The Concept of God in the Teachings of Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah

Ismā‘īlī Gnosis presents Imām Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh Aga Khan III’s teachings on the concept of God as found in his public speeches, interviews and writings.

These teachings are extremely important in an age where both believers, agnostics and atheists harbour misunderstandings concerning the nature of God and His relationship to the Cosmos. These errors include things like “deism” (that God simply creates the Universe and leaves it to its own existence without any involvement), “theistic personalism” (that God is merely an immaterial disembodied “person” that watches over human beings), “pantheism” (that the physical Universe is God), “abstract monotheism” (that God’s personality is entirely separate and disjoint from the Cosmos), atheism (that there is no God whatsoever), etc. The below statements of Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah present a conception of God that harmonizes both “classical theism” (upheld by Christian and Islamic philosophers including Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Ibn Sina, al-Farabi, etc) and “mono-realism” (upheld by Christian and Muslim mystics such as Meister Eckhart, Ibn al-Arabi, Mulla Sadra, etc): the concept of God as the Absolute, Infinite and Sole Reality – the continuous Creator and Sustainer all of existence at every waking moment, the Absolute Being whose intrinsic and infinite qualities of Knowledge, Power, Justice, and Mercy are revealed throughout vastness of the Cosmos and in the souls of human beings, and the Eternal Reality through whom human beings may attain spiritual vision and mystical union.

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