IB World Religions 1.7.2. the Human Condition: Submission, Guidance and Moral Error Notes

1.7.2. The Human Condition: Submission, Guidance and Moral Error

Fitrah and human nature

1. Muslims teach that Allah created human beings deliberately and gave them a standing no other creature has, appointing them khalifah (steward) over the earth.
2. Every person is held to be born with fitrah, an original disposition that inclines them towards recognising the one God. Nothing in Islam teaches that human nature is corrupt at birth.
3. In the Qur'anic account human beings are shaped from clay and given something of Allah's spirit, and the angels are told to bow before Adam. Muslims read that scene as a statement of human worth.
4. Muslims hold that Adam then disobeyed, repented and was forgiven. His lapse stands as a warning about human weakness rather than as a stain passed down to his descendants.
5. Human beings also choose freely, and Muslims describe the pull the other way as ghaflah (heedlessness) and as the promptings of the nafs, the lower self that wants what is easy.

The need for guidance

1. Muslims teach that human beings left to themselves forget and stray, so Allah sends hidayah (guidance) rather than leaving people to work the path out alone.
2. Guidance arrives through risalah, the message Allah reveals to humankind through prophets. Muslims count a long line of them, from Adam through Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses) and Isa (Jesus) to Muhammad.
3. Every prophet is held to have brought the same core message, the worship of the one God. Muslims teach that earlier communities altered what they were given, which is why the Qur'an was sent.
4. Muslims ask for that guidance in every unit of prayer. The opening surah, al-Fatihah, asks Allah to show the worshipper as-sirat al-mustaqim, the straight path.
5. Sunni and Shi'ah Muslims describe how guidance continues differently. Sunni Muslims hold that it now runs through the Qur'an, the Sunnah and the reasoning of the ulama (scholars), while Shi'ah Muslims hold that the divinely guided imams carry it as well.

The straight path in law

1. Muslims describe the guidance as a path of prescribed and prohibited actions, marked out so that people do not fall into moral error.
2. Acts are sorted into halal (permitted) and haram (forbidden). Scholars divide them more finely still, into obligatory, recommended, neutral, discouraged and forbidden.
3. The whole body of that guidance is shari'ah, a word that first meant the path leading down to water. Fiqh is the scholars' work of understanding what it requires.
4. Shari'ah covers worship, food, money, marriage and dress alike, so Muslims do not divide life into religious and ordinary parts. Akhlaq (ethics and conduct) sits inside it rather than beside it.
5. Jurists disagree over details, which is why Sunni Muslims follow one of four schools of law and Twelver Shi'ah Muslims follow the Ja'fari school. All of them treat the Qur'an as the first source.

Sin, shirk and repentance

1. Muslims call a wrong action a dhanb (sin), and hold that a person becomes answerable for such acts on reaching maturity and understanding.
2. The gravest error is shirk, treating anything as a partner or equal of Allah. Muslims teach on Qur'anic authority that Allah may forgive any sin except shirk that is never repented of.
3. Refusing the truth once it is clear is kufr, usually translated as unbelief. The word carries the sense of covering something over, and so of ingratitude for what Allah has given.
4. The remedy is tawbah (repentance), which Muslims describe as regret, stopping the act, resolving not to return to it, and putting right any harm done to another person.
5. Repentance is expected to be ordinary rather than exceptional. Muslims say astaghfirullah, I ask Allah's forgiveness, in everyday conversation, and they hold that Allah's mercy outweighs his anger.

Jihad as moral struggle

1. Muslims call the whole effort to live in submission jihad, a word that means struggle or striving rather than holy war.
2. Many Muslims distinguish the Greater Jihad, the personal struggle against one's own evil inclinations, from the Lesser Jihad, the collective defence of the Muslim community.
3. The inward struggle is against the nafs, the self that prefers comfort. Its goal is taqwa, an alert awareness of Allah that shapes conduct when nobody else is watching.
4. Sufi Muslims make that inward work their main practice, using dhikr (remembrance of the names of Allah) to draw attention away from the self.
5. Muslims hold that intention decides the worth of an act, and they quote the Prophet's saying that deeds are judged by niyyah (intention). The same action done for display and done for Allah does not count the same.