The People of Monotheism may translate several Arabic terms:
The Druze, who call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn, are an Arab esoteric religious group from West Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and syncretic religion whose main tenets assert the unity of God, reincarnation, and the eternity of the soul.
Unitarian or Unitarianism may refer to:
Wahhabism is a reformist movement within Sunni Islam based on the teachings of the 18th-century Hanbali cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The movement was initially established in the central Arabian region of Najd and later spread to other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and is today followed primarily in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Shirk in Islam is a sin often roughly translated as 'idolatry' or 'polytheism', but more accurately meaning 'association [with God]'. It refers to accepting other divinities or powers alongside God as associates. In contrast, Islam teaches that God does not share divine attributes with anyone, as it is disallowed according to the Islamic doctrine of tawhid. The Quran, the central religious text of Islam, states in 4:48 that God will not forgive shirk if one dies without repenting of it.
Tawhid is the concept of monotheism in Islam. Tawhid is the religion's central and single most important concept, upon which a Muslim's entire religious adherence rests. It unequivocally holds that God is indivisibly one (ahad) and single (wahid).
The Alawites, also known as Nusayrites, are an Arab ethnoreligious group that live primarily in the Levant and follow Alawism, a religious sect that splintered from early Shia Islam as a ghulat branch during the ninth century. Alawites venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, the "first Imam" in the Twelver school, as the physical manifestation of God. The group was founded by Ibn Nusayr during the 9th century. Ibn Nusayr was a disciple of the tenth Twelver Imam, Ali al-Hadi and of the eleventh Twelver Imam, Hasan al-Askari. For this reason, Alawites are also called Nusayris.
Kitab al-Majmu‘ is a book which is claimed by some Sunni Muslims and former Alawites to be the main source of teaching of the ‘Alawi sect of Islam. They claim the book is not openly published and instead is passed down from initiated Master to Apprentice; however, the book has been published by Western scholars, and both the original Arabic and French translation are available on the Internet Archive. The Alawis, however, reject this book as baseless and state that their main source of teaching is Nahj al-Balagha. According to Matti Moosa:
The ghulāt were a branch of early Shiʿa. The term mainly refers to a wide variety of extinct Shiʿi sects active in 8th and 9th-century Kufa in Lower Mesopotamia, and who despite their sometimes significant differences shared several common ideas. These common ideas included the attribution of a divine nature to the Imams, metempsychosis, a particular gnostic creation myth involving pre-existent 'shadows' whose fall from grace produced the material world, and an emphasis on secrecy and dissociation from outsiders. They were named ghulāt by other Shiʿi and Sunni Muslims for their purportedly "exaggerated" veneration of Muhammad and his family, most notably Ali and his descendants, the Imams.
Islamic schools and branches have different understandings of Islam. There are many different sects or denominations, schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and schools of Islamic theology, or ʿaqīdah (creed). Within Islamic groups themselves there may be differences, such as different orders (tariqa) within Sufism, and within Sunnī Islam different schools of theology and jurisprudence. Groups in Islam may be numerous, or relatively small in size.
Abū Shuʿayb Muḥammad ibn Nuṣayr al-Numayri, died after 868, was considered by his followers as the representative of the tenth Twelver Imam, Ali al‐Hadi and of the eleventh Twelver Imam, Hasan al‐Askari, and founder of the Alawites. Ibn Nusayr was known to his followers as a representative (Bab) of al‐Askari and of the twelfth Twelver Imam, Hujjat-Allah al-Mahdi during the Minor Occultation. A rival of his in claiming to be the bāb (door) to the Imams was Abu Yaqub Ishaq, founder of the Ishaqiyya.
The Lebanese Druze are an ethnoreligious group constituting about 5.2 percent of the population of Lebanon. They follow the Druze faith, which is an esoteric Abrahamic religion originating from the Near East, and self identify as unitarians.
Abu ʿAbd-Allāh al-Ḥusayn ibn Ḥamdān al-Jonbalānī al-Khaṣībī, died 969, was originally from a village called Jonbalā, between Kufa and Wasit in Iraq, which was the center of the Qarmatians. He was a member of a well-educated family with close ties to eleventh Twelver Imam Hasan al-Askari and a scholar of the Islamic sect known as the Alawites or Nusayris, which is now present in Syria, southern Turkey and northern Lebanon.
Israeli Druze or Druze Israelis are an ethnoreligious minority among the Arab citizens of Israel. They maintain Arabic language and culture as integral parts of their identity, and Arabic is their primary language. In 2019, there were 143,000 Druze people living within Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, comprising 1.6% of the total population of Israel. the majority of Israeli Druze are concentrated in northern Israel, especially in Galilee, Carmel and the Golan areas.
The Epistles of Wisdom is a corpus of sacred texts and pastoral letters by teachers of the Druze faith native to the Levant, which has currently close to a million practitioners. The text revolves around the acknowledgement and worship of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah as the last and definite incarnation of the One God, a belief which Druze define as 'Monotheism'.
Almohad doctrine or Almohadism was the ideology underpinning the Almohad movement, founded by Ibn Tumart, which created the Almohad Empire during the 12th to 13th centuries. Fundamental to Almohadism was Ibn Tumart's radical interpretation of tawḥid—"unity" or "oneness"—from which the Almohads get their name: al-muwaḥḥidūn (المُوَحِّدون).
Schools of Islamic theology are various Islamic schools and branches in different schools of thought regarding creed. The main schools of Islamic theology include the extant Mu'tazili, Ash'ari, Maturidi, and Athari schools; the extinct ones include the Qadari, Jahmi, Murji', and Batini schools.
Druze in Jordan refers to adherents of the Druze faith, an ethnoreligious esoteric group originating from the Near East who self identify as unitarians (Muwahhideen). Druze faith is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion, and Druze do not identify as Muslims.
Hinn are both a kind of supernatural creature in Arabian lore—along with jinn and various kinds of devils (shaitan)—as well as a pre-Adamitic race in Islam-related beliefs. Their existence, along with that of binn, timm, and rimm, is accepted by the Druze.
The Umm al-Kitāb is a syncretic Shi'i work originating in the ghulāt milieus of 8th-century Kufa (Iraq). It was later transplanted to Syria by the 10th-century Nusayris, whose final redaction of the work was preserved in a Persian translation produced by the Nizari Isma'ilis of Central Asia. The work only survives in Persian. It contains no notable elements of Isma'ili doctrine, but given the fact that Isma'ili authors starting from the 10th century were influenced by early ghulāt ideas such as those found in the Umm al-Kitāb, and especially given the influence of these ideas on later Tayyibi Isma'ilism, some Isma'ilis do regard the work as one of the most important works in their tradition.
Kitab at-Tawheed is a Sunni book about monotheism in the Athari school of thought. The book is the primary source for Wahhabi beliefs on monotheism. The book was written by the Hanbali scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.
Both Nuṣayrīs and Druzes were Shīʿī sects deeply influenced by Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Both called themselves muwaḥḥidūn, and considered the study of esoteric knowledge as the true path to monotheism.
According to Nuṣayrī sources, the members of this group called themselves muwaḥḥidūn or ahl al-tawḥīd (monotheists), because they believed that only by combining exoteric (zāhir) and esoteric (bāṭin) knowledge, can complete monotheism be achieved.