The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

faith

In the Qur’an, faith (īmān) and its antithesis, unbelief (kufr), denote two radically opposed moral categories. Faith leads the believer to perform good works continually in this world and to receive a blessed existence in paradise in the next, while its opposite leads the unbeliever to wreak continual havoc and corruption in this world and to suffer hellfire in the hereafter. In fact, the terms most frequently used in the Qur’an to designate the Muslim community, the followers of the Prophet Muhammad’s mission, are al-mu’minūn (the faithful) and alladhīna āmanū (those who have faith) rather than “Muslims,” while those who reject and oppose the Prophet’s mission are kafirs (unbelievers). Faith is the basic condition for membership in the Muslim community, while lack of it excludes one from the community. This idea lies behind a number of key Islamic terms, such as ummahāt al-mu’minīn (the mothers of the believers), which is applied to the wives of the Prophet Muhammad in the Qur’an on the grounds that the Muslims essentially form one family, with the Prophet as their father and his wives as their mothers, the basis of which is faith. Another key term, amīr al-mu’minīn (Commander of the Faithful), a title adopted by the caliphs beginning with ‘Umar b. al-Khattab (r. 634–44), similarly is based on the identification of faith as the central identifying characteristic of the community’s members.

In Islamic tradition, a distinction is often made between having faith (īmān) and being Muslim (islām). In a famous hadith report, the angel Gabriel questions the Prophet about the meaning of the two terms and his response shows that islām is external (ẓāhir) and more general (‘āmm), while faith is internal (bāṭin) and a more specific (khāṣṣ) matter. Islām, outward adherence to the Islamic faith, includes the performance of basic ritual obligations such as praying, fasting, almsgiving, making the pilgrimage, and uttering the creed that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Īmān refers to the inner belief in the one God, His angels, His scriptures, His messengers, the Day of Judgment, and fate, whether good or bad. However, the terms are nearly interchangeable in the Qur’an: “Then We evacuated those of the believers who were there, But We did not find any Muslims there except one house” (53:35–36). In other contexts, the distinction holds: “The desert Arabs say, ‘We believe.’ Say, ‘You have no faith’; but say, ‘We have submitted our wills to God,’ for faith has not yet entered your hearts” (Q. 51:14). Islam, therefore, is the quality of outward adherence to the religion, whereas faith is a matter of complete inner conviction.

The Qur’an upholds the possibility that an apparent believer may lack internal faith. A group among the Prophet’s community in Medina, termed munāfiqūn (hypocrites) or alladhīna fī qulūbihim maraḍ (those who have a disease in their hearts), are described as adhering to Islam outwardly but actively working to undermine it in secret. In later texts, the term ahl al-qiblah (those who pray toward Mecca) is used to designate all ostensible Muslims, including those who harbor concealed heresy or lack of faith. The accusation of unbelief, termed takfīr, is a grave matter in Islamic law, because the apostate is deemed deserving of capital punishment. The outward signs of lack of faith, or heretical beliefs, may be words or deeds. Uttering blasphemies against God, the Prophet Muhammad, other prophets, the sacred books, angels, the Companions of the Prophet, or Islamic doctrines or obligations that were conveyed by the Prophet or appear in the Qur’an and are subject to consensus may reveal that one is actually an unbeliever. Acts such as the desecration of sacred monuments or holy ground produce the same result. Various Muslim groups differed over other Muslims’ status with regard to faith. The Kharijis, in particular the Azariqa and the Najdis, condemned grave sinners and all non-Kharijis as infidels who could be killed, enslaved, or robbed of their possessions with impunity. Other groups, such as the Murji’a, claimed that faith is not determined by deeds and that one could not condemn a grave sinner as an unbeliever, except one who has abandoned prayer altogether, a view that became generally accepted in Sunni Islam. Indeed, popular views held that faith alone, and particularly devotion to the Prophet—and for Shi‘is, to the imams as well—can make up for sins and a poor record of devotions and, through intercession, gain one entrance to paradise.

Creeds detailing the beliefs required of Muslims have been written from the early Islamic centuries until the present, and one of their main functions was to correct or exclude groups considered to hold heretical beliefs. Most jurists required the believer to know the very basic elements of Islamic theology and nothing more, but many theologians required a stronger adherence to complex creeds and wrote long doxographies detailing the beliefs of many Islamic sects, arguing that only one of these was “the saved sect” (al-firqa al-nājiya). Between 833 and 848, the Abbasid caliphs Ma’mun (r. 813–33), Mu‘tasim (r. 833–42), and Wathiq (r. 842–47), in league with Mu‘tazili theologians, initiated the inquisition (miḥna), attempting to enforce public adherence to the doctrine that the Qur’an was created rather than eternal. The Qadiri Creed, publicly promulgated by the Abbasid caliph Qadir (r. 991–1031) and his son and successor Qa’im (r. 1031–75) in the early 11th century, was inspired by traditionalist theologians and condemned Mu‘tazili and Shi‘i views as heretical in an attempt to exclude them from public religious discourse. Other influential Sunni creeds were written by Abu Ja‘far al-Tahawi (d. 933), Abu Hafs ‘Umar b. Muḥammad al-Nasafi (d. 537), Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), and Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Sanunsi (d. 1486).

See also blasphemy; God; theology