Between Piety, Faith, and the Betrayal of Islam

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

We hear a great deal about people described as “religious” (mutadayyin), and people speak of them with a kind of intellectual reverence and Islamic piety; the description is repeated in our ears so constantly that the general public has come to think that religiosity (tadayyun) is the same as faith (iman). This is a mistaken notion, because religiosity differs greatly from faith, and the requirements of each differ from the requirements of the other.

The Meaning of Religiosity

Religiosity is a historical custom among all peoples who hold to a religion, and it has its distinguished men and women who are pointed to as the people most understanding of religion and most capable of applying it. The following are the traits that predominate among the religious, regardless of the religion they believe in:

Excessive performance of religious rituals, particularly various prayers, supplications, ceremonies, and religious celebrations, and giving sermons and guidance lessons to the general public.

Religious fanaticism, which means possessing the truth to the exclusion of others, and monopolizing bliss in the afterlife. The religious person sees himself as God’s beloved, or beloved of the deities he worships if he is not a monotheist, or believes he is working to reach that rank, and that in the end he is the one who is pleased and pleasing, who will enjoy an afterlife filled with happiness, while others will meet with the worst of torments.

Preoccupation with the unseen and the hidden forces that direct and control human affairs. Such people busy themselves with the supernatural in order to learn its secrets and the various forces acting within it, and they weave many tales and legends about what a person might encounter in life and in death as a result of the workings of these forces.

Fleeing from worldly life in favor of establishing, in one way or another, relationships with supra-natural powers that do not belong to nature, hoping that this will ease success, sustenance, calm, and healing in this world and the next. For this reason, a considerable number of the religious withdraw from public affairs, and many of them lose the capacity for public dealings and the flexibility to build social relationships.

The elevation of supernatural explanations of social and natural phenomena above scientific explanations, and disdain for scientific thinking and the analytical mindset based on knowledge and logic. The mind is not for research and scrutiny, but for thinking about how to apply religious teachings.

The claim that human beings are driven by fate, since powers above nature have already decided everything in advance, and the human being must submit to what may be his destiny and the will of powers he does not know. For this reason, fear of the unknown dominates him, and his will collapses before what he believes to be a truth he cannot see.

Life, for the most part, becomes asceticism and monasticism, and religion takes on a priestly character. For this reason, the religious person becomes closed off mentally and socially, limited in activity, and finds it difficult to see matters from multiple angles.

Religiosity and Ritual in Islam

There is no “religiosity” (tadayyun) in Islam, no class of clergy, and no rituals. There is, in Islam, faith (iman) and rites (sha’a’ir), and there are people who embody the ethics of Islam.

Faith in Islam is what settles in the heart and is confirmed by deeds; there is no paradise for the Muslim unless he is a believer who does good works. The Holy Qur’an repeats to people, in more than fifty verses, the pairing of faith with righteous deeds as a condition for entering paradise. Paradise is for those who believe and do righteous deeds.

As for the rites, they differ radically from rituals, in that rituals are habitual, repetitive activities (from “custom”), whose value lies only in themselves, as rigid motions devoid of any practical reflection on reality, with no value outside themselves. The rites in Islam, however, are obligations that derive their value from outside themselves, because they remind a person of God, glorified and exalted is He, and of His teachings, so that he does good. They are daily means that impel the Muslim toward doing good, and if they are emptied of this social and human value, they lose their devotional value. Prayer commands what is right and forbids indecency and wrongdoing; the pilgrimage unites Muslims and gathers them in a broad circle of discussion and dialogue; fasting is accompanied by the virtue of moderation, altruism, and empathy with others; and zakat establishes an economic structure that stands between the Muslim and the want that might drive him to vice or hatred.

…and going on the Umrah, and calculating the sins and good deeds resulting from every act, and so on. Their countries are occupied, backward, and poor, and they are preoccupied with the devils gathered in a woman’s smile.

Muslims have, in most cases, turned prayer into mere motions that do not keep them from corruption and corrupting others, that do not deter them from hypocrisy, lying, and deception, nor from sedition, false accusation, slander, conspiracy, intrigue, deceit, and betrayal. They have turned the pilgrimage into mere ritual devoid of social, scientific, political, and human meaning, and fasting into fleeing the daytime by turning it into night. Growing numbers of Muslims now flee Ramadan by suspending work so that their hours of daytime sleep can stretch out, and their hours of staying up at night can lengthen. As for food, it is wasted abundantly in Ramadan, and lavish Ramadan banquets are held only for a large portion of the food to end up in the garbage dump.

Rituals are a path of idolatry, or of fear of the unknown, or of flight from worldly life, while the rites are a path of faith that derive their value from outside themselves, so as to translate into good that benefits the person, his surroundings, and his society.

Islamic Faith

For clarity, faith in Islam requires the following matters, which I regard as principal, though not exhaustive:

The oneness of God, Mighty and Exalted, and belief in His angels, His messengers, His books, and the Last Day.

Enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, proceeding from the supreme Islamic value that the remembrance of God is greatest. The remembrance of God is not only in words, but in doing good, and in performing the rites of prayer, zakat, fasting, and pilgrimage, which derive their value from outside themselves.

The establishment of the Islamic nation (umma), because without it, it is impossible to establish an Islamic state or to properly apply Islamic teachings. The nation is built upon the following, which take their value from within themselves:

Knowledge, which occupies about 12% of the verses of the Holy Qur’an, whether by explicit text or by indication toward rational action.

Work, which forms the backbone of production, self-reliance, and invention, which always offers something new to the whole of humanity.

Jihad, in both its personal and objective, internal and external forms, which continually elevates souls, safeguards the sanctity of the nation, and deters its enemies.

Ethics, through which the nation sets an example for other nations.

Establishing justice among people, providing them security and reassurance, enabling them to overcome life’s hardships and forge their way toward progress, prosperity, and peace — and thereby the nation becomes the best nation brought forth for mankind.

Between Religiosity and Faith

Faith is what gathers Muslims together and unites them, because it rests on fixed foundations of certainty, knowledge, construction, giving, production, justice, and sound ethics that reinforce trust, collective action, love, harmony, solidarity, and mutual support. Religiosity, by contrast, tears them apart and turns them into mere idlers waiting for paradise through rituals that do not elevate them to moral loftiness, diligence, and work. Muslims fell apart when they turned their backs on the foundations of success, and set about searching for supernatural fantasies that keep them from working and drive them toward notions of faith that have no connection to the earth or to the true content of faith. Muslims have become absorbed in ritualistic and clerical matters, until the torment of the grave became a great preoccupation for them, and the horrors of the Day of Judgment and obsessive whispering shackle their activity. A woman’s hair is now far more important than establishing a great university that graduates scholars; the takbirs of the funeral prayer rank above scientific discovery; the length of a beard is more important than liberating al-Aqsa; sectarian infighting is more important than uniting the nation; a woman driving a car is more important than the presence of invading and tyrannical powers on Muslim land; and nutmeg is more important than spending in the way of God, and so on.

It is the Islamic sects that reinforced the idea of religiosity over faith, and both earlier and later rulers encouraged this, given how it distracts people from injustice, enslavement, and the plundering of wealth. The Islamic sects have divided, destroyed, and ruined, and have diverted the Islamic religion from its correct course. How many Islamic practices now depart from the teachings of the religion, doing harm to it and to all its followers.

Muslims in general — though not absolutely all of them — do harm to the Islamic religion because of their backwardness, laziness, incapacity, defeats, recklessness with their money and wealth, and their dependence on others. They hurl insults at one another, fight one another, feud with one another, and curse one another, while their countries groan under the injustice, exploitation, and oppression of others. Indeed, a considerable portion of Muslims now turn people away from the path of God, and distort the image of Islam and the image of our master Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. They betray God and His Messenger, and it is they who have driven others to curse and revile our master Muhammad publicly and across various media, because it is they who speak in his name and claim to follow in his footsteps. Muhammad, peace be upon him, is innocent of them; in truth, they are allies of Satan.

For this reason we say: no to religiosity, and yes to the faith that establishes justice and balance, and does not diminish people, whether they are believers or non-believers.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “بين التدين والإيمان وخيانة الإسلام” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.