33. Religion in Faith (1)

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The Qur’an is extremely hard – impossible, I would say – to wrap up into a comprehensive and consistent system. (I consider that a positive feature, by the way.) It is certainly harder than most of its readers realize, given that they in almost all cases approach it through the thick and comforting filter of their religion, culture, or personal experience. Everything I have quoted thus far from the canonical literature can be and usually is interpreted to equate faith with Islam and believers with Muslims. That is why I deliberately left out Muslims from the nine scenarios in Chapter 31.

In all nine cases, the chance that those characters would encounter Islam or become Muslim in the culturally specific and conventional sense of the word today was practically zero. You, the reader, or I, the author, could easily have been one of those individuals – someone with no practical opportunity to absorb a particular set of Islamic doctrines or be exposed to the actual text of the Qur’an. Yet those imaginary persons, like billions of Adam’s progeny since the beginning of time, experienced a crisis in their relation to the Absolute that no true account of faith can afford to ignore. In other words, if your version of faith automatically excludes such persons, that version is, for me, incomprehensibly unfair and unworthy of respect.

We must, and do, find in the Qur’an a faith that encompasses the entirety of human experience, one that is powerful enough to both go beyond religion and nonetheless highly supportive of those who express their faith through religion. Faith is in GOD, and GOD’s Domain, notwithstanding its limitless scope, is intimately connected to the heart of every human being who has ever lived, and established there a primal citizenship of perfect equality, obtained solely by faith. Nothing but faith makes all of us – rich and poor, competent and feeble, old and young, clever and naïve – completely equal. (The faith of infants and children, for example, though in one sense undeveloped, could turn out to be greater than that of adults.) It is only fair, therefore, that all humans, without exception, should have equal access to it. GOD’s Justice demands it, and so do I.

AL-LAH is the GOD of all and, as the verse above declares, He brings us all together in the end. Those who, despite their better natures, exclude Him from their vacuous versions of reality incur penalties – penalties that are ultimately obliterated by His Greater Mercy. I unleash My punishment on whom I will. And My compassion comprehends all things. (Q7:156) In His Decisions we find total ethical justice, the basis of which is recognized by all religions and the non-religious alike:

Indeed, the closer you are to the truth, the greater the punishment if you should neglect or oppose it, as I explained in Chapter 23 regarding this verse: AL-LAH said, “Truly I shall send it down to you. Then as for him who disbelieves among you afterwards, I shall inflict a punishment with which I will not punish any other [living being] of the worlds.” (Q5:115)

It is the current state of one’s heart that counts in the end, and not one’s external advantages, such as membership in a particular group, or even previous God-given favours. “Verily AL-LAH does not attend to your physiques or your appearances, but pays attention to your hearts.”

In an age when parochialism and nationalism are on the rise, and religion is too often seen as the possession of particular ethnicities, cultures, or sects, we need constantly to be reminded that faith and religion are not the same. Faith, when rightly understood, is inclusive, non-denominational, and affirmative. Given its many negative and exclusive associations, the common conception of religion (which does not adequately capture the meaning of the Qur’anic din) needs to be clearly distinguished from the far more powerful and vibrant delineation of faith (iman) in the Qur’an, as in the following verses:

The desert Arabs say, “We have believed.” Say, “You do not believe, but say, instead, ‘We have submitted;’ faith has not yet come into your hearts.” (Q49:15)

Notice here, and in similar verses (Q22:17 and Q2:62), that the believers are not identified as Muslims. There are, moreover, verses in the Qur’an that specifically identify believers from among the People of the Book, such as (Q3:113-115):

Those who have believed in GOD and in the Final Day and acted righteously do not constitute a sectarian group per se, so we can say that faith is not confined to a particular religion. How, then, do we make sense of the following?

Do these verses not contradict the assertion that faith transcends religion?

To be quite clear, AL-LAH does not say that the only faith He will accept is that of Muslims. On the contrary, He affirms that

Rather, insofar as you approach GOD with a religion – an organized way of life, with its doctrines and practices – then it should be Submission, i.e. Islam. This is now, as of Today, the only acceptable expression of faith in religious terms. But that criterion by itself does not negate one’s faith.

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