In the name of Allah, Most Beneficent, Most Merciful

The Sin of Disbelief

'Disbelief' is something that comes from the way we think. Indeed all our 'beliefs' are the result of the way we think; the way we weigh the evidence; the way we decide on which course of action to take. Our 'beliefs' are our conclusions. Consequently the 'sin of disbelief' must be equivalent to the sin that causes disbelief i.e. 'Bad thinking'.

Even though it is fairly clear what is meant here, I am generally reluctant to use the word ‘belief’ since it has the sense of something guessed and without foundation. The Islamic word that is most often translated into ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ is imân, which has quite a different connotation:

"Unlike the faith of Christians, the imân of Islam is truth given to the mind, not to man’s credulity. The truths, or prepositions, of imân are not mysteries, stumbling blocks, unknowable and unreasonable but critical and rational. They have been subjected to doubt and emerged from the testing confirmed and established as true. No more pleading on their behalf is necessary. Whoever acknowledges them as true is reasonable; whoever persists in denying or doubting is unreasonable."

[Isma’il Raji al Faruqi, Al Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life, IIIT Publications 1992]

Indeed the Qur’an is full of prescriptions to use the mind and presents many arguments and evidences which I shall cover in due course. This is summarized in the Qur’an in verses such as these:

"Now have come to you from your Lord proofs to open your eyes: if any will see, it will be for (the good of) his own soul; if any will be blind it will be to his own (harm): I am not (here) to watch over your doings."

[The Qur’an 6:104]

Say thou: "This is my way: I do invite unto Allah on evidence clear as the seeing with one's eyes, I and whoever follows me: Glory to Allah! And never will I join gods with Allah!”

[The Qur’an 12:108]

It is also useful to note here that the word usually translated as ‘to disbelieve’ is ‘kafara’. This has the literal meaning of ‘to cover up’ the implication being that those who disbelieve are covering up something; hiding it from themselves and / or others. I will come back to this point later.

In Islam you can only be guilty of the 'sin of disbelief' if the message of Islam has been delivered to you. Bad thinking can only take hold when the evidence and arguments have been clearly presented.

. To follow on to the next stage of this explanation of the sin of disbelief we have to examine what thinking is and how we can go about reaching a workable common starting point on what constitutes good & bad thinking.

What is 'good thinking'? What is 'bad thinking'?

I wish I could answer this in a few simple sentences but it is not so easy. There are many factors that go into good thinking and into bad thinking. As a consequence there are many approaches to explaining it. My approach with this will be to try to establish common ground with the reader and progress from there. Different readers may well accept different levels of common ground. To facilitate this I will try to establish the most basic fundamental common ground. Where there is an easy step where the reader already accepts the conclusions of an argument I will try to add a link so that s/he may skip the relevant material and get on to the next argument.

Before I can start to justify saying that some thinking is good and some thinking is bad it is necessary to find an acceptable definition or explanation of what thinking is:

The basic sources of knowledge: observation and reason, should be considered in terms of processes of thinking: search and inference. The search is an attempt to use our faculties, such as our senses, to identify relevant information; the second is the process of reflecting on what we discover and drawing conclusions through using reasoning. I will use the verb 'to think' in a very general way. Not only is it the process of reflecting on what the senses perceive but it is also an interpreter of the senses. It is quite possible to hear but not to listen. Listening requires that the mind is engaged in interpreting the senses. For the purposes of this explanation I shall consider 'listening' to our senses, to be part of thinking. This is of course only a convenient definition, since certain aspects of listening or seeking information will necessitate action that could not easily be described as thinking.

Thinking can roughly be separated into 2 processes: searching and inferring. These processes are sometimes inextricably interlinked but it is often instructive to see how they can be separated. We search for 'certain objects' and then we make inferences from and about the objects we have found². Our preconceived ideas about what we are searching for may well influence what we find as they may also influence what we infer from those objects. As it stands this definition isn't very useful this is because thinking is essentially a process of exercising free choice. Free choice to reach conclusions and free choice to make decisions about future thinking. Whatever limits I might think I have discovered enabling me to describe thinking more narrowly I can in principle think in another way beyond and outside those limits. (e.g. if I discovered that I tend to make bad decisions because I am biased towards my own ideas, then I can change that). This is very closely related to arguments surrounding free will, which I won’t go into here..

For this reason the study of thinking revolves around understanding how we ought to think. The study of thinking is probably the only academic study where the words good and bad are regularly used as descriptive terms of reality (see below). Secular academic studies such as chemistry and physics are usually considered to be studying how nature works and doesn’t attribute any value to any particular aspect of it. (A possible exception is Physics where some theories are preferred by some people over others because of their aesthetic value) In the study of thinking some thinking is good and some thinking is bad. This leads to a paradox that academics get themselves into, and it is this paradox that I believe lies at the heart of the flaws of current thinking. It is the understanding that says

"It is a fundamental part of good thinking that in reality it is nonsense to talk of good and bad. Reality just is." Or - put another way- “every study should be value neutral - and that is good”. This is a lie and a self-contradiction at the heart of the 'modern' mind and I aim to replace it with the statement:

"Good and bad are determined by what is good thinking and what is bad thinking."

[Perceptive Muslim readers will recognize in this formulation a strong hint towards the hadith that says "All deeds are judged by intention." i.e. a deed is judged good because of its good intention. ]

Revelation

So far we have only dealt with the sin of disbelief in God and with the general framework of the basis of knowledge in terms of good and bad thinking. The sin of disbelief in God is essentially the product of rejecting the effort to do what is morally right. This applies to general actions and in particular to exercising good thinking as it would inevitably lead to belief in God as the ultimate explanation of reality in both the senses of the question "Why?" i.e. "So What?" and "How?".

What makes good thinking is at the core a question of sincerity and when one rejects good thinking one is essentially undergoing self-deception of one form or another. It is not necessary to be intelligent to have good thinking - though good thinking may well lead to greater intelligence. What matters is sincerity; wanting to do what is morally right. Someone who practices good thinking is essentially someone with a clear conscience. Insincerity and self-deception are core to the concept in Islam of the disbeliever. The word used for disbeliever in Islam is "kafir" and has the literal meaning of someone who covers up. I could go into many quotes from the Qur'an of the nature of kafir but I'll leave that to the reader to discover for themselves. What I will quote here is the essentials of belief which apply to all people:

...any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.

Surah 2 Verse 62

This brings in the subject of the last day or judgment day. The need for judgment day can easily be understood once moral teachings are recognized as having real meaning. Moral laws are like physical laws. If I am in a state of self-deception as to the laws of physics I might decide to punch my hand into a concrete wall. It would hurt me a lot but that is the natural law. It is the same way with morals. If I refuse to acknowledge that which is evident to me and I do something to spite it, I am only going to cause harm to myself in the long run. If I deliberately do wrong it is no different from me punching my fist into the concrete I should expect it to hurt and I have no excuse. The difference with morals is that the consequences are sometimes well into the future whereas punching concrete has an immediate consequence.

However, all this only gets us so far. Morals relate to how we should act over such issues as the use of drugs, sexual morals, use of violence etc and this concerns much more that the general principles we have been discussing so far. Morals can be learned to some degree through life's experiences, cultural traditions can get passed on through the generations and sciences can come to some sort of conclusions. However, morals are often considered to be different from descriptions of the physical reality around us and indeed they are. This is the ‘Is / Ought’ problem again. In the earlier pages I have in a way partially bridged this divide by tackling the very categorization: we only have 'Is statements' because we keep to a foundation of good thinking which results in our knowledge. That said, we still don't have a firm basis for deriving morals; we have really only asserted the integral and essential nature of moral intent in the way we observe and think about reality in general. How can we approach, for example, the question of the morality of drinking alcohol? To judge an act to be morally right or wrong, we need to know the ultimate consequences of its effects. This we are in principle not able to do, because such knowledge is beyond our ability to know. We can only know a few of the effects. Morals also are not subject to experimentation as are purely non-living phenomena. We cannot morally justify forcing people to behave in certain ways to see the effects. Indeed any forced behavior cannot be moral because it is not freely chosen. The only real source of legitimate knowledge on this subject is history. History tells us that no culture has ever maintained morality over time without having a strong religious underpinning. This is because the only source of suitably qualified moral teachings is the ultimate cause and explanation of reality, who is therefore all-knowing and the one who knows the ultimate outcomes - Allah.

From this we see that revelation has been the source of moral guidance throughout history. The question that is critical though is to distinguish between genuine revelation and fake. How are we to know what is true revelation from Allah? To answer this I shall return to the concepts described before in the sin of disbelief. To really resolve the ‘Is / Ought’ problem we use the principles of good thinking to analyze the evidence that some scripture claiming to be revelation actually is revelation. First we must consider what kind of evidence would demonstrate the truth of a revelation.

The nature of signs of revelation

The nature of signs that demonstrate a source of revelation from God to humanity have changed over time, but have all been to convince people in accordance to the science of their day. In the time of Moses the science of the day was the trickery of sorcery. To know how to impress people with such things was the highest form of knowledge. Moses was given many miracles but among them were that his staff turned into a snake and that his hand shone bright white. In the time of Jesus the miracles he brought were similarly in tune with the best science of the day - he healed people in miraculous ways. These things were all convincing to the people in the sciences of their day. If you had been healed by Jesus or seen the staff turned into a snake you would have had no reasonable excuse to reject the revelation brought by these people. Another thing has always been critical in sciences thought out history, and that is the prediction of the future which is the basis of the usefulness of all science, indeed this is the common meaning of the word prophet in English.

So where is the evidence of revelation today? What would be the nature of such evidence today, which would be convincing to the sciences around now? For that matter what would be convincing to future scientists?

The nature of the evidence is that of the scripture itself - its meanings its style, its knowledge. It claims to be a text that cannot be explained away: - for many reasons the evidence points to the convincing conclusion that it was not composed by any one person or by any group of people. This is known as the ijaz of the Qur'an.

The Qur'an had a huge impact on the world. It transformed the Arabs from a bunch of warring tribes into leaders of the most powerful empire that had ever existed. It was the reason why the classical Arabic language has been preserved to an extent incomparable to any other classical language. It was a completely new style of literature that had no precedent and has had no text approach its unique poetic prose with powerful meanings. Although it is sometimes hard to put the meanings into English I will attempt to bring some of this across in a discussion on the opening surah of the Qur'an which is a mere seven verses but which is packed with profound meaning. I will also introduce a couple of examples of remarkable subtlety.

To directly appreciate the signs of the Qur'an it is necessary to know Arabic, because only then can you really see the full range of meanings of the words employed. You can then apply your knowledge of reality to those meanings and appreciate more fully the accuracy and eloquence of the text. To the Arabs of the time its power as a text was profound and a few verses were able to transform the lives of people. This occasionally was partly the result of the context and timing of the revelation which gave a clear meaning to the verses sometimes giving accurate predictions of otherwise unexpected events, but often the listener recognised the text as speaking directly to them and from a position of knowing them intimately as only God could have.

It is sometimes said that you cannot simply read the Qur'an, rather you have to answer it - it challenges you directly from a position of completely unquestionable authority. You must answer. Many people who would like to consider themselves balanced and fair minded are unnerved by the text. They simply don't like to be challenged. It is hard to really read it and earnestly seek to understand the meanings without reflecting on what it means for you.

These things await the earnest seeker of truth when they read the Qur'an, however for now, I would like to consider the evidence which I can easily relate to someone who doesn't speak Arabic. This must inevitably depend on my knowledge of Arabic, which is somewhat limited. I have, however, studied some Arabic in the key areas, which I cover in the following pages. The principal evidence of the Qur'an which I aim to present is of remarkably accurate descriptions of phenomena found in the Qur'an which have been discovered only recently many centuries after the Qur'an was written as well as the beginnings of some discoveries in the numerical structures in the Qur'an which have become available since the complete concordance of the Qur'an was first compiled in the middle of this century.

These are part of the perfection of the Qur’an is evidence of the perfection of its author. My knowledge is imperfect and any errors I may make in this are mine alone. The Qur'an makes the powerful and important challenge that if the Qur'an were by other than Allah then there would be much error in it. Indeed if you look at any text contemporary with the Qur'an you will find in it many things which when looking back with hindsight we recognise as errors. It is indeed remarkable that none of these have found their way into the Qur'an. To prove there is no error in the Qur'an would require me to go through the whole Qur'an explaining every verse - even then this doesn't prove it against future discoveries. All I attempt to do here is highlight the remarkably accurate statements and impressive structure in the Qur'an and refute some things that could be mistaken for errors. I leave the rest to you.

When I first thought seriously about becoming a Muslim I made a point of reading the whole Qur'an to see if there was anything which I would find intellectually unacceptable. I found nothing of the sort. On the contrary, I found several things that strongly confirmed my tentative newly forming belief.

The sin of disbelief as far as revelation is concerned is closely related to that of disbelief in God. However, there is an important distinction: Disbelief in God is the equivalent of bad thinking. Belief in God is essential for good thinking: it provides the ultimate rationalization which makes the believer’s perspective on reality a 'rational' one and the ultimate goal to what makes thinking really good. Disbelief in revelation, on the other hand is the consequence of bad thinking when encountering revelation. It is possible to believe in God and not accept the Qur'an as genuine revelation. If someone disbelieves in the revelation of the Qur'an then it is not necessarily a sin. It will depend on how good their thinking is, given the knowledge that has reached them. Good thinking implies that the search made was a reasonable one. It is no excuse not to gain knowledge that may be vital for you when it is at your fingertips or even if you need to put some significant effort in. A reasonable search will of course correspond to your estimations of success in the search. For example there is no reason to expect to find banana trees growing at the North Pole. If your expectations are genuinely very low of finding something important, and your perception of the risks of not finding something is not high then you are not guilty for not putting much effort into the search. Your estimations are based on your knowledge. Allah knows what you know to be a reasonable effort. You will only be judged as sinful in your not accepting some particular piece of revelation if your thinking was bad; if you had some lack of sincerity in seeking the truth as to the claims of the Qur'an.

"Ad-din an-nasiha" - the religion (Islam) is sincerity

Saying of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him)

The general concept of sin in Islam

So far we have concentrated on the sin of disbelief in Islam. To wrap up that discussion it is necessary to put it into context within the general concept of sin in Islam. A sin is an act in contrast to the will of Allah. We can act following His will, this is the meaning of the word Islam, or we can fail to pay attention to His will or we can deliberately act against His will. Islam is submission to the will of Allah. The purpose of our existence as Human beings is to worship and serve Allah - to do His will.

This is made clear in the Qur'an:

"I have only created Jinns and men, that they may serve Me."

Surah 51 Verse 56

Yusuf Ali Translation:

"I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me."

The most important names of Allah are ones expressing His compassion towards creation - Ar-Rahmaan and Ar-Raheem. These mean the most full of compassion and mercy (Ar-Rahmaan) and the most giving in that compassion and mercy (Ar-Raheem). The foundation of worship / service to Allah is to become humbly grateful for the great gifts we already have from Allah and as a result to seek to please Allah through serving Him. This happens through gaining knowledge of creation and recognition of the revelation sent by Allah to Mankind and learning to value and appreciate it. We then serve Allah by building in and on that creation to add ever more real value to it.

To serve Allah our intentions must reflect His intentions; our wills must be consciously submitted to His will. The basic principle for us then is to reflect Allah's 'rahma' by showing compassion and mercy towards Allah's creation in the hope, and with the assurance, that Allah will show compassion and mercy towards us.

One of Allah's greatest gifts is the gift of moral guidance through revelation. If we follow it, it brings the greatest benefits in this life and the next. It is in trying to do this that our intentions are purified and it is by our intentions that we are judged.

A fundamental precept of Islam is that Human nature is essentially good. There are many elements to Human nature and each one has the potential to bring benefits.

In general we can say that a sin is committed when someone causes harm to themselves or to others or to any part of creation. The guilt depends on the intention of the sinner. In its most extreme form someone does deliberately harmful and destructive acts rejecting any appeals to do what is for their own benefit never mind what is beneficial for others. They may claim that it makes no difference anyway since existence is pointless and therefore have no gratitude for the benefits they have in life.

The contrast to this is someone who tries to improve himself, others and all of creation. They believe in God and are always grateful to Him for all they have in life. Their works to improve creation flow from their will to please God.

Human beings have the capacity to sin largely as a result of having the capacity to plan. When someone plans their efforts, they need to be able to suppress their natural desires for a time. This is quite different from animals that live from moment to moment obeying their perceptions of the present and their instinctive drives. This is indeed a dramatic difference. Human beings are able to look to the future - conceptualize it and form an intention to act. This conscious intention can override even the most powerful of our instincts. Through it we have capacity to cause ourselves harm in the short term in order to realize the greater good in the long term. As an inevitable part of this we gain the potential to cause ourselves harm, i.e. the potential to sin.

We cannot see clearly into the future. What we do instead is to believe in some future circumstances and direct our actions accordingly. Taking planning to its logical limits we would try to do what is for the good over all time and certainly for our entire life (in this world and the next). This is the core of trying to do what is morally right. It is trying to do what is for the ultimate good. It is trying to do what Allah wills.

Problems with Christianity

Islam's view of Christianity is that it started off as a religion based in Jewish tradition but accepting Jesus as a prophet and teacher. In time these teachings got replaced by corrupted teachings that Islam rejects: Jesus was not God incarnate and he was not God's begotten son. Islam's view of other religions generally is based on them having received, at some point, prophets which taught the pure monotheism of Islam along with fundamental concepts of the religion such as the nature of sin and forgiveness. These religious teachings have become forgotten and corrupted over time and so God renews His revelation again and again until in the final revelation the message is preserved intact. This is taken to be the revelation given to Muhammad primarily in the form of the Qur'an.

There is much more to Islam's view of Christianity than I shall detail here, however my concern is only to identify the sin of disbelief in Christianity and to compare and contrast this with Islam.

It is quite hard to speak of Christian beliefs without being inaccurate because there is a large variety of sects. What I am referring to here is the form(s) of Christianity that I am most familiar with: namely mainstream Catholic and Protestant Christianity.

In Christianity the disbelief in God and disbelief in revelation are also key sins. They are however somewhat secondary to disbelief in the resurrection of Christ. As a Muslim, I believe Jesus to be a prophet and a great teacher who brought great evidence in the form of miracles. I try to follow what he taught in so far as I trust the sources through which I find out what he taught. This, however, does not make me a Christian. To be a Christian I have to believe that Jesus died on the cross to save Mankind from their sins; that Jesus was God incarnated as a man and that God is Trinity rather than Unity.

It is the acceptance of these doctrinal points that makes one a Christian. If you don't accept these you are not a Christian. (This at least is the definition of Christian that I shall be using.)

Historically many people called themselves Christians who did not accept these doctrinal points and today many people consider themselves Christians but have never really thought about these points. How these doctrinal points came to be part of mainstream Christianity is not my concern here. What matters is that they are incompatible with the sin of disbelief as it has been set out in the previous pages.

The aspect of the sin of disbelief in God connected to the purposiveness of existence (i.e. if existence is purposeless then everything you do is futile and worthless) is a line of argument that still applies with Christianity because in broad terms Christians consider themselves monotheists and believe that there is only one judge. Some Christians, however, may think of God as essentially two judges or maybe three with Jesus playing the role of lawyer who needs to be persuaded of your case before he appeals to God on your behalf. In Catholicism the graves and images of Saints were and are worshipped and asked for favours etc., These things pollute otherwise pure intentions by appealing to different judges, who in principle may judge by different criteria. This damages or destroys the idea of universal morality and absolute rights and wrongs. If there are many criteria there are many purposes of the universe and you choose which purpose to work towards. No deed of someone who believes in many judges can be said to be good or bad in absolute terms.

This is strongly connected to the concept of salvation through Jesus dying on the cross. By this act all the sins of Christians are supposed to be forgiven. This great act must have changed something about the way to salvation, i.e. that before the act people had a certain route to salvation and that after the act the route to salvation is profoundly different. However, if God fundamentally changes the way he judges people in different times from being harsh to being easier, then this can hardly be justice! Is this a change in God's justice or is it rather two judges: God the father and God the Son. On the other hand, if there is no fundamental change in the route to salvation, then why all the fuss? -it doesn't really matter whether Jesus died on the cross or not; there has always been one justice and one judge.

The aspect of the sin of disbelief in God being the ultimate explanation of existence is a line of argument that might apply to Christians but generally doesn't. The problems again lie in the paradoxes of the Trinity.

Essentially both religions assert that they believe in a God whose nature is beyond the human mind to comprehend fully. There is however a significant difference in the perspectives of why God cannot be fully comprehended by man. In the Islamic perspective the metaphysical existence believed in which includes as its core God is called 'al-ghaib' which basically means 'the unseen'. This specifically refers to observation rather than the sense of "I don't see that" meaning, "I don’t understand that". For example it could be said that the sun, when it is not visible to us at night, is part of 'al-ghaib'. Metaphysics in Islam is unknown essentially because of the limitations in our sense perception. In contrast to this Metaphysics in Christianity is unknown largely because our natural reason cannot understand it. God is 'above' logic.

At the heart of Christian doctrine is a profound mystery of paradoxes (e.g. everything belongs to God, He has complete power over everything. So in what sense can God sacrifice something? What does He give up? How can God be all knowing and at the same time not know what is going to happen? How can God become a man? See also "God made flesh?")

The effect of this is that the sin of disbelief in Christianity can't use a deliberate breakage of basic logical reasoning as a foundational element in the sin of disbelief. Christians don't merely 'not always expect better explanations' to their questions about reality, they also have no problems with explanations that are logically self -contradictory or paradoxes.

In conclusion the sin of disbelief in Christianity, because of its doctrinal beliefs, is far from the description set out above. Believing Christians can be very bad thinkers and people well informed about Christianity and extremely good thinkers may never become Christians. To illustrate the point I'll relate an incident that I heard about recently:

A woman brought up as a Christian accepted Islam and after some time decided to tell her mother of her decision. Her Christian mother asked why she had become a Muslim and she replied "Islam makes more sense" to which her astonished mother replied:

"But religion is not supposed to make sense!"