in which God does not exist: -
Foremost among them being the system attributed to Gautama Buddha.
In teachings of Jainism as sustematized by Varhmana, there is no God.
Another ancient example is that of the Pharaoh of Prophet Musa A.S. mentioned in the Qur’an that he negated the existence of God and claimed to Moses and the people of Egypt that he, Pharoah was the only true lord of all creation.
Darwin’s proposal that man was merely a glorified ape.
An example of this form of Shirk among Muslims is that of many Sufis such as Ibn ‘Arabi, who claim that only Allah exists (All is Allah & Allah is all). They deny the separate indentity of Allah and thereby in fact deny His existence. This idea was also expressed in the 17th century by the Dutch Jewish philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, who claimed that God is the total of all parts of the universe including man.
Note : TERM 3 means LEVEL 3, so new students need to join TERM 1 - pass it to get to TERM 2 and then onwards InShaAllah, so you are free to read this if you have time but tests should only be of the respective TERM and certificates are only given one TERM after the other. JazakAllah Khair
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