The Theology of Unity (Risalat al-tawhid)

Introduction

Muhammad Abduh gave the lectures on which the book is based in Beirut in the 1880s, during his exile from Egypt after the Urabi revolt, and published them in Cairo in 1897. In concise form he presents Islamic doctrine – God’s existence and attributes, prophecy, the Qur’an and human action – and argues that Islam is a religion of reason: it rejects blind imitation (taqlid) and encourages the study of nature. He sets aside many subtleties of the older kalam schools and stresses human responsibility for one’s own actions. The book was used as a textbook and translated into several languages; an English translation, The Theology of Unity, appeared in 1966.