Quora Answer: What is Faith according to Islam?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What is faith according to Islam?” 

There are as many definitions of faith as there are people.  Some say that faith is to believe, but to believe without evidence is superstition.  On the other hand, to believe with all evidence manifest is no longer faith, but certainty.  So, true faith lies somewhere in between.  Faith is the child, when his mother throws him in the air, and he laughs because he cannot conceive that he will not be caught.  This is not blind faith.  The child was born of her, carried to term, and yet, after the pain of childbirth, still receives love.  He has been fed, clothed, nurtured. 

Faith in God is to understand that whatever we have good within us, is a reflection of the Absolute Attributes of God.  If we are kind, all that kindness of Creation is a drop in the Ocean of God’s Kindness.  If we are compassionate, it is but a drop in that Divine Ocean of Compassion.  And so forth.  This faith is not blind because we see the evidence of mercy and compassion and love all around us.  It is found in the people we meet. It is found in the beauty of the sunset.  It is found in the way that the rain falls, gently washing the dust from the leaves, is little drops.  All these and more are signs of the beginnings of faith. 

There are, of course, levels of faith. The highest form of faith is certainty beyond evidence.  This is found in Sayyidina Abu Bakr ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Utsman asw-Swiddiq (q.s.).  When the Prophet (s.a.w.) spoke of the Night Journey to Jerusalem and the Ascent to the Divine Throne, the Quraysh disbelieved.   Some renounced their Islam.  Abu Jahl ‘Amr ibn Hisham al-Makhzumi asked Sayyidina Abu Bakr asw-Swiddiq (q.s.), “What do you say of this?” 

He replied, “If Muhammad said he went and came back twenty times, I would still believe.” 

This is not blind loyalty.  This faith is borne of the fact that he knew the Prophet (s.a.w.) from before the advent of his prophethood.  He knew that this was a man who never lied, who never embellished a tale, who never exaggerated.  And this is before the Prophet (s.a.w.) demonstrated his claims.  He was on the way to see the Prophet (s.a.w.), and had not heard the entirety of the tale.  That is true faith, and all faith pales in comparison to this. 

Before we look for faith in God, we should be the sort of person that others would have faith with, such that those who know you, believe in you, even when it seems evidence to the contrary.  And be that friend, who believes in others even when the world has discounted them.  When we can have this faith, then we have the taste of what it is to believe in something greater than ourselves.