Tawhid
Islam’s confession of God’s oneness. In this corpus it is never one view: Ashʿarī tawhid keeps real eternal attributes “neither He nor other than He”; Avicennian tawhid denies real distinct attributes altogether. Both are steelmanned as rivals to Trinity, not as a generic “unitarian god”.
Arabic tawḥīd, “making one”, from wāḥid, “one”.
Tawhid is the Islamic confession that God is one. That sentence is true and almost useless for Debby's actual comparisons, because the schools do not mean the same thing by it.
Ashʿarī tawhid (OTC-003) keeps seven real eternal attributes, "neither He nor other than He" — genuine plurality-in-unity without Trinitarian relations of origin, and with its own underived cardinality. Avicennian tawhid denies real distinct attributes and then pays a one/many cost at the first emanated Intellect (al-Ghazālī's charge, still disputed inside the tradition). Kalām tawhid, like EO cardinality, is received rather than derived; Avicennian unity is derived and then spends the gain downstream. Neither is a strawman "bare monad." Gregory's "constriction" charge, run against both, currently hangs on an unadjudicated premise about actual versus dispositional generosity.
The mistaken everyday reading is "Muslims just think God is a lonely individual." The live rivals are sophisticated, and Trinity's own one/many cost remains equally unresolved.
Where this comes up
Sources
- Debby packets OTC-003 (Ashʿarī attribute-theism; Avicennian Necessary Existent; tawhid constriction test)