In my formative years as a Christian, I was taught that some of the biggest sins were having intercourse before marriage, abortion, and… Well, I really can’t remember being told that anything else was a serious sin.

Disclaimer: This may be my own fault. I was never a good student as a child. This is in no way a comment on the Christian mores nor is it a statement about the religious education I was afforded.

Sure, I was taught the Ten Commandments. But, to me at least, most of those guidelines were not really set in stone (pun intended). To me, it was as if God was making polite and meek suggestions for people who lived thousands of years ago. And if you didn’t follow God’s rules, you would run the risk of hurting God’s feelings.

And in much the same way I thought of the Ten Commandments as mild-mannered suggestions for people who lived in the stone ages; I also thought that they were randomly thrown together in no particular order.

I was wrong on all accounts.

When I came to Islam, I learned, firstly, that God wasn’t joking about the laws He set forth for humankind in those ten laws. God was, in fact, firmly telling us to stay away from this stuff, otherwise… There are clear and obvious consequences.

I also learned that we don’t hurt God when we don’t follow His rules. We in fact hurt ourselves, and that God has created everything in such a way that when we do evil we will reap evil, even if it isn’t immediate.

Furthermore, I realized that the Ten Commandments were in a very particular order with the first being the most important:

“You shall have no other gods before Me”.

But what is the First Commandment talking about?

What is Shirk?

In Islamic terms, the command to have no other god is a firm injunction on us to steer clear of shirk.

Shirk, in English, is something you do. “To shirk” is to avoid or refuse a duty or responsibility. And to me this is the root of what shirk means. What could be a bigger way “to shirk” a responsibility than “to shirk” the responsibility to put God before all others?

Shirk in Arabic means ascribing or establishing “partners” above or beside God. In this way, Islamic belief goes one step further with monotheism, and doesn’t just say to have no false god above God, but to have no God next to, near, in association with, or in the vicinity of the one true God.

There is no duty more basic, more essential than the duty to not associate or put anything above God. Allah is our originator, the One who created, continues to create, and provides for all that is in existence. All other duties, even our responsibilities to each other and the rest of creation, come from this one major responsibility to the Creator.

And what could be simpler than a responsibility to NOT do something?

Most responsibilities involve action. Taking out the trash. Raising your children. Going to work to make a living. These are all examples of responsibilities that take effort.

How can we go out of our way to not do something?

We have to take action “to shirk”. It’s a responsibility that requires nothing more than remaining in our natural state of believing in our Creator.

Tawheed

As Muslims, most of us feel pretty safe from shirk because we hold tawheed as an important principle in our lives. It is, after all, the first step to becoming a Muslim. And shirk is the one thing that scholars agree voids faith and one’s Islam. But often shirk creeps into our lives in unassuming ways.

Sometimes we attach our hearts to people and things too much; we forget that they are just a part of God’s creation. As I stated before, not giving God His rights doesn’t hurt Him, it hurts us.

Shirk Destroys in this Life