An Analysis of Islamic Thinker's Opinions of What Faith Is

Faith is the first value that people are invited to by way of religious teachings. Also, faith is said to be either a verbal action, emerging from the heart, or a mental one, originating from intellect, or just consisting of the components attributable to the human heart, language and physics. Each of these three items play a significant role in the realization of faith. Along with them intellect and intellectual contemplation have, in addition, an important share in it. Also, the human being paves the way, by means of his/her practical obedience and submission, for faith to reach realization. All Muslim thinkers and scholars, with the authority of opinion, have stated their special interpretations of what faith is, within the framework of their scholarly ability and authority. Muslim thinkers explain the concept of ‘what faith is’ to be as follows: knowledge and awareness; knowledge reached at by intuition or discovering the truth; cordial faith and confidence; whole-hearted conviction; the heart’s inclination and acknowledgement of an issue; feelings and various states of the heart; practical obedience; general cordial fidelity; the statement of a belief along with obedience; and cordial trusting accompanied by the discovery of the metaphysical; and finally certainty obtained by way of knowledge. Since true faith has a variety of aspects – and is therefore very complex by nature – some thinkers have not paid attention to all of its aspects, thus delimiting it to some of its aspects. By way of analyzing these aspects and observing their positive points, it seems that true faith is the heart’s inclination and conviction whose attainment depends on certainty obtained by way of knowledge. As something that exists, the trueness of faith has, nevertheless, to do with the whole personality of the human being. On the one hand, there is no distance between true faith and the human’s practical observance of all that faith requires. On the other hand, true faith manifests itself within the human’s emotional and experiential spheres, as it creates the special emotional states, such as love, hope to God, reliance and satisfaction. The practical observance and emotional states turn instantaneously after their implementation into faith within the human being.