ABSTRACT
This splendid axiom comes from Uzbek writer and politician Xurshid Do’stmuhammad. During a conversation in the Uzbek Parliament in 2003 he asserted that the Qur’an for centuries has determined and underwritten this core philosophical tenet of local culture. It is redolent of a certain pantheism, and indeed within the Qur’an itself one can find surprising equivalences of a singular God and multiplicity: “To God belongs the East and West. Whichever way you turn there is the face of God. He is omnipresent and all-knowing” (“The Cow,” 2: 115). This is a type of Spinozistic monotheism which left some early Sufi theologians suggesting there is nothing not born of Allah, and since He resides within each and every individual there must therefore exist (difficult) paths leading to a mystical union with universality.
