“Disbelief (kufr) is the opposite of faith. It means not believing in God, refusing to accept the truth, and—through denial—‘covering up’ God’s blessings. In fact, when faith is made lovable to a heart and that heart is built up with it, it naturally brings with it a revulsion toward disbelief. Anyone who has tasted faith will inevitably feel repelled by disbelief. As the Pride of Humanity (peace and blessings be upon him) said: ‘Whoever has these three qualities has tasted the sweetness of faith: to love God and His Messenger more than anything and anyone else; to love a person only for the sake of God; and, after God has saved him from disbelief, to find returning to disbelief more hateful than being thrown into fire.’¹⁾

Open sinfulness and rebellion (fisq and isyan) are also among the doors that open onto disbelief and eternal ruin; and anyone who feels the joy of faith in their heart must keep miles and miles away from these two dangerous paths.”²⁾

“There are forms of sinfulness and wrongdoing that are regarded as outright disbelief—for example, defying the principles God has set down or associating partners with Him. This is a kind of ‘sinfulness and depravity’ that falls within disbelief. On the other hand, neglecting obligatory worship such as prayer and fasting—if it has not hardened into a settled habit—may still be called fisq, but the one who commits it has traditionally still been regarded as a believer.”³⁾

“Inner distortions such as arrogance, envy, self-admiration, hypocrisy, boastfulness, and egotism become major obstacles insofar as they prevent truth from being heard and felt as it really is—just as sins, which are steps leading toward disbelief and misguidance, are also serious barriers.”⁴⁾

“A philosophy closed to the ‘incomings’ of faith and revelation cannot truly satisfy a person who has a heart and conscience—because what gives human beings depth, meaning, and a true identity has always been religion. Yet throughout history, people have turned to both ‘systems,’ and the struggle has arisen from that very tension: from one comes faith and beautiful character; from the other, disbelief and moral corruption.”⁵⁾

“If the subtle inner faculties granted so that a traveler on the path of truth can reach faith, knowledge of God, love of God, awe of God, and spiritual joy—and ultimately attain God’s good pleasure—are ‘killed’ by disbelief and misguidance and never revived, then people who later come to guidance cannot truly get anywhere.”⁶⁾

“To avoid giving ammunition to people locked into disbelief, misguidance, envy, and spite—and not to make their job easier—we must live with great sensitivity, never abandoning caution and vigilance.”⁷⁾

“People of verification have said: ‘Disbelief may continue, but oppression will not endure.’ Disbelief is deferred to the Supreme Court of the Hereafter: God will judge it in His august presence. But oppression—because it tramples public rights and violates the rights of the innocent—sooner or later is punished even in this world. Yes, oppressors taste its consequences here as well, at least to some degree.”⁸⁾

“Faith carries within it the seed of a spiritual paradise; disbelief, too, hides within it the seed of a spiritual hell.”⁹⁾

“Breaking a promise (khulf al-wa’d) is both disgrace and abasement; it can in no way befit His majestic holiness. Breaking a promise, however, comes either from pardon or from incapacity. But disbelief is absolute criminality—it is not something to be pardoned. And the Absolute All-Powerful is transcendent and sacred, utterly free of any incapacity.”¹⁰⁾

“O Satan! With your devilish ploys—heedlessness, misguidance, sophistry, stubbornness, fallacious reasoning, arrogant contention, deception, and blind habit—which make falsehood look like truth and the impossible look possible, you have made those wretched beasts in human form swallow disbelief and denial, producing countless absurdities!”¹¹⁾

“Merely imagining disbelief is not disbelief; and merely having an intrusive notion of disbelief is not disbelief either. Likewise, merely picturing misguidance is not misguidance, and merely thinking about misguidance is not misguidance. For imagination, illusion, conception, and reflection are different from intellectual assent and heartfelt conviction—they are relatively free and often do not listen to the will. They do not easily fall under religious accountability. Assent and conviction are not like that; they are bound to a standard. And since imagination, illusion, conception, and reflection are not assent or conviction, they are not, in themselves, doubt or hesitation either. But if they are repeated unnecessarily until they settle into a fixed state, then a real kind of doubt can eventually be born from them.”¹²⁾

“With the light of faith, a person rises to the highest heights and becomes worthy of Paradise; with the darkness of disbelief, he falls to the lowest depths and becomes fit for Hell.”¹³⁾

“Faith makes a human being truly human—indeed, it makes him like a sovereign. Therefore a person’s essential duty is faith and prayer. Disbelief turns a human being into a helpless, predatory animal.”¹⁴⁾

“Disbelief, rebellion, and evil deeds are essentially destruction and negation. Yet vast destruction and countless ‘non-existences’ can follow from a single merely ‘negative’ act—like a ship’s helmsman neglecting his duty, causing a great vessel to sink and nullifying the labor of all its crew. In the same way, since disbelief and sin belong to the category of negation and ruin, a small act of choice can set them in motion and produce terrifying consequences. For disbelief, though it is an evil, is also an immense affront: it reduces the entire universe to meaninglessness and emptiness, denies all beings that point to divine oneness, belittles the manifestations of the divine Names, and strips creation of its value. Therefore, God’s severe complaint and awesome threats toward the unbeliever—in the name of the universe, creation, and the divine Names—are pure wisdom; and eternal punishment is pure justice.”¹⁵⁾

“One of Satan’s most dangerous tricks is this: he makes certain sensitive, pure-hearted people confuse the imagining of disbelief with affirming disbelief. He presents the mere thought of misguidance as though it were the confirmation of misguidance, and shows them ugly images about sacred and pure things. He presents mere theoretical possibility as if it were rational probability, giving it a form that seems to contradict certainty of faith. Then the poor, sensitive person imagines he has fallen into disbelief, thinks his certainty has vanished, falls into despair—and in that despair becomes a plaything of Satan.”¹⁶⁾

“As for the people of disbelief and misguidance: by denying in their disbelief that supreme outcome which is the final purpose of all beings and the very reason for their enduring significance, they commit—so to speak—a kind of violation against the rights of all created things. And since they also deny the manifestations of the Divine Names that appear in the mirrors of all fashioned beings—and that, through their very ‘mirrorhood,’ elevate the worth of those beings—they thereby belittle those sacred Names as well. Moreover, by lowering the value of all created works, they commit a grave act of contempt toward creation itself.”¹⁷⁾

“The essence of disbelief that actively opposes Islamic truths is denial, ignorance, and negation. Even if it appears outwardly as something ‘affirmative,’ its inner meaning is absence and negation. Faith, by contrast, is knowledge, affirmation, real being, and judgment. Even what looks negative in faith is, in truth, a veil over some positive reality.

In short, unbelieving conviction is of two kinds: one that does not engage Islamic truths at all (a private, false ‘assent’ within its own world)—this is outside our discussion. The second confronts the truths of faith, and it too has two forms: (a) simple non-acceptance—merely not affirming—which is ignorance and has no real ‘judgment’; and (b) affirming nonexistence—confirming inwardly that the truth is not—which becomes a committed stance that must then try to ‘prove’ its denial.”¹⁸⁾

“I saw with witnessed certainty that just as a colocynth seed contains the colocynth tree within it, so too Hell lies hidden within the seed of disbelief and misguidance. And just as a date pit carries the date palm within it, I saw with decisive intuition that Paradise is present within the seed of faith. For just as it is not strange that seeds turn into trees, it is not far-fetched that disbelief and misguidance produce a painful hell, while faith and guidance produce a paradise.”¹⁹⁾

Faith

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