Iman and Its Characteristics

It is narrated on the authority of Abu Hurayrah that the Messenger of Allah (May peace be upon him) said: Ask me (about matters pertaining to religion), but they (the Companions of the Holy Prophet) were too overawed out of profound respect for him to ask him (anything). In the meanwhile a man came there, and sat near his knees and said: Messenger of Allah, what al-lslam is? - to which he (the Holy Prophet) replied: You must not associate anything with Allah, and establish prayer, pay the poor-rate (Zakat) and observe (the fasts) of Ramadan. He said : You (have) told the truth. He (again) said: Messenger of Allah, what al-Iman (the faith) is? He (the Holy Prophet) said: That you affirm your faith in Allah, His angels, His Books, His meeting, His Apostles, and that you believe in Resurrection and that you believe in Qadr (Divine Decree) in all its entirety, He (the inquirer) said: You (have) told the truth. He (again) said: Messenger of Allah, what al-Ihsan is? Upon this he (the Holy Prophet) said: (Al-Ihsan implies) that you fear Allah as if you are seeing Him, and though you see Him not, verily He is seeing you. He (the inquirer) said: You(have) told the truth. He (the inquirer) said: When there would be the hour (of Doom)? (Upon this) he (the Holy Prophet said: The one who is being asked about it is no better informed than the inquirer himself.

I, however, narrate some of its signs (and these are):when you see a slave(woman)giving birth to her master - that is one of the signs of (Doom); when you see barefooted, naked, deaf and dumb (ignorant and foolish persons) as the rulers of the earth - that is one of the signs of the Doom. And when you see the shepherds of black camels exult in buildings - that is one of the signs of Doom. The (Doom) is one of the five things (wrapped) in the unseen. No one knows them except Allah.

Then (the Holy Prophet) recited (the following verse): "Verily Allah! With Him alone is the knowledge of the hour and He it is Who sends down the rain and knows that which is in the wombs and no person knows whatsoever he shall earn on morrow and a person knows not in whatsoever land he shall die. Verily Allah is Knowing, Aware”

He (the narrator, Abu Hurayrah) said: Then the person stood up an (made his way). The Messenger of Allah (May peace be upon him) said: Bring him back to me. He was searched for, but they (the Companions of the Holy Prophet) could not find him. The Messenger of Allah (May peace be upon him) thereupon said: He was Gabriel and he wanted to teach you (things pertaining to religion) when you did not ask (them yourselves).

[Muslim, Chapter 2 Book 1, Number 0006]

Tawhid

The concept Tawhid in Islam is about Allah’s True Nature and His Oneness, which we acquired it through the Mercy and Guidance of Allah delivered by His prophets and revealed texts, [1] In order to provide a better understanding of Islamic Tawhid, we have provided a description of Allah and some of His attributes as it appears in a famous, classical text of Islamic knowledge.

The following is an original translation of excerpts from Revival of the Religious Sciences by Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali [2]:

Allah is singular in His essence with no partner, Unique with no equivalent, Absolute, no opposite has He, Alone without peer. He is beginning less without predecessor, perpetual of being without end, singularly sustaining everything without stop. He is not victim to termination or cessation, or to the elapsing of spans or the passing of interims. Rather He is the First and the Last; the Outward and the Inward – and He has knowledge of everything.

He is not a body with form, nor is He a confined or quantifiable substance. He does not resemble bodies in quantifiably or divisibility. Rather He resembles nothing existent, nor does anything existent resemble Him. There is absolutely nothing like Him, nor is He like anything.

No measure confines Him, no space contains Him, no direction encompasses Him, nor do the heavens surround Him.

He is above everything until the farthest reaches of the stars – an above-ness that does not increase His nearness to the heavens; rather He is exalted in degree above the heavens to the same extent that He is exalted in degree above the depths of the earth. Notwithstanding, He is near to all existence, and He is nearer to the bondsman than his jugular vein. His nearness, however, no more resembles the nearness of bodies one to another than His essence resembles the essences of bodies.

He is too sublime that space should encompass Him, as He is too hallowed that time should restrict Him. Rather He was, before He created time and space, and He is now as He was always. He is separate from His creation by His attributes. He is transcendentally holier than to be subject to change and movement. Rather He remains in His qualities of absolute majesty, not subject to abating, and in His qualities of perfection with no need of increase.

He is Living, Almighty, Irresistible, Overpowering; deficiency does not affect Him nor does incapacity. “No slumber can seize Him nor sleep.” [3] Extinction and death do not counteract Him. He is possessed of absolute dominion, sovereignty, and grandeur; to Him is creation and command.

He is matchless in creating and beginning, solitary in causing existence and originating. He creates all beings and their acts, decrees their sustenance and spans. Nothing possible is outside His grasp, and He is never detached from the absolute governing of all affairs. His abilities cannot be enumerated, and His knowledge is boundless.

He knows all things knowable, encompassing all that transpires between the depths of the earths to the ends of the universe. Nothing of an atom’s weight in the earth and the heavens escapes His Knowledge; rather He knows the creeping of a black ant across a soundless stone on a lightless night. He knows the movement of the particles on a windy day. He knows the hidden and what is beyond. He presides over the thoughts of the conscience, the movements of the cerebrations, and the recondite subtleties of the psyche, with a beginningless, eternal Knowledge that has been with Him forever.

He is the willer of all that exists, and He is the director of all that occurs. Nothing occurs in the seen or unseen world, be it minimal or abundant, small or large, good or evil, beneficial or harmful, of belief or disbelief, knowledge or ignorance, triumph or ruin, increase or decrease, obedience or defiance, except by His decree, foreordainment, command, and volition. What He wills is, and what He does not will is not.

A servant has no escape from disobeying Him except through His conferred success and mercy; he has no power to obey Him except through His assistance and will. If all of mankind united together to move or retard a single atom in the universe without His will and volition, they would be unable to do so.

He hears and He sees. No audible thing, however faint, escapes His hearing, and no visible thing, however minute, is hidden from His sight. Distance does not impede His hearing and darkness does not obstruct His seeing. His attributes do not resemble the attributes of the creation to the same extent that His essence does not resemble the essences of creation.

Everything other than Him is an originated thing that He created by His power from nothingness, since He existed in eternity alone and there was nothing whatsoever with Him. He originated creation thereafter as a manifestation of His power and as a realization of His preceding Will, not because He had any need of it.

He is Magnanimous in creating and in imposing obligations upon His creation; He is not compelled to do it by necessity. He is Gracious in beneficence and reform, though not through any need. Munificence and Kindness, Beneficence and Grace are His. He rewards His believing worshipers for their acts of obedience according to generosity and encouragement rather than according to their merit and obligation, for there is no obligation upon Him in any deed towards anyone. Tyranny is inconceivable in Him, for there is no right upon Him towards anyone. [4]

While these are the Islamic beliefs on Allah in written form, it must be noted that a person is not accountable for his intellectual understanding of them, but rather he is responsible for truly incorporating them in his heart. True conviction in Allah’s existence and in His actual relationship with every one of us comes only with His Mercy and Guidance. As such, Muslims ask Allah in every prayer (solah and do’a) for guidance unto His Straight Path.
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Footnotes:
[1] For a more-detailed presentation of these concepts, see Introducing Islam’s “Messengers” and “Revelation” sections respectively.
[2] A famous Islamic jurist, theologian, and sage who died in the beginning of the 6th century after Hijrah (1111 CE).
[3] Surah Al-Baqarah, 2: 255.
[4] This passage was an original translation of excerpts of al-Ghazali’s “Foundations of Belief,” found in Book II of his Revival of the Religious Sciences. A fuller version of the section can be found on the Dartmouth College MSA website.

©IslamOnline

Belief in Scriptures

Description: Why God revealed His message in the form of scriptures, and a brief description of the two of the Scriptures of God: the Bible, and the Qur'an.

Belief in the scriptures revealed by God is the third article of Islamic faith.

Thre are four main reasons for the revelation of scriptures:

(1) The scripture revealed to a prophet is a point of reference to learn the religion and obligations towards God and fellow human beings. God reveals Himself and explains the purpose of human creation through revealed scriptures.

(2) By referring to it, 'disputes and differences between its followers in matter of religious belief and practice or in matters of social practice could be settled.

(3) The scriptures are meant to keep the religion safe from corruption and deterioration, at least for some time after the death of the prophet. At the present time, the Qur'an revealed to our Prophet Muhammad, may the blessing and mercy of God be upon him, is the only scripture to remain safe from corruption.

(4) It is God’s proof against human beings. They are not allowed to oppose or overstep it.

A Muslim firmly believes that divinely revealed books were actually revealed by the Compassionate God to His prophets to guide mankind. The Qur'an is not the only spoken Word of God, but God also spoke to prophets before Prophet Muhammad.

“…and to Moses God spoke directly.” (An-Nisaa', 4:164)

God describes true believers are those who:

“…believe in what has been sent down to you (Muhammad) and what has been sent down before you…” (Al-Baqarah, 2:4)

The most important and central message of all scriptures was to worship God and God alone.

“And we sent never a prophet before you except that we revealed to him, saying, ‘there is no God but I, so worship Me.’” (Al-Anbiyaa', 21:25)

Islam is more inclusive in the holy revelations it affirms than any other heavenly religion in its present form.

Muslims uphold and respect the following scriptures:

(i) The Qur'an itself, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.

(ii) The Torah (Tawrah in Arabic) revealed to the Prophet Moses (different from the Old Testament read today).

(iii) The Gospel (Injeel in Arabic) revealed to Prophet Jesus (different from the New Testament read in churches today).

(iv) The Psalms (Zabur in Arabic) of David.

(v) The Scrolls (Suhuf in Arabic) of Moses and Abraham.

Third, Muslims believe whatever is true in them and has neither been altered or deliberately misconstrued.

Fourth, Islam affirms that God revealed the Quran as a witness over the previous scriptures and confirmation of them, because He says therein:

“And We have sent down to you (O Muhammad) the Book (the Qur'an) in truth, confirming the scripture that came before it and trustworthy in highness and a witness over it (the collection of old scriptures)…” (Al-Maidah, 5:48)

Meaning the Qur'an confirms whatever is true in previous scriptures and rejects whatever alterations and changes human hands have made to them.

Original Scriptures and the Bible

We must distinguish between two matters: the original Torah, Gospel, and Psalms and the present day Bible. The originals were God’s revelation, but the present day Bible does not have the exact original scripture.

No divine scripture exists today in the original language it was revealed in, except the Qur'an. The Bible was not revealed in English. Different books of today’s Bible are at best tertiary translations and different versions exist. These multiple translations were done by people whose knowledge, skill, or honesty is not known. As a result, some bibles are larger than others and have contradictions and internal inconsistencies! No originals exist. The Qur'an, on the other hand, is the only scripture in existence today in its original language and words. Not one letter of the Qur'an has been changed since its revelation. It is internally consistent with no contradictions. It is today as it was revealed 1400 years ago, transmitted by a rock-solid tradition of memorization and writing. Unlike other sacred texts, the entire Qur'an has been memorized by almost every Islamic scholar and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Muslims, generation after generation!

The previous scriptures essentially consist of:

(i) Stories of man’s creation and earlier nations, prophesies of what was to come like signs before the Judgment Day, appearance of new prophets, and other news.

The stories, prophecies, and news in the Bible read in churches and synagogues today are partly true and partly false. These books consist of some translated fragments of the original scripture revealed by God, words of some prophets, mixed with explanations of scholars, errors of scribes, and outright malicious insertions and deletions. Qur'an, the final and trustworthy scripture, helps us sort out fact from fiction. For a Muslim, it is the criterion to judge the truth from the falsehood in these stories. For example, the Bible still contains some clear passages pointing to God’s unity.[1] Also, some prophecies regarding the Prophet Muhammad are found in the Bible as well.[2] Yet, there are passages, even whole books, almost entirely recognized to be forgeries and the handiwork of men.[3]

(ii) Law and rulings, the allowed and prohibited, like the Law of Moses.

If we were to assume the law, that is the lawful and the prohibited, contained in the previous books did not suffer corruption, the Qur'an still abrogates those rulings, it cancels the old law which was suitable for its time and is no longer applicable today. For example, the old laws pertaining to diet, ritual prayer, fasting, inheritance, marriage and divorce have been cancelled (or, in many cases, reaffirmed) by the Islamic Law.

The Holy Qur'an

The Qur'an is different from other scriptures in the following respects:

(1) The Qur'an is miraculous and inimitable. Nothing similar to it can be produced by human beings.

(2) After the Qur'an, no more scriptures will be revealed by God. Just as the Prophet Muhammad is the last prophet, the Qur'an is the last scripture.

(3) God has taken it upon Himself to protect the Qur'an from alteration, to safeguard it from corruption, and to preserve it from distortion. On the other hand, previous scriptures suffered alteration and distortion and do not remain in their originally revealed form.

(4) The Qur'an, for one, confirms early scriptures and, for another, is a trustworthy witness over them.

(5) The Qur'an abrogates them, meaning it cancels the rulings of the previous scriptures and renders them inapplicable. The Law of the old scriptures is no longer applicable; the previous rulings have been abrogated with the new Law of Islam.

[Excerpted from IslamReligion.com, Published on 16 Jan 2006 - Last modified on 01 Jul 2007]____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:
[1] For example the declaration of Moses: “Hear, O Israel The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4) and the announcement of Jesus: “...The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord.” (Mark 12:29).
[2] Refer to (Deuteronomy 18:18), (Deuteronomy 33:1-2), (Isaiah 28:11), (Isaiah 42:1-13), (Habakkuk 3:3), (John 16:13), (John 1:19-21), (Matthew 21:42-43), and more.
[3] For example, refer to books of the Apocrypha.

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