What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Society Religion & Philosophy
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:salam:

This will be an in-depth conversation, inshaAllah about belief, belief systems, the formulaic method and need for a belief system and some discussion and comparison of beliefs … Please keep this discussion purely academic.

I will start with introducing some words and you can take the conversation in any direction you like and we can always come back and start another side topic. If it is justified we can start up standalone side topics.

Athanasius … Nicea … At-Tahawiyya … Logic … Reality … etc

For a good start can I ask you … “what is the bare essentials for a Muslim belief system - what do we need to start with?”

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

No god but one God* ??

*the word god is actually not good enough for use to refer to Allah

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Well, the Shahada is simple and straight foward. Believe in Allah, and his prophets. And believe that the Prophet Muhammad pbuh is his messenger.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Believe in Allah and His Attributes, the Prophets, the Books and the Scriptures, His angels, the final Messenger (pbuh), Quran, The Final Day, and the destiny.

The five pillars.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

pata hai mainai aaj kia kia. aaj Abida ka bhanda phar dia! I believe in witty laughter! cos theres no break :flower1:

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

All this. Also, to believe that the Qur’an is complete, that it is the truth. And also to not reject the commandments of Allah, e.g. somebody might not pray while accepting that it is a fault on his part vs someone rejecting the notion that he has to pray. This example of salat can equally apply to any clear order of Allah.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Practicing religion comes later…

Oneness of Allah and finality of prophet Muhammad(saw) and then it includes beliefs of 4 books, prophets from Adam (as) to Muhammad (saw), destiny, day of judgement. angels.

:5:

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Start with Allah (Rab)

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

:kiss: :rotfl:lai aiaiy!

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

In Islam the concept of Tawheed is quite refined.

The basic concept of “existence” (which is an oxymoron because existence is not a basic concept) - is that it is real. Things exist. If they do not exist then they may be present as concepts in conscious minds, but if there is no mind to conceive of a concept nor any body that exists then there would be nothing.

However, the concept of nothingness would itself be self-defeating. If concepts cannot exist without conscious minds then the concept of nothingness implies its own negation. In reality the primary concept must be a statement of exception … It must entail nothing exists except the Primary Existence. That Existence is what enables the “concept of nothingness” to be hence it would infer that that Primary Existence is Conscious.

Primary or Initial or First is hence real, whereas absolute nothingness is a paradox and it is empirically impossible to achieve. We exist and we have minds to conceive concepts. We can never reach a situation in theoretical science or otherwise where there is nothing, by so doing we would have to remove that virtual eye looking upon the concept that we constructed.

The problem is one where abstract constructs are focused on while there is no “reality check” and that is the crux of the main differences between the ideas of existence. Reality Check - means that we should check our conceptual understandings against empirical tests.

Belief is a feeling of conviction - it is to dwell in a state of subjective reality. It is not the opposite of fact. The opposite of fact is fiction and it so happens that people believe in things that are fictional and disbelieve in things that are fictional as well as believe in things that are fact and disbelieve in things that are fact.

a belief in a fact is a true belief
a disbelief in a fiction is also a true belief
a disbelief in a fact is a false belief
and finally a belief in a fiction is a false belief

Disbelief is merely to say that the logical opposite of the subject matter is being believed in. In other words the above will take the following form:

  1. a belief in a fact is a true belief
  2. a belief in a non-fiction is also a true belief
  3. a belief in a non-fact is a false belief
  4. a belief in a fiction is a false belief

Which reduces down further as a non-fiction is a fact and a non-fact is a fiction hence 1 and 2 are merged and 3 and 4 are merged to give:

A belief in a fact is a true belief
A belief in a fiction is a false belief

It is based on this definition of “belief” that we need to understand first before going in to the more involved matters of existence and origin.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

From the above the concepts of “subjectivity” and “fact” need to be discussed further …

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Stop misusing the term Jihad. Leave disbelievers in peace. No prosecution of minorities.
Save others from your tongue and hands. That is what I call a Muslim.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

What I believe and understand:

Most important thing for a Muslim to know and believe is:

Islam is not for human animals. Islam is for human humans.

Where, human is not one ‘who walks like human, talks like human and looks like human’ … but one ‘who acts and behaves like human’ or the one who has human heart and has humanity in him.

If a person is inhumane than all his beliefs, worships, deeds and claim of being a Muslim, would be waste. Hell would await him.

After above belief and making oneself human (come out of being an animal), second thing is about how to use faculties Allah has given, then ponder on their own birth (created), know themselves, and after that it is required to search and recognise Allah using those faculties (given by Allah).

Unfortunately, most Muslims of today are inhumane animals, so knowing themselves and recognising Allah is far from them.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

You could not be wrong enough. Where did you even get this absurd idea sir? Why be paranoid and hateful?

You cannot even prove it.

Most Muslims are human like other human being.

Please do get your philosophy straight. :slight_smile:

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

to begin with the core of the belief of a Muslim is “There is no god but Allah”. Even the phrase “Muhammad (pbuh) is His messenger” is part of it. means if you truly believe in the first part, you have to believe in 2nd part too and so and so forth.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Absolutely true.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Psyah sahib,

this part of your post drew my attention. What is a fact? A fact is a reality that doesn’t require a belief or faith. 2+2 =4 is a fact and accepting this fact is not a belief or faith. Our eyes (without external aid) need light to see things. It is an accepted fact and accepting this fact is not a belief. Belief/faith comes always when there is an element of doubt, something that cannot be proven scientifically. In matters of faith, inclination of heart is involved. If it is proved scientifically then it becomes fact that no one can deny. Belief in Allah came to us through prophets/messengers. people believed in them because of their good past and apparent goodness of the values they professed. We, the rational beings can ponder and think that this intricate universe must have intelligent creator/s but we cannot pinpoint that there is only one God and what He requires of us. for that, we needed the help of His prophets. I hope, I am making some sense.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Peace kchughtai sir

I hold partiality at the notion that to accept a fact, belief is not being invoked. It seems to be more logically consistent and terminologically more consistent to understand belief to be “acceptance”. And I will discuss matters in that way - I will use the word “belief” in that way. To have certainty is the highest level of belief and that certainty does not have to be a true belief, which caters for the phenomenon of “being deluded”.

The real contention can be illustrated is in the following:

Given your definition of belief … and fact … If we were to say that “it requires belief to accept God, but there is no belief required in accepting 1 + 1 = 2”

Then we would have to say that 1 + 1 = 2 is a fact and Existence of God is not a fact … !!!

That presents a huge problem. It delineates the idea of “fact” from being something that is “true” (nominal, deductive) to merely something that is “objectively provable” … I don’t think a “fact” should be classed as something that is “objectively provable” because whenever we discuss matters of reality we must also cater for the “objectiveness” of that scenario and then we move in to wishy-washy statements like “nothing is real and everything is subjective” …

Logically it can be shown that belief is the supergroup and all verdicts expressed by humans are contained within it. As stated earlier if we can’t move past this point then we can’t move at all.

My axiom is that “belief is inescapable in conscious beings” it is my a priori assumption … When we say “This is a chair” while pointing at a chair we are in fact saying … “It is my belief that: ‘This is a chair’”. We say it so often with so much certainty that it no longer requires the statement … “It is my belief that” … When we are trying to be courteous and careful our speech will bring back the statement … “It is my belief that …” or “I thought that” … and so on. e.g.

Teacher: The capital of Australia is Sydney
Considerate Smart Student: But Miss, I thought that Canberra was the capital?!

My reduction in the previous post suggests both belief and disbelief are beliefs.

And it follows that “humans are believing entities” - That our ability to believe defines us. That is also the reason why I put the title of the thread this way too … We can’t talk about our belief system without first understanding the “act of belief” itself.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

For us it is a fact, and an ultimate reality but not in general sense of the word. It doesn’t mean that it is not a reality. It only means that some people may be able to accept His being and some not because it requires more than mere five senses to know Him.
A few hundred years ago, people, through their genius, “believed” that Earth is not flat and is not stationary. That belief has become a known fact now.
What we are required to believe: One Allah, His messengers, Books, Angels, Judgement day but we are not asked to believe in Sun, day and night. If Allah had sent some super-beings as His messengers, we could see His angels descending on him, messengers going to heaven and bringing down the Book, all would have believed but we are tested on beliefs so they are not as evident as sun and moon. The belief works before all the veils will be lifted and people actually find out the reality. Will their believing benefit them at that time? No. Why?

You are wrong in saying that “then we move in to wishy-washy statements like “nothing is real and everything is subjective” …”. I am not saying that. Try to understand. I am not here for a 20 page “argument for the sake of an argument” type discussion.

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Re: What do you believe you must believe to be a Muslim?

Peace kchughtai

Please see that you are falling in to what I already predicted … “nothing is real everything is subjective” … The first step in that direction is to invoke the oxymoronic statement “not a universal fact” …

In any case there are many people who do argue as you do … but that is not the way I wish to proceed in my discourse, because it causes problems.

Please help me define the following positions:

A person who can see a chair - Is the chair really there?
A person who believes he can see a chair - Is the chair really there?
A person who does not believe in God - Is God not there?

My use encapsulates both meanings in the dictionary definition sense: 2 are given in the Oxford dictionary, neither of them infer that ‘belief’ is not inclusive of accepting things WITH PROOF.

An acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof:
Something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion