Faith is very important in Islam, and in all religion for that matter, but unfortunately we today understand very little about it. In this article “What is Imaan Or Faith’ we look at the extensive teachings of the Holy Prophet Muhammad PBUH to learn more about faith.
With the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Ever Merciful,
The importance of Faith
The most important thing in Islam is to have ‘Imaan’ ‘Emaan’ (faith) because this singular aspect is what will grant us success in this life and the hereafter. Just to show how important this is: When one becomes a Muslim, then the first thing he has to do is to recite the “kalima Shahada” which is saying the first article of faith, “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is His Messenger.”
”It is only those who believe and have not polluted their faith with associating partners with Allah, to whom belongs peace (and salvation). It is these alone who are rightly guided.” Al Quran 6:82.
The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, said:
“that Allah has prohibited from the fire of hell for anyone bearing witness that there is no deity but Allah and Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah with a SINCERE BELIEF in his heart.” Al Hadith 1:1:2:21.
Belief has to be sincere and not just lip service. So, the bottom line is, we must strive towards having sincere faith because it is this, that would grant us ultimate success in this world and the hereafter. In this theme article, of the 2021 KZN Juloos Meelad un Nabi, we explore this all important aspect of “imaan” (faith)
Is a Muslim a believer (ie. Does he have faith)?
A Muslim is not necessarily a believer. A Muslim is he who follows and accepts Islam as his religion. Simply declaring the articles of faith, practising the five pillars and accepting the religion as our own does not make us true believers. These are all outer actions (‘zahir’), which, if done properly leads towards faith which is about how we are inside (‘batin’)
“The Bedouins say: “We believe.” Say: “You have not (yet) believed, but say, `We have submitted (in Islam),’ for faith has not yet entered your hearts. And if you obey Allah and His Messenger (SAW), He will not decrease anything in reward for your deeds. Indeed Allah is Forgiving, Most Merciful.” Al Quran 49:14
In the Holy Quran there are also verses which use Muslims and “Mo’min” (believers) back to back proving that they are different. In studying Islamic teachings further one would notice that there are different levels to faith. The Holy scriptures talks about a person as having an atoms amount of faith. Faith is therefore something that we have to grow and develop within our beings.
The Soul and ‘imaan’ or faith?
Having ‘imaan’ or faith is to firmly believe in a Supreme Being, God, Who is one and Who has created us and everything else around us.
Saying we believe in God is not good enough, even praying five times a day ritualistically is not good enough. We have to grow ourselves to believe in God from the bottom of our hearts and we have to live every aspect of our lives according to this statement. Believing in God is difficult because God is beyond our normal sensory perception of sight and touch. God, in His essence, is not made up of anything we know; He has no shape or form. Although He is always present to all of us and although He is always ever ready to communicate with us, we normal human beings, do not have the ability to communicate with Him from our side. This is because His way of communication is not like the way we speak or by words but it is by revelation (wahie) and inspiration (ilhaam) which our souls feel and understand. This communication is something we have to learn by developing or purifying our souls so that we can interpret His messages.
“By the (human) soul, (that Allah has made) perfect, and its inspiration as to what is wrong and right, truly he succeeds that purifies it, and he fails that corrupts it.” Al Quran 91:7
Our Spiritual Guide, Dr. Hakim Hazrath Khawaja Sayed Shareef Ahmed Ali Shah RA (Hazrath Poona Wale Shah Saib RA) has said: “strive to recognize yourself and life, then your Creator you will come to know.” So let’s try to understand ourselves so that we could understand faith.
We have a brain or a mind which controls our entire body and it is also responsible for thinking. Also, apart from responding to the information that our brains receives from our five senses, our brains are also influenced by two other things. The first one is our bodily desires or carnal desires or worldly desires and the seat this is in our bellies. Our bodily needs are food, recognition from others, sexual gratification and so forth. If we allow these urges to fully control our minds then we could behave worse than animals, we will give in to greed, hoarding, stealing, murder, corruption, rape, incest, adultery, homosexuality and so forth. This is the seat of evil within us.
The second aspect which influences our thinking and resulting behaviour is our souls who’s seat is in our hearts. Our souls are closely linked to God and its nature is unlike the rest of our physical bodies. It’s not a physical organ like the brain. Think of it as being angelic and it is present with us, or a part of us. So this soul of ours knows about right and wrong and it knows about the hidden realities. Our conscience stems from our souls.
So if we want to know God and develop a strong faith then the primary thing we should strive for is to keep our souls clean and learn to listen to it and NOT to listen to, or follow our carnal desires because our souls know Allah and it would lead us towards Him.
So ‘Imaan’ is about developing our spirituality (our inner beings) so that we could feel and perceive these hidden realities with certainty. Growing our souls is not easy. It means striving against our carnal desires.
“Do you suppose that you would enter Paradise while Allah has not yet distinguished those of you who strive hard…” Al Quran 3:142.
The Hadith of Gibreel AS
Once the angel Gibraeel (AS) came to the Holy Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him, and asked him a few questions so that his companions could learn about Islam. The questions and the answers that the Holy Prophet Salallahu Alayhe Wasallam gave are as follows:
1) Inform me about Islam? The Holy Prophet Salallahu Alayhe Wasallam replied: Islam is – that you attest the first “kalima” (article of faith), perform your 5 daily prayers, give charity, fast and go for hajj. (The five pillars of Islam)
2) Inform me about (faith) Imaan? He replied it is that you believe in Allah, His Angels, His books, His Prophets, The Day of Judgment and “Taqdeer” (predestination).
3) Inform me about Ihsaan? He replied that it is that you serve Allah as if you see Him, and if you do not see Him then He certainly sees you. Mishkaat Al Misabih-chapter on belief.
These three answers denote three different levels. The first is outer actions, the second is about our inner feelings (imaan) and the third is the ultimate goal which is realising God or God consciousness. The first stage, the five pillars, is about being Muslim. The second and third stages are about becoming a believer. The first stage is therefore not the end all of Islam but it is the means to attaining faith and God consciousness which is the ultimate objective.
Note: we must never have pride and think that we are pious believers if we pray five times a day. This is being ritualistic and this complacency diminishes our urge to strive and improve our spirituality.
Developing Faith.The three main steps:
So how do we go about realising God to make Him a certainty in our hearts?
Firstly: we must have a sincere desire to want to know God and to serve Him. We must make this our priority and the main goal of our life. We must strive towards this and no matter what sacrifices we have to make, we must make them to attain this goal. Everything else in our life must be secondary. Learning about God, spirituality and growing our souls is far more important than having good times or developing our minds and worldly abilities because our bodies and thinking abilities will diminish and come to an end, but our souls will continue living. “Every soul is destined to taste death. …” Al Quran 3:185. Our souls will only taste death. It does not die but it will live eternally. We have to develop it so that it will live well in the hereafter, which is the next phase of our lives and when we do this then we become the best of creation that God has destined us to be. Becoming spiritually enlightened is the most important part of our growth and if we do not do this we will be incompetent and dysfunctional in the next phase of our lives. Therefore learning about God and spirituality is the ultimate in everything we can do.
Secondly: keep steadfast to the five pillars and do them sincerely with understanding and consciousness so that we could attain faith and God Consciousness. Practicing the five pillars must not be a mere ritual but it must be a step that leads us to realising and growing our spirituality and faith. It must stimulate us, make us think and broaden our horizons.
Thirdly: we are going to face a whole lot of distractions which will stem from our carnal desires. Consider: why, when we are praying, we think of everything else but God? This is because our carnal or worldly desires is distracting us. We have to control these desires and finally kill them. Then only will we be able to pray without being distracted by our carnal desires.
Faith in everything we do.
Having faith impacts everything we do and by doing everything in an Islamic manner we will improve on our faith. There are many traditions that shed light on this and we will discuss some of it under different headings. God willing.
Idol Worship: At the outset we must not pray to idols or historical figures, no matter how great or pious they are. We must not pray to any creation, such as the sun no matter how beneficial it is to us. God, in His essence, is beyond and greater than all of this. These are all, only His creations.
Submission: God, however directs us to certain people and physical things which He has made sacred, such as the Holy Kaabah, the Holy Quraan and most importantly, to the people around us, especially His Holy people, such as the prophets and saints. Allah SWT has always communicated to humanity through His Messengers because these people have developed themselves spiritually and are able to communicate with Allah SWT. They are the masters in spirituality and they are the ones that will teach us about spirituality and lead us towards God.
Islam teaches us to love, respect and pay attention to these people for the sake of God. The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, has said:
“you will not believe until you love me more than your parent, your children and the whole of mankind”.
Following righteous people, for the sake of God is mentioned in the most important chapter of the Holy Quran, surah Al Fatiha. The outcome of our prayer should be finding such people. These are the people that teach spirituality (faith) and these are the people we should follow if we want to learn about spirituality (tasawaff). Our Pir o Murshid RA said that it is ‘fard ul Ain’ (a very important compulsory duty) to take ‘baith’ (become a disciple of a saint) and sincerely follow his teachings so as to learn about spirituality.
“(O Prophet!) Those who swear allegiance (baith) to you as a matter of fact swear allegiance to Allah. Allah’s (helpful and benign) hand is above their hands….” Al Quran 48:10
Islam means submission and we are taught to submit by many different ways.
Children, no matter how big we are, we must respect our parents and elders, wives must listen to and follow the lead of the husband, employees must respect and listen to the employer, children must respect and obey their teachers, younger siblings must respect and obey elder siblings, and most importantly, as we said before, everyone must follow the Caliph or their Spiritual Guide (pir o Murshid).
Our carnal/worldly desires does not like us to follow others because we all want to be the boss and have our own way. We need to overcome this rebellion stemming from our carnal desires and make ourselves follow others for the sake of Allah because these are His commands. Learning or practicing to submit to people, especially the spiritual guide, in essence leads to submission to God (faith).
The Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, has said with regards to following:
“the BELIEVERS are humble and modest like the nose stringed camel which, if led, walks and if made to halt over a rock, halts.” Al Hadith 1:1:3:57.
The rock is symbolic of difficulty. We have to follow even if it’s difficult for us.
Caution: there are many out there that will misguide. That is why we have to pray sincerely to Allah SWT to guide us (surah Al Fatiha) and He will lead us to the right people and save us from those that mislead.
- Pride:
The Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, has said that I do not fear that you would worship idols and so forth, but I fear
“that you would do Devine service (pray) for show.” Al Hadith 1:4:9:137w.
This wanting to be recogised stems from our carnal desires and it amounts to self worship.
So we could even use prayer for the wrong reasons, as a means of establishing ourselves as someone to be looked up to, someone important and someone pious. Note, this is a challenge we will all face when we start to pray and we need to overcome this urge to think that we are pious.
Showing off is having pride. So to show off, especially when it comes to religious knowledge and piety, is going against the very grain of this first belief. This self-seeking glory is something that prevents us from growing and having faith because we will be too preoccupied with ourselves to see the wonder of our Creator. We would never be able to follow Allah’s chosen people.
There are many narrations in the Holy Quraan which depict people with such pride and vanity. The hypocrites in the time of the Holy Prophet SAW were such people that thought and showed themselves out to be outwardly pious but they were inwardly evil.
“Is he, then, to whom the evil of his conduct is made to appear pleasing, so that he looks upon it as good (equal to one who is rightly guided)….” Al Quran 35:8.
Pride equates to the opposite of having faith and it is what Allah dislikes the most and He will punish the proud.
“`…. Evil indeed is the abode of those whose hearts are full of vanity and pride.” Al Quran 16:29.
Our carnal desires wants us to be self centred, it urges us to impress others with our religious knowledge, piety and to a lesser degree, our beauty or belongings or accomplishments. All this is serving our egos and having pride. We have to overcome our carnal desires and not want praises.
The Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, has said in this regards:
“none of you BELIEVES till he makes his passions follow what I have been commissioned with” Al Hadith 1:1:2:10w.
So, its important to become people that are not seeking positions or praises but rather people that can listen, follow and submit. We must accept that Allah will choose whom He pleases for His service and we must support and follow such people.
The Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, has warned that to realise that we are doing things to seek recognition is very difficult, almost impossible, so we need to be on guard, we need to constantly ponder and think about why we do good deeds or talk religion. Only a spiritual guide can help in this department. On a higher level, to even think that we are special is wrong.
The solution is not to show off: He also advised us to pray at night in solitude without telling anyone about this and to give charity in such a way that the left hand does not know what the right hand gives. No one must know about our piety. It’s between us and Allah. Hiding our piety is also one aspect of modesty and the Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, has said:
“…and modesty is a part of FAITH.” Al Hadith 1:1:2:12
Love For Others
If we want to have faith then we have to sincerely care for others and grow bonds of love. Our parents, our spouses, our children, our siblings, our neighbors; these are all people that we must be good to so that we can develop bonds of love.
“You will not believe till you love one another. The way to grow this love is by greeting one another” Al Hadith 1:3:4:620.
Abondoning parents and divorce shows a lack of caring for others and we must careful not to do this.
Independance:
We must not depend on or have pride in our knowledge, wealth, strength and abilities to fulfil our needs but we must depend primarily on Allah alone to fulfil our needs. This is having faith. We must do what we need to do but never take credit and have pride in what we achieve because it is Allah who has given us life, strength and opportunity to achieve our needs and He could take it all away in the blink of an eye. By thinking we achieved it on our own, is denying Allah.
For The sake Of God:
If we want to have faith in Allah then we must not be distracted by wealth, entertainment, spouses, children or any other allurement of this world by making these things the sole focus of our life, a sort of god. Attention belongs to God only and those that are sincerely devoted to His service.
All this does not mean that we should not work or not be good to our families or not love our spouses or not have good times. We need to do all this but it must not be the end all. Our ultimate object must be to please God and we must do all of these things on the basis, that we do it, to please God.
The Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, has said:
“whoever loves for Allah, hates for Allah, gives charity for Allah, and withholds for Allah has indeed perfected FAITH” Al Hadith 1:1:2:26.
Having faith is about doing everything for the sake of Allah.
Conscoiousness:
Maintaining a sense of consciousness over what is right and what is wrong is a part of faith. The Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, once, when asked, what is faith, he replied:
“when your good works gives you pleasure and you evil works grieves you, you are then a man of FAITH.” Al Hadith 1:1:3:2w
We are all human and we will all make mistakes or sin but we must never become complacent about the wrong we do. We must never overlook the wrong we do. Instead it must hurt us, we must feel guilty about it, we must repent and ask God to help us to stop doing wrong. No matter how long or how many times we do the same wrong we must never condone it. We must never lose hope either of not overcoming the wrong we do.
If we are not particular about right and wrong then we will eventually become people that cannot differentiate and we might even end up being people who would strive to make wrong right. This is losing contact with our souls and giving in to evil totally.
Remember, the first step is to correct the wrong we do and then try to correct those around us.
Striving For Truth:
The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, has said:
“A BELIEVER may have defects, the whole of them, except breach of trust and falsehood.” Al Hadith 1:1:3:13w.
So we must always try to speak the truth. When we are truthful outwardly then we would be able to be truthful inwardly and we would be able to recognize the truth. If we are entrusted with something then we must fulfil the trust. If we instil this quality in us then we would be able to fulfil what Allah SWT has entrusted us with, which is, the soul so as to become His best creation.
Fear:
We should not fear poverty, death or other people in life because we trust that Allah alone will determine all our affairs. We have to stand up for truth and justice and not overlook the wrong we do or the wrong our loved ones do. We have to try to put things right irrespective of the consequences. The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, has said that a strong believer strives to put things right with his hands. A lesser degree of faith is to talk about the wrong and the least is to think that it is wrong.
Prayer:
We depend on nobody else but Allah for guidance in all our affairs. This is a prayer that we are taught to make most often in the form of Surah AL Fatiha in every rakaat of every prayer. We have to know what Surah Al Fatiha means and we have to read it sincerely and conscious of the fact that Allah is listening to us. We have to inculcate this trust in Allah (tawakkal) that He hears our prayers and He will surely guide us.
However, Allah SWT is going to guide us through His chosen people such as the Prophets and the Saints (aulia Allah)
The Uphill Path:
Following the right path, so as to attain faith, is not easy while the wrong path is easy and attractive to our carnal desires. The wrong path is glitzy and glamorous giving us temporary joy. However what is important is the end result. Following the wrong path will eventually, in the long term, lead to pain and suffering in this world and the hereafter. As an example: If we are attracted to the world and use devious means to acquire wealth then we would enjoy all the material comforts initially but we would never know contentment because we did not learn to control our greed. One can never be happy without contentment.
Benefits Of The First Article Of Faith.
From all of this, what comes to light, is that this, first belief of ours is truly liberating. It liberates us from our greed, fears, compulsions, prejudices and self-idolization. It rids us of pride and vanity.
It teaches us to look beyond the glitz and glamor of this physical world and this results in wisdom and enlightenment.
When we shape our character and behaviour according to this testimony then we would bloom or grow to become true servants of Allah. We would want nothing for ourselves and we would become absolutely nothing in front of our Creator. When we do this, Insha-Allah, then we would understand ourselves and the purpose of life better and finally we would experience and get to know Allah intimately. This is the ultimate achievement.
A true servant of God is not like the servants of this world. They are in reality, masters of themselves and their surroundings. The whole world would be like a mustard seed in the palms of their hand.
God and His attributes.
There is only one God who has no parents, siblings, offspring or partners. He is supreme in all aspects. He has created the entire universe and all that exists simply by the command ‘be’ and it came into being. The One God (Allah) is free from all needs and wants. He has no beginning nor an end. He creates everything from absolutely nothing.
He knows and sees every little thing, even our deepest thoughts. Nothing happens, not even a leaf falling, except by His leave.
Allah’s greatest attribute is His Mercy. He loves and cares for all His creation and He wants us to be successful. He is ever ready to forgive. Take that step towards Him and He would take ten towards you. Inshallah.
Peace and salutations be upon the Holy Prophet Muhammad Salallahu Alayhe Wasallam. Ameen.
Published by Anjuman e Waris e Mohammedi.
Anjuman e Waris e Mohammedi was founded by Dr/Hakim Hazrath Khwaja Sayed Shareef Ahmed Ali Shah RA, (lovingly known as Hazrath Poona Wale Shah Saib RA).
Author: Mohammed Hassan Gaffoor Contact him on WhatsApp +27849101486
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