People around the world may well believe in God in various ways, but they tend to describe what they believe in many (and sometimes quite apparently conflicting) ways. So I try to find a way to express what I believe using a language that others can also find easy to use. What I do, to a greater or lesser extent, is try to explain the Shahada.

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim - In the Name of God the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.

[Qur'an from the chapter named Forgiving vv. 61-65]

It is God who made the night for you to rest in, and the day in which to see.

Surely God is generous to men, but most men are ungrateful. That then is God, your Lord, the Creator of everything; there is no god but He. How then are you misled? Even so are they misled who deny the signs of God.

It is God who made for you the earth as a resting place and heaven for a canopy; and He shaped you, and shaped you well, and provided you with the good things. That then is God, your Lord, so blessed be God, the Lord of all the Worlds.

He is the Living One, there is no god but He. So call upon Him, and make your religion His sincerely. Praise belongs only to God, the Lord of all the Worlds.

When people ask me if I believe there is a God, the first thing I say to them is "No". Now if you are surprised by my answer it is because you already thought you knew what my answer was going to be. The question sounds simple enough. You know that I am a muslim, and you know that muslims believe in some kind of God, so why is my answer not what you expected? Communication between humans is rarely simple, and the chances of misunderstanding are even greater when that communication has to bridge between people of different faiths or cultural understandings. Even though we are both speaking English, we may well understand the same words in different ways.

One of the easiest ways to win an argument is to first tell the other person what he thinks, and then tell him why what he thinks is wrong. People do it all the time. It is certainly much easier than listening carefully to what the other person is saying, with the risk of finding out that what he really means is harder to disagree with. It might even be that there is no reason for an argument at all.

This kind of argument is very common when people talk about God, because people have different ways of understanding what the word means. All around the world we can find people fighting over who has the proper name for God, or who has the best way to worship Him. They torture and kill those they think are their enemies, and see no contradiction in doing these things on behalf of a God of Love or Mercy.

But arguments about God don't usually result in bloodshed when I teach at the University in Glasgow. Most students don't seem to find God that important nowadays. In our secular world the idea of God has been going out of fashion. People laugh at the idea of God being like a white bearded old man throwing thunderbolts from the sky. Nor do they believe that the sun is a god at the reins of a chariot of fire. But just because there is no god like that doesn't mean there is no God.

When I am asked if I believe there is a god, I say No, because that little word "a" means the questioner thinks that there could be another different kind of god, and in that kind of God I don't believe. But there is an Arabic word Allah which means The God. Not one of many, but the One apart from whom there is no other, and this is the God in which I believe. I believe that there is not a god - which is not The God that I worship.

Say: "He is The One God - God, the Eternal and Absolute One;
Who begets not, and has not been begotten, and equal to Him is no one."