How to attain to Faith . . .

To be a Muslim only believing in God and in the Hereafter is not enough. A Muslim should attain to faith in God, in His Angels, in His Scriptures, in His Messengers, in the Hereafter and in the Qadar (= ordained measure, which is considered good and bad).

I am surprised that most translators of the Qur’an into English used the word belief in translating the word iman. “Iman” is equal to “attaining to faith”.

According to English dictionaries, “faith” is the allegiance and loyalty to a duty or a person. It means fidelity to one’s promises, or sincerity of intentions. It means belief and trust in and loyalty to God, etc. English dictionaries also indicate that “belief” is a feeling of being sure that someone or something exists or that something is true.

Among the translators I know, only Muhammad Asad translated “iman” with “attaining to faith”. In translating “ya ayuhal-lazeena amanu”, Muhammad Asad used to translate it as:

“O you who have attained to faith” and not “O believers”.

To be sure about this issue, let us ponder upon verses 14 and 15 of Surah Al-Hujurat in the Qur’an: “The Beduin say: We have attained to faith; say (to them o Muhammad): You have not yet attained to faith; you should (rather) say: We have (outwardly) surrendered, for (true) faith has not yet entered your hearts. But if you (truly) pay heed to God and His Messenger, He will not let the least of your deeds go to waste: for, behold, God is Much-Forgiving, a Dispenser of Grace. (Know that) true believers are only those who have attained to faith in God and His Messenger and have left all doubts behind, and who strive hard in God’s cause with their possessions and their lives: it is they, they who are true to their word!” (49:14-15).

Let us now go ahead with our reflection on “how to attain to faith”.

First of all, we have to be sincere with ourselves, each of us has an inner feeling about the concept: there must be a One Who created us and everything around us. Because with only One Creator (Who continuously sustains), all creation can go on constantly in harmony! Surely, all those harmonious beings could not be so, except with the Guidance of the Sustainer.

Secondly, the teachings of God’s Messengers’ told us that only human beings have the choice to follow God’s Guidance or to disobey. This being has a certain freedom of will and of desires. Only those who have a strong will to strive against certain destructive desires and who have a strong will to obey God’s guidance can be considered having attained to faith.

Thirdly, to help faithful human beings undertake their duties correctly in this hard life, God traced for them certain obligatory trainings to be performed, such as salaat (= prayers), siyaam (= fasting), zakaat (= purifying alms), hajj (= pilgrimage to Makkah) and discipline in behaviour.

These are obligations, which should be fulfilled while accomplishing all life activities as excellently as possible and in the most useful way for society.

It is important to emphasise that prosperity can only be obtained by undertaking the following four points:

1.   To be patient in adversity: We have to increase our capacity to calmly endure pain and trying situations, to bear provocation, annoyance or misfortune without complaint or losing our temper. We have to show steady persistence in the course of any action we do.

2.   To vie in patience with one another.

3.   To strengthen each other and bind our mutual relations closer for our common service to God.

4.   To strengthen our consciousness of God by always remembering Him in all our activities.

We find all these elements in the Qur’an as follows: “O you who have attained to faith! Be patient in adversity, and vie in patience with one another, and be ever ready (to do what is right), and remain conscious of God, so that you might attain to a happy state!” (3:200).

People with faith in God will always face others who mock and ridicule them, but the real servants of God should endure and have patience with them. God says: “Endure them with patience (all that they who deny the truth may say), and (remember) that it is none but God who gives you the strength to endure adversity, and do not grieve over them, and neither be distressed by the false arguments which they devise” (16:127).

Faithful Muslims should behave in a good way with other communities in any context, even if the others behave badly: we should endure their behaviour with patience: “And endure with patience whatever people may say (against you), and avoid them with a comely avoidance” (73:10).

In fact, whatever situation a person who has attained to faith is facing, good or bad, that person will always be content, as explained by the Messenger of God:

Suhaib bin Sinan reported that the Prophet (God’s blessings upon him) said: “How wonderful is the case of the faithful believer. Indeed all his case is good for him; and this could apply only to a faithful believer, because if prosperity attends him, he expresses gratitude to God and that is good for him. And if adversity befalls him, he endures it patiently and that is better for him”  (Recorded by Muslim in his Collection of Hadith).

Those who attain to faith in today’s life, will be welcomed (in the hereafter) in gardens of perpetual bliss which they shall enter: “Those who are true to their bond with God and never break their covenant, and who keep together what God has bidden to be joined, and stand in awe of their Lord and fear the most evil reckoning (which awaits such as do not respond to Him); and who are patient in adversity and of a longing for their Lord’s countenance, and are constant in prayer, and spend on other, secretly and openly, out of what We provide for them as sustenance, and (who) repel evil with good. It is these that shall find their fulfilment in the hereafter: gardens of perpetual bliss, which they shall enter together with the righteous from among their parents, their spouses, and their offspring; and the angels will come to them from every gate (and will say): Peace be upon you, because you have persevered. How excellent, then, this fulfilment in the hereafter!” (13:20-24).