Every Sikh scripture reading begins with one character: ੴ. It looks like the number one joined to a curving line. It reads Ik Oankar, 'One Creator', and it opens the Guru Granth Sahib on its very first page. Three thousand years earlier, a poet in north-west India sang that 'Truth is one; the wise call it by many names.' In ancient Iran, the prophet Zarathustra asked: who set the paths of the sun and the stars?
Muslims, Jews and Christians sometimes assume that belief in one Creator belongs to their family alone. It does not. Here four other traditions speak in their own words. We do not claim that any of them is 'really' Islam, Judaism or Christianity in disguise; each has its own story, and its followers are the best guides to it. What we can do is listen, and notice where human beings, far apart, have looked up and asked the same question.
“Lo! We have sent thee with the Truth, a bearer of glad tidings and a warner; and there is not a nation but a warner hath passed among them.”
Qur'an 35:24 · Pickthall (1930) and 4:164 · in brief
The Qur'an teaches that guidance was sent to every people, and that the names of most messengers are not recorded in it. Muslim scholars have therefore been cautious: they do not name founders of other religions as prophets without clear evidence, and they do not deny that truth may have reached other lands. The verse invites humility, not a list.
What the record shows
Sikhi. Guru Nanak (1469–1539) founded the Sikh path in Punjab. The scripture's opening lines, the Mul Mantar or 'root verse', describe God in a string of short phrases: Ik Oankar, Sat Naam, Kartā Purakh, Nirbhau, Nirvair, Akāl Mūrat, Ajūnī, Saibhaṅ, Gur Prasād. In plain English: One Creator; whose Name is Truth; the Maker; without fear; without hatred; beyond time; unborn; self-existent; known by the Guru's grace. Sikhs stress that God has no physical form and does not take birth. Around 524,000 people in England and Wales described themselves as Sikh in the 2021 Census. Sikhi is its own faith, not a blend of Hinduism and Islam, and Sikhs ask that it be described that way.
Hindu traditions. 'Hinduism' is a modern umbrella word for a vast family of traditions, and Hindus describe the divine in different ways. The Rigveda, among the oldest texts in any living religion, contains a hymn (1.164.46) that says: ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadanti, 'Truth is one; the wise speak of it in many ways', naming Indra, Mitra, Varuna and Agni as titles of the One. The Upanishads speak of Brahman, the ultimate reality, 'one only, without a second' (Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.1). Some schools, such as Shankara's Advaita, teach that Brahman alone is real. Others, such as Ramanuja's and Madhva's, teach a personal Lord, Ishvara or Bhagavan, distinct from souls and the world. Many Hindus honour many deities as forms or servants of the One; others would put it differently. About one million people in England and Wales described themselves as Hindu in 2021.
Zoroastrian tradition. Zarathustra (also called Zoroaster) lived in ancient Iran; scholars date him anywhere from about 1500 to 500 BCE. His hymns, the Gathas, address Ahura Mazda, the 'Wise Lord', as creator of all that is good. In one (Yasna 44) he asks a chain of questions: 'Who is by generation the Father of Right, at the first? Who determined the path of sun and stars?' Zoroastrian teaching is often called dualistic, because it describes a cosmic struggle between good and evil, but Zoroastrians today generally describe their faith as worship of one supreme, wholly good God. The community is small: about 4,000 people in England and Wales in 2021. Its UK association, founded in 1861, is the oldest Asian religious organisation in Britain.
Ancient Egypt. Around 1350 BCE the pharaoh Akhenaten closed temples to Egypt's many gods and promoted the worship of the Aten, the disc of the sun. A hymn found in a tomb at his new city, Amarna, praises the Aten as the one who made the earth, the seasons and every creature, and calls it a sole god with no other like it. Scholars urge caution. Worship of the Aten seems to have centred on the royal family, who presented themselves as its only intermediaries; ordinary Egyptians kept household gods; and the experiment was dismantled after his death. Egyptologists debate whether to call it monotheism at all. Some readers have noticed similarities between the Hymn to the Aten and Psalm 104, but no direct link has been shown.
What can be said fairly? That the idea of one source of all things, beyond the sun and stars, has arisen or been taught in more than one civilisation. That each has described it in its own language and placed it in its own story. And that the similarities are real enough to start a conversation, and the differences are real enough to deserve respect.
What each faith says
Judaism
“And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was priest of God the Most High. And he blessed him, and said: 'Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth.'”
Genesis 14:18-19 · JPS 1917
The Hebrew Bible itself contains a figure from outside Abraham's family who knows 'God Most High'. Melchizedek, king of Salem, comes out to bless Abram (later Abraham, peace be upon him) 'of God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth' (Genesis 14:19). Jewish commentators have discussed him ever since as a sign that knowledge of the Creator was not confined to one family. The prophet Malachi says God's name is 'great among the nations' (1:11).
Persia also has a special place in Jewish memory. The Persian king Cyrus the Great allowed exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem in 538 BCE, and Isaiah calls him God's 'anointed' (45:1). Whether Cyrus himself was a Zoroastrian is debated by historians. Jewish tradition holds that the non-Jewish nations are bound by seven basic laws given to Noah, including not worshipping idols, and that 'the righteous of the nations have a share in the world to come' (Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:2).
Christianity
“I also found an altar with this inscription: 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' What therefore you worship in ignorance, I announce to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn't dwell in temples made with hands.”
Acts 17:23-24 · WEB
When Paul visited Athens he found an altar inscribed 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD', and began from there: 'The God who made the world and all things in it... is not far from each one of us' (Acts 17:23-27). Elsewhere he says God 'didn't leave himself without witness' among the nations (Acts 14:17). Early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr spoke of 'seeds of the Word' scattered among all peoples.
Christians today take different views of other religions. The Catholic Church's declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) says it 'rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions', naming Hinduism and Buddhism, while holding that the fullness of truth is found in Christ. Many Protestant and Orthodox Christians stress the uniqueness of Christ more strongly. Most agree on the practice Paul modelled at Athens: start with respect, listen first, and speak plainly about what you believe.
Islam
“For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which He hath given you (He hath made you as ye are). So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah ye will all return, and He will then inform you of that wherein ye differ.”
Qur'an 5:48 · Pickthall (1930)
The Qur'an names twenty-five prophets, but says many more were sent (40:78). Some Muslims have speculated about whether figures in other traditions were among them; mainstream scholars have usually declined to say, because the Qur'an does not. The Qur'an does mention the Magians (al-majūs), widely understood as Zoroastrians, alongside Jews, Christians and Sabians (22:17), and early Muslim rulers in Iran treated Zoroastrians as a protected community.
In India, Muslim thinkers engaged deeply with Hindu thought. The scholar al-Biruni (973–1048) learned Sanskrit and wrote a careful study of India, noting that learned Hindus described God as one, eternal and without beginning, while also recording popular worship faithfully. Sikh scripture, for its part, includes verses by the Muslim Sufi Sheikh Farid. The Qur'anic principle remains: 'There is no compulsion in religion. The right direction is henceforth distinct from error. And he who rejecteth false deities and believeth in Allah hath grasped a firm handhold which will never break. Allah is Hearer, Knower.' (2:256, Pickthall); and to each community 'For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way.' (5:48, Pickthall).
Without religion
Non-religious readers often see this page's pattern as a human one: people in many places, under the same sky, reaching for the biggest idea they can hold. They also point out that not every great tradition has a Creator at all. Buddhism, followed by about 270,000 people in England and Wales in 2021, teaches a path to freedom from suffering without a creator God. And India's own history includes the Charvaka school, among the oldest recorded voices that denied any creator and trusted only what can be perceived.
Many humanists find common ground here in practice rather than belief: the langar's food for anyone who comes, the Golden Rule, the welcome at a mandir door. Humanists UK describes humanists as people who make their ethical choices through reason and empathy. That is a language, they say, in which every tradition on this page can meet.
Sikhi
“One Creator. Truth is the Name. Maker of all. Without fear. Without hatred. Timeless in form. Unborn. Self-existent. Known by the Guru’s grace.”
Mool Mantar, Guru Granth Sahib, ang 1 · our rendering
Sikhs call their path Sikhi, from sikh, ‘learner’. It begins with Guru Nanak (1469–1539). Sikh tradition tells that around 1499 he vanished into the river Vein near Sultanpur for three days, and came out saying, “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.” Sikhs hold the Mool Mantar (also spelt Mul Mantar), the ‘root verse’, to be the heart of his teaching. It opens the Guru Granth Sahib with Ik Oankar: there is one Creator, present in all creation and beyond it.
Sikhs often call God Waheguru, ‘Wondrous Lord’, and remember God through naam simran, meditating on the Name. The Guru Granth Sahib holds hymns by six of the ten Gurus and by saints from Hindu and Muslim backgrounds, among them Kabir, Ravidas, Namdev and Sheikh Farid. In 1708 Guru Gobind Singh declared the scripture itself the eternal Guru. In every gurdwara it is carried, covered and read with the honour due to a living teacher.
Faith is lived through three pillars: naam japna, remembering God; kirat karni, honest work; and vand chhakna, sharing with others. Every gurdwara's langar, a free kitchen where everyone sits together as equals, makes the sharing visible. Tradition credits Mata Khivi, wife of the second Guru, with shaping it. Guru Nanak asked why anyone would call woman inferior, when kings are born of her (Asa di Var, Guru Granth Sahib, ang 473).
Hindu traditions
“Truth is one; the wise speak of it in many ways.”
Rigveda 1.164.46 · our rendering
Many Hindus prefer to call their tradition Sanatana Dharma, ‘the eternal way’, and point out that it has no single founder or single book. At its heart, for many, is Brahman: the one Supreme Reality, infinite being, consciousness and bliss (sat-chit-ananda, ‘being, awareness, joy’). Brahman is also the deepest self in every living thing, the atman. “Tat tvam asi”, ‘that you are’, says a famous teaching of the Chandogya Upanishad (6.8.7).
Brahman is worshipped in many forms. A Vaishnava family may pray to Vishnu as Krishna or Rama; a Shaiva family to Shiva; a Shakta family to the Goddess, Devi, as Durga or Lakshmi. Many Hindus say these are faces of the one Lord. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that whatever form a devotee worships with faith, he makes that faith steady (7.21). Others, following Shankara's Advaita, say Brahman alone is real and every form points beyond itself.
Practice brings it home: puja at a home shrine with a lamp and flowers, the sacred syllable Om, and festivals such as Diwali, when lamps celebrate light over darkness. Women saints are among the best loved: Mirabai, the sixteenth-century Rajput princess who left palace life to sing to Krishna, and Andal, the Tamil poet-saint. In Britain, mandirs such as the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden, London, opened in 1995, welcome visitors of every faith and none.
Same and different
Jews, Christians and Muslims each hold that the Creator has not been absent from any people. Each has a scriptural figure for it: Melchizedek, the altar to the unknown god, the warner sent to every nation. They also hold firmly to their own revelation and do not treat all faiths as the same. The traditions on this page would say the same about themselves. Sikhs hold to the Gurus' word in the Guru Granth Sahib; many Hindus hold that one Reality is approached by many paths; Zoroastrians keep the Wise Lord's hymns. Here the Abrahamic faiths are the ones that stand out, for drawing firm lines around one final revelation each. The respectful course is to let each speak, notice what echoes, and resist the urge to claim anyone else's story as secretly our own.
A moment to reflect
- Have you ever heard someone from a very different background describe God, or the world, in words that felt familiar?
- Which matters more to you: the similarities between faiths, or the differences? Why?
- How would you feel if someone described your faith, or your lack of one, as 'really' a version of theirs?
- Zarathustra answered his own questions with praise. What questions about the world lead you to wonder?
Watch
Sikh teachers explain the Mul Mantar line by line, in their own words.
A clear introduction to Brahman and other core ideas in Hindu thought.
A short history of Zarathustra, Ahura Mazda and the Zoroastrian faith.
A religious-studies scholar asks whether Akhenaten really was the first monotheist.
An animated overview of five world religions, good for a first conversation.
Do it together
Many gurdwaras serve free langar meals to anyone, and many mandirs welcome visitors. Book a group visit, ask what visitors should wear, and ask your hosts how they describe God.
Invite people from different traditions to bring one short line from their scripture about God or creation, read it aloud and say what it means to them. Others listen and ask one question each.
Read Zarathustra's questions from Yasna 44 under the night sky. Write your own list of 'Who...?' questions about the world, then talk about which ones science answers and which it does not.
At the autumn festival of Sukkot, Jewish families eat in a sukkah, a leafy hut open to the sky, and symbolically welcome ancestral guests, the ushpizin, from Abraham onwards. Many invite living neighbours too. Ask a synagogue or Jewish friend if you may visit, and bring guests from a gurdwara or mandir.
Pair a church harvest festival with a neighbour's harvest: Vaisakhi in the gurdwara in April, or Pongal in a Tamil Hindu family in January. Share food and one line of thanksgiving from each tradition.
Go deeper
- Guru Granth Sahib, ang 1 (Mul Mantar) · scripture
- Yasna 44 (Mills translation) · scripture
- Brahman (Encyclopaedia Britannica) · article
- Akhenaten (Encyclopaedia Britannica) · article
- Nostra Aetate (Vatican) · article
- Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 (ONS) · article
- Genesis 14, Melchizedek (Sefaria) · scripture
- Acts 17 (Bible Gateway, WEB) · scripture
- BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, London · place
Sources (8)
- Mul Mantar text: Guru Granth Sahib ang 1 (SikhiToTheMax)
- Hindu 1.0 million and Zoroastrian 4,000 in England and Wales, 2021: ONS, Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021
- Rigveda 1.164.46 'ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti': Rigveda, Griffith translation 1896
- Yasna 44 questions to Ahura Mazda: Avesta, Yasna 44, tr. L. H. Mills (1887)
- Akhenaten, Aten worship, royal intermediaries, reversal after his death: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Akhenaten'
- Brahman, Advaita and theistic Vedanta schools: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Brahman'
- Nostra Aetate: rejects nothing true and holy: Second Vatican Council, 1965
- Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe founded 1861: ZTFE, About