Basic Faith, Not Dogma

The first word revealed to the Messenger of God, Muhammad (peace and God’s blessings upon him) was “iqraa!” (= Read!), which means: examine and grasp the meaning of written characters. More than that, it can have the meaning of: examine and try to understand how this creation has been created. The first five verses of the Qur’an revealed to the Messenger (God’s blessings upon him) were as follows:

“Read in the Name of your Lord who has created. He has created human being out of a germ cell. Read, for your Lord is the Most Bountiful One. Who has taught (man) the use of the pen. He taught man what he did not know!” (96:1-5).

It shows that even preaching the basic faith has to be done by convincing people with knowledge. Knowledge should be spread among people. Observation should be encouraged, however not by asking people to believe in a dogma, nor to follow the Messenger blindly. In the Qur’an, God ordered the Messenger to declare his way of preaching:

“Say, This is my way: I call to God with full perception, I and whoever follows me. Limitless is God in His glory, and I am not among those who associate partners (with God)” (12:108).

God ordered His messenger to invite people to the Way of Him, the Lord, not with dogmatic method, but with wisdom and fair exhortation. He asked His messenger to argue with them reasonably in the most kindly manner: “Call to the Way of your Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and argue with them by way of that which is best. Truly your Lord knows best those who stray from His way and He knows best those who are guided” (16:125).

Although the main preach of the Messenger of God (and all God’s messengers before him) was about the basic faith, that “there is no other god than the One God”, that preach was never in a type of dogma. To convince people to that basic faith in that Unique God, the Qur’an turns their attention to God’s creation that lies in front of them. Can they claim that their deities have created the heavens and the earth? Can they claim that their idols sent down water causing rows of those splendid gardens to grow with different kinds of trees and plantations?

The Qur’an draws their attention to the earth, their planet, how can it be stable in space among other planets; and to the rivers, which flow throughout the earth; and to the mountains, which make this planet firm; and how those waters in the seas vaporize to create clouds so they can then water the earth; who orders all those things regularly to revivify the barren land, except God alone? And when a person or a group of persons are desperate, in whatever bad condition, call God urgently to take away their suffering, who except God could respond and help? And there are hidden realities, of which we only know a trace, is there anyone except God, the Creator, who controls them and keeps them hidden? (See: Qur’an, 27:59-65).

The Qur’an also draws the attention of those who doubt the resurrection to their own nature, or to the nature around them:

1)   To their own nature. How wonderful is the human physical and intellectual growth, from lifeless matter to seed, to fertilized ovum, to fetus, to child, to youth, to adulthood, to old age and finally to death. How could one doubt that the Author of all these wonderful stages of his life in this world can also easily give him another kind of life after death, on the Day of Resurrection!

2)   To the nature around. If one looks at the external nature, he or she will see the earth dead and barren, then comes down the rain to fertilize and bring it to life, growth and beauty in various forms of herbs, vegetables, fruits, trees and palms. Surely, the Creator of all these wonderful things can create yet another and a newer world. (For reference, see Qur’an, 22:5). “That is because God, He is the Truth, and because He is reviving the dead, and has power over all things” (22:6).

The Qur’an is full of verses encouraging and urging people to use their faculty of reason. Hundreds of verses ending with “will you not use the reason?”, or  “will you not reflect?”

Even forbidden things, God explains with arguments why they are forbidden: “They ask you about intoxicants and games of chance. Say: In both there is great evil as well as some benefit for man; but the evil, which they cause, is greater than the benefit, which they bring. And they ask you as to what they should spend (in God’s cause), say: Whatever you can spare. In this way God makes clear unto you His Signs so that you might reflect” (2:219).

“O you who have attained to faith! Intoxicants, and games of chance, and idolatrous practices, and the divining of the future are but a loathsome evil of Satan’s doing: shun it, then, so that you might attain to a happy state! By means of intoxicants and games of chance Satan seeks only to sow enmity and hatred among you, and to turn you away from remembrance of God and from prayer. Will you not, then, desist?” (5:90-91).

This belief and these ordinances are reasonably explained in the Qur’an and in the guidance of the Messenger of God, whereas a dogma is a belief or a set of believes that is taught by a religious organization.

In this article, I plead that faith, even the basic faith in Islam, is given by God through His messenger, explained in the Qur’an and preached with full perception of arguments, by the messenger and his faithful followers. The Qur’an itself does not allow people to believe without conviction brought by reason. The truly God-conscious are deeply desirous to understand the teachings of the Qur’an with perception, and therefore, to listen to it with wide open ears, and to look into it attentively:

“And those (who have attained to faith), whenever they are reminded of their Lord’s signs (= Qur’anic verses), they do not droop themselves down, as if they were deaf and blind” (25:73). 

This shows that they think about what they listen to or what they read and reflect deeply upon it.