Maulana Wahiduddin Khan I Discover God
The Quran defines one quality of those true servants of God whom He will be pleased with as their “faith in the unseen” (2:3). As for those who “only know the outward appearance of the life of this world” (30:7), they can never come close to God.
From these definitions one can gauge the difference between polytheism and monotheism. Polytheism, one might say, is to see reality on a superficial level, while monotheism is to see reality on a level of inner meanings. A polytheist, in other words, comes to know only those gods that he can see with the eyes of his physical body. A monotheist, on the other hand, comes to know the God that he can see with the inner eye of his soul. He believes in the unseen, while a polytheist believes only in outward forms.
It is here that the true difference between belief and disbelief lies. A disbeliever is one who lives for that which he can see, while a true believer is one who lives for what he has not seen. The former discovers physical things, while the latter makes discoveries of an intellectual nature. Disbelief is to grasp only that which can be seen; belief, on the other hand, is to be able to grasp those concepts which can only be understood by profound thought.
In every day and age, people have gone astray through worshipping superficial forms. The prophets call on people to believe in God, but since God cannot be seen, few are able to fix their minds on Him. Instead, most people have recourse to those objects which they can actually see. Throughout the ages, people have worshipped objects, from the stars in the sky to the mountains and rivers. Invariably, they have been led to do this by a desire to see something before they will believe it. People were familiar with visual, tangible gods. That was why the call of the prophets to believe in an invisible God fell for most part on deaf ears.
People take to saint and hero-worship for the same reason. God cannot be seen, so they cannot grasp His greatness. Saints and popular heroes, on the other hand, can be seen by men, so people are quick to acknowledge their greatness, and take to worshipping them. Saint and hero-worship are just other forms of idol worship, even though their adherents call them piety, religion, and even monotheism.