Islamic Monotheism

I was directed to a posting on youtube about a person who was an Orthodox Jew for 10 years, then became a Muslim. On the video this person said he was frum from his late teens until his early thirties and then, through discussions over the internet with a Muslim, became a devout Muslim. In the small piece of this video that I saw, this person contended that an argument that really convinced him of the truth of Islam was that it was the perfect Monotheism, Now I understood what this person was contending in regard to Christianity but I could not fathom what he meant by contending that Islam was a better form of Monotheism. The person continued. The problem with Judaism, according to this person, was that it gave power to the Rabbis and thus lessened the oneness and overall power of the deity. I write deity in this case with a small d -- for this person was not referring to HaKodesh Baruch Hu. What amazed me was that this individual, after being frum for over 10 years, could not understand the problem with this contention and this idea that Rabbinic power lessens the greatness of God. It is precisely because Hashem gave power to rabbis, human beings, that we recognize His True Greatness.

Islam is all about submission to the deity. Through submission, one is deemed to recognize the deity as the one, overall force in the world. The problem is: what about the human being? What was the human being created for? The greatest gift that God can give a human being is the ability to be Godlike which includes individuality, independence and autonomy. It is with this perspective that Hashem gave us the Torah in such a manner that it still demanded human involvement, human thought, human decision making. We accept the dominion of Hakodesh Baruch Hu by submitting ourselves to the direction of Torah -- but, then, God's directive still demands our analysis. We have to figure out what God wants from us. We have to think. We have to still make decisions. On the surface, it may look that God's power is chas v'sholom being reduced by this involvement of human beings in the determination of what is demanded. It may seem that God's overall Authority, His Oneness, is being challenged by the involvement of human decision makers in the process. What is not being understood is that God is so above the need for this type of full submission that He wished to create an entity upon whom he could actually bestow some of His essential attributes -- because He is so unique and so One of an Entity that whatever He bestowed upon humanity would not detract from Him one iota in any event. So Hashem created a system that demanded of Man to recognize His absolute Dominion yet still gave Man the ability to participate in the process and thereby experience imatio Dei. Rabbinic power is thus not a challenge to the Oneness of God but actually declares the Greatness of this Oneness.

Rabbi Ben Hecht