Encyclopaedia of Islam

What is “to believe”? The schools of ʿilm al-kalām and of fiḳh very soon posed this question and continually returned to it. Three principal elements concur in an act of faith: the internal conviction, the verbal expression, the performance of the prescribed works ( iʿtiḳād [or taṣdīḳ] bi 'l-ḳalb, iḳrār bi 'l-lisān [or ḳawl], ʿamal ). There follow now the main solutions, which sometimes overlap, but according to different perspectives. It should be added that each term of the definitions proposed must be considered in relation to the schools or tendencies which use it, and to their ideas.

(1) The As̲h̲ʿarī school stresses conviction or internal judgement. We find in As̲h̲ʿarī himself two ideas of faith: (a) that of the credos of the Ibāna (Cairo ed. 1348, 11) and of the Maḳālāt (ed. ʿAbd Ḥamīd, Cairo n.d., i, 327), which defines faith (in the Ḥanbalī tradition) as “words (ḳawl) and works”; (b) that of the Lumaʿ (ed. with Engl. tr. by R. J. McCarthy, The Theology of al-Ashʿarī, Beirut 1953, 75/104) which states: “faith is taṣdīḳ in God”, taṣdīḳ being understood as an internal judgement of truthfulness, which gives its adherence to God. The vocabulary may vary, G̲h̲azālī will speak of ʿaḳd , “pact”, agreement of the heart, and Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ānī (Taʿrīfāt, ed. Flügel, Leipzig 1845, 41) prefers iʿtiḳād ; but the school as a whole considers the “pillar”, the formal constituent of faith, to be the conviction of the heart (or of the intellect, ʿaḳl ): the verbal profession of this is, unless it is impossible, the condition required, and the “actions of the limbs” (the accomplishment of the prescribed works) inter-vene to perfect it. When therefore the electicism of G̲h̲azālī ( Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn , Cairo ed. 1325/1933, i, 103) unites the three elements to define faith as taṣdīḳ (or ʿaḳd ), plus ḳawl, plus ʿamal , it cannot be said that he is diverging from As̲h̲ʿarī tradition.

(2) In the Ḥanafī-Māturīdī tendencies, the stress moves from iʿtiḳād to ḳawl, without omitting taṣdīḳ and joining to it the “knowledge of the heart ( maʿrifa )”. “Faith”, says article 1 of the Waṣiyyat Abī Ḥanīfa , “is confession ( iḳrār ) by the tongue, internal conviction (taṣdīḳ bi-'l-d̲j̲anān) and knowledge of the heart (wa-maʿrifa bi 'l-ḳalb)”. More briefly, the Fiḳh Akbar II (article 18) states: “faith is iḳrār and taṣdīḳ”. The profession of faith expressed in words (as it is formulated, essentially, by the “two members of the s̲h̲ahāda ”) thus appears here as the constituent of the act of faith: and the conviction which is given to it becomes the condition of it. In some manuscripts of the Waṣiyya, sometimes taṣdīḳ and more often maʿrifa are missing. It remains that an appeal to the “knowledge of the heart” is characteristic of the Ḥanafī-Māturīdī tendencies. In his Maḳālāt al-Islāmiyyīn, As̲h̲ʿarī saw in it even the first of the elements of faith according to Abū Ḥanīfa. As Wensinck points out (The Muslim creed , Cambridge 1932, 132), it is possible that there is here a certain continuity with the Murd̲j̲iʾī definition of faith, which considered it to consist in the knowledge of God, of the Prophet and of his teaching. The Maḳālāt (i, 197-8) mention in this connexion Ḏj̲ahm b. Ṣafwān and the Ḏj̲ahmiyya. As̲h̲ʿarī describes the Ḥanīfiyya as a Murd̲j̲iʾī sect (ibid., 202), while recognizing that they (unlike the Ḏj̲ahmiyya) include in faith iḳrār with—and after— maʿrifa (ibid., 203). However, the brief article of the Fiḳh Akbar II, mentioning only the verbal confession and internal conviction, was to be the main theme of the Māturīdī line (e.g., ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Ibn ʿAlī, Kitāb Naẓm al-farāʾid ², Cairo n.d., 49 ff.). It appears that Ḏj̲urd̲j̲ānī, in his Taʿrīfāt (loc. cit.) agreed with this opinion.

(3) As we have seen, various As̲h̲ʿarī texts mention the “works of the limbs” (in contrast to the Murd̲j̲iʾīs, for whom works are only “ways”, s̲h̲arāʾīʿ). They do not exclude them from faith, but do not consider them to be a formal constituent of it, nor even an obligatory condition. An earlier attitude, which was later challenged by Sunnism and in which Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲īs, S̲h̲īʿīs, Ḳadarīs and Muʿtazilīs joined, saw “works” as an integral part of faith, even as faith itself. By ʿamal (and its plural aʿmāl) should be understood the “pillars of Islam” (including the profession of faith), and with them the works prescribed by the Ḳurʾān. If the unrepentant sinner is doomed to hell, this is because, through his acts of “disobedience”, he has abandoned his faith. We need not here study the differences between the Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲īs and the Muʿtazilīs, or the “intermediate state” accorded by the latter to the “believing sinner” [see fāsiḳ ]; we may say in short, for both of them, that “works” are not only the sign or the perfecting of faith, they are themselves faith and acts of faith; but, for the Ḵh̲ārid̲j̲īs, faith and works are interchangeable, whereas, for the Muʿtazilīs, the works are the witness which constitutes faith, itself a witness rendered to God. Thenceforward “faith ( īmān ) and religion ( dīn ) are one single and identical thing”, according to the ḳāḍī ʿAbd al-Ḏj̲abbār ( S̲h̲arḥ uṣūl k̲h̲amsa , ed. ʿAbd Karīm ʿUt̲h̲mān, Cairo 1384/1965, 808). Al-Ḏj̲ubbāʾī and his son Abū Hās̲h̲im defined faith only as the fulfilling of the “prescribed” obediences (ṭāʿāt); but according to Abu 'l-Hud̲h̲ayl al-ʿAllāf, who was followed in this by ʿAbd al-Ḏj̲abbār, the performance of supererogatory works (nawāfil) also formed part of faith (op. cit., 707-8). Deliberately to omit the performance of a prescribed duty is to cease to bear witness to the faith; whereas deliberately to fail to fulfil a secondary commandment is (merely) to tarnish the purity of the witness.

(4) The Ḥanbalī line insists on faith. It is vehemently opposed to the Murd̲j̲iʾīs; and, without making “works” the only pillar of the act of faith, it gives them a place in its definitions. According to Ibn Ḥanbal ( ʿAḳīda , i, 24), “faith consists of words, works, the right intention ( niyya ) and attachment to the Sunna ”. And according to Ibn Baṭṭa, “To believe [in the message of the Prophet] is to state it with the tongue, to adhere to it (taṣdīḳ) with the heart (d̲j̲anān), and to fulfil the pillars of Islam” (cf. H. Laoust, La profession de foi d'Ibn Baṭṭa, text and Fr. tr., Damascus 1958, 47/78). Thus taṣdīḳ is here less “judgement of veracity” than the synonym, to a certain extent, of niyya , the “right intention”. Al-Kālabād̲h̲ī turned this Ḥanbalī list into the “doctrine of the Ṣūfīs”: “faith is word (ḳawl), act ( ʿamal ) and right intention ( niyya )” ( Kitāb al-Taʿarruf, ed. Arberry, Cairo 1352/1933, 51; Eng. tr., Cambridge 1935, 67). However, many Ḥanbalī texts (among them ʿAḳīda II and ʿAḳīda III) prefer to mention only words and works, ḳawl and ʿamal . We find again the same terms as those of the credos of As̲h̲ʿarī (Ibāna and Maḳālāt); and it is thus also that the Wahhābī credo defined faith (cf. Fr. tr. of H. Laoust, apud Doctrines sociales et politiques de Taḳī-d-Dīn Aḥmad b. Taimīya, Cairo 1939, 623). Thus the emphasis is on visible and audible witness. But the witness is valid before God only when it is rooted in the heart. This is the import of the Kitāb al-Īmān of Ibn Taymiyya (Cairo ed. 1325). The Kitāb al-Furḳān repeats the main argument of it (apud Mad̲j̲mūʿat al-rasāʾil al-kubrā, Cairo 1328, i, 28). Faith must not only be expressed by words and by “the works of the limbs”, but it should arouse in the heart of the believer the virtues of the fear of God (k̲h̲awf), of submission to God ( tawakkul ), of humility (d̲h̲ill), and of patient endurance ( ṣabr ). H. Laoust is right in saying, in his summary of these theses, that “la foi, dans la doctrine d'Ibn Taymiyya, est totalitaire” (op. cit., 470).

(5) It is not impossible that Ibn Taymiyya accepted certain influences of the S̲h̲īʿī thought to which in fact he was opposed: but he separated them from their gnostic tendencies, and re-situated them in a Sunnī context. If we refer for example to the moderate Ismāʿīlism of the Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ (Rasāʾil Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ , Cairo 1347/1928, iv, 128-129) we find again the distinction between external ( ẓāhir ) faith and internal ( bāṭin ) faith. The first is verbal affirmation; the second, which is the true faith, is defined as the innermost thoughts of the heart brought to bear, with experienced certainty, upon the truths professed by the tongue. Thus it is no longer a case of iʿtiḳād , firm adherence, or of taṣdīḳ, judgement of veracity, but of the “idea” of intellectual conception ( iḍmār ) which “realizes” the certainty (yaḳīn) of the object of faith (cf. the yaḳīn preached by G̲h̲azālī, who goes so far as to call “the reality of faith” an experienced taste of internal evidence). The following chapters of the Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ combine with this “certainty” the religious sentiments of tawakkul, ik̲h̲lāṣ , ṣabr , etc. (op. cit., iv,129 ff.), according to a procedure which, though starting from different basic ideas, is not without an analogy with the interiorization sought by Ibn Taymiyya.

It was against the Murd̲j̲iʾīs and the Ḏj̲ahmīs that the Ḥanbalī school had insisted on a faith which is expressed: thus affirming that faith is not only knowledge ( maʿrifa ), but must be made alive by the intention ( niyya ) or the adherence (taṣdīḳ) of the heart, and render witness by words and the fulfilment of the prescribed works. Certainly knowledge, understood as the object of faith, is not ignored, but it is not sufficient; knowledge alone, even if experienced, does not constitute faith, but faith implies a certain knowledge: the distinction is established between the act of faith and its content. “Faith in God”, says Ibn Baṭṭa (cf. H. Laoust, op. cit., 47/77-8), “is to give one's adherence to all that God has said, to all that He has ordered, to all the duties which He has prescribed, to all the prohibitions which He has laid down, to all which He instructed His prophets to transmit, to all that He has revealed in His books”. It may be said more briefly that the content of faith is the Ḳurʾān itself, summed up in the “two limbs of the s̲h̲ahāda ”: the Unity of God and the mission of Muḥammad, the Prophet of God.

The manuals often distinguish between “the necessary beliefs”, and those which a man may ignore without ceasing to be a Muslim. It is readily stated that the “essential beliefs” are listed in the famous verse of the Ḳurʾān (II, 285, tr. Arberry): “The Messenger believes in what was sent down to him from his Lord, and the believers; each one believes in God and His angels, and in His books and His Messengers” (and “in the Last Day”, LX, 6). A no less famous ḥadīt̲h̲ repeats: “Faith is that thou shouldst believe in God, in his angels, in the future life, in the prophets, in the resurrection” (cf. the ḥadīt̲h̲ known as that “of Gabriel”, Buk̲h̲ārī, Īmān , 37). Another, often quoted, adds: “and that thou shouldst believe in the divine Decree for good and evil, the sweet and the bitter”; and a third: “The Prophet said: man has not faith unless he believes in four things: unless he bears witness that there is no divinity but God; that I am the messenger of God charged to teach the truth; unless he believes in the resurrection after death; and believes in the divine decree for good and evil, for the sweet and the bitter”.

The precise list of the essential beliefs varies somewhat according to the schools, and sometimes the authors. It always refers however, in essentials, to the Ḳurʾānic verse and the three ḥadīt̲h̲ s quoted above.

It should also be noted that the essential content of the S̲h̲īʿī conception of faith remains close to that of the Sunnī concept. There are added to it some points of doctrine peculiar to S̲h̲īʿism, and, especially in Ismāʿīlism, an interpretation of the nature of angels and of prophecy conforming to a emanatist and monist view of the order of the world (cf. Rasāʾil Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ , iv, 129).

There should be mentioned three problems.

Very many related questions are raised by the consideration of faith. We give here a list which is not exhaustive: (1) the “status” ( ḥukm ) of muʾmin in this world and the next; (2) the relation between faith and unbelief (kufr); (3) the relation between īmān and islām ; (4) may a person “hide” his faith? (the problem of taḳiyya ); (5) should the proviso “if it pleases God” be added to the statement “I am a believer”? (6) can faith increase and decrease? (7) the degrees of faith. (Cf. L. Gardet, Les grands problèmes de la théologie musulmane: Dieu et la destinée de l'homme, Paris 1967, 308-90.) The first five questions will be treated in the articles muʾmin , kufr, islām , taḳiyya, in s̲h̲āʾ allāh , respectively. We discuss here only the last two.