Who is Allah? How do Muslims understand God?

"Yet there is the man whose Tawhid is so great and vast that many of those traces are swallowed up in it and transformed within it, as with abundant water into which the slightest impurity or filth is mixed. Then the man of lesser Tawhid is deceived by his example, and mixes his own feeble Tawhid with what the man of great and abundant Tawhid mixed with his; so its effect appears in him as it never appeared in that abundant Tawhid."

"And that is by performing what is commanded. Whoever abandons both the commands and the prohibitions is ruined, not saved; and none is saved except by performing what is commanded, which is Tawhid. If it be said: he was ruined only by committing the forbidden thing, namely associating partners with God — the answer is that for ruin it suffices merely to abandon the Tawhid he was commanded with, even if he does not commit any positive opposite of it in the form of associating partners. Indeed, whenever his heart is wholly empty of Tawhid, so that he does not declare God one, he is ruined even if he worships nothing alongside Him."

"Sincerity and Tawhid are a tree in the heart: its branches are deeds, and its fruit is a goodly life in this world and abiding bliss in the Hereafter. And just as the fruits of Paradise are neither cut off nor withheld, so too is the fruit of Tawhid and sincerity in this world. Idolatry, falsehood, and ostentation are a tree in the heart whose fruit in this world is fear, anxiety, grief, constriction of the breast, and darkness of the heart, and whose fruit in the Hereafter is the tree of Zaqqum and lasting torment. God has mentioned these two trees in the Surah of Ibrahim."

"your heart to God, you grow distant from intimacy with people and from dwelling among them; and in the measure of your guarding of your secret and your will, it is preserved. The mainstay of all this is soundness of Tawhid, then soundness of knowledge of the way, then soundness of will, then soundness of deed — and vigilance, A Benefit: Every Man of Understanding Knows That Satan Has No Path to Him Save Three A Benefit: One Who Seeks Passage to God and the Hereafter — Indeed to Every Knowledge and Craft utmost vigilance, against people seeking you out and turning toward you, and against their stumbling upon the place of your aim — for that is the greatest affliction."

"this world repelled by anything like Tawhid. That is why the supplication for distress is a declaration of Tawhid, and why the prayer of the Man of the Whale — with which no distressed soul has ever prayed but that God relieved his distress — is Tawhid itself. Nothing casts a person into grave distress but idolatry, and nothing delivers from it but Tawhid. It is the refuge of creation, its sanctuary, its fortress, and its rescue. And success is from God. A benefit:"

"Tawhid is the refuge of His enemies and His friends alike. As for His enemies, it rescues them from the distresses and hardships of this world: "And when they board a ship they call upon God, sincere to Him in faith; but when He delivers them safely to land, at once they associate others with Him." As for His friends, by it He rescues them from the distresses and hardships of both this world and the next. It was to Tawhid that Yunus fled, and God delivered him from those layers of darkness. To it the followers of the messengers fled, and by it they were saved from the punishment inflicted upon the idolaters in this world and from what awaits them in the next."

"with divine determining, and so they claimed that whoever affirms determining cannot uphold justice, and whoever upholds justice cannot affirm determining — just as they found it hard to reconcile Tawhid with the affirmation of the divine attributes, and so claimed they could establish Tawhid only by denying the attributes."

"They were the people who loved most for the sake of Tawhid, faith, and Islam, and who hated most whatever opposed it, knowing the way in full detail. As for those who came after the Companions, among them was one who grew up in Islam without knowing its opposite in detail, so some of the particulars of the way of the believers became confused for him with the way of the criminals; for confusion occurs only when knowledge of the two ways, or of one of them, is weak. As Umar ibn al-Khattab said: The handholds of Islam will be undone one by one when there grows up in Islam one who has not"

"Adhere to the piety of God Almighty, fear none but God, hope for none but God, and entrust all needs to God Almighty. Rely only on Him, seek everything from Him, and trust no one but God. Tawhid, Tawhid, the consensus of all. O Allah, I love to meet You, so love to meet me. He, may God be pleased with him and grant him contentment, said: When the heart is sound with God Almighty, nothing is absent from it, nor does anything depart from it."

"location, sitting, or sleeping by saying, I seek refuge in Allah and his perfect words, which no righteous or wicked person can surpass, and in all the beautiful names of Allah, those I know and those I do not know, from the evil of what he created, scattered, and brought forth, from the evil of what descends from the sky and what ascends therein, from the evil of what is scattered on the earth and what emerges from it, from the trials of night and day, and from the visitor of night and day, except a visitor who comes with good, O most merciful of the merciful, and from every creature whose forelock my Lord holds."