Belief and Action

Since God’s Rationality and God’s Speech are irremediably beyond the human imagination, neither human speech nor human action will ever truly capture Di­vine Justice. So, trying to get the exact right interpretation or act in exactly the right way is a fool’s errand, an impossible mission.

‘Belief’, for the early Hanafis, is the defining characteristic of a Muslim. Be­lievers, by definition, believe in God’s unity and Muhammad’s prophethood, and disbelievers do not. For the early Hanafis, ‘belief’ does not denote a personal predilection, but signifies a state one achieves after having completed a certain action.^[38] That action is a verbal testament; namely, speaking the words of the shahada: ‘There is no deity other than God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.’ Having spoken this phrase, one must then truly believe its contents in one’s heart to be a true ‘believer’,^{[39] [40] [41] though of course there is no way to externally validate whether one has done that or not.}

Just as one becomes a believer by speaking the shahada with the tongue and believing it in the heart, one does not become a disbeliever except by both de­nouncing the shahada with the tongue and rejecting it within the hearth Thus, one is considered to be a believer until and unless she both states that she disbelieves and also truly disbelieves in her heart. Since disbelief in the heart is not verifiable, the only way to determine disbelief is by a verbal state­ment to that effect.22 ‘Disbelief’ is therefore contingent on a verbal attestation, just as ‘belief ’ is contingent on a verbal attestation.

In this conception, ‘belief’ is digital; one either believes or does not. ‘Belief’ does not rise or fall over time,^{[42] [43] [44] [45] and speaking of ‘weak belief ’ makes no sense. Abu Hanifa famously compared the faith of humans to that of the angels;24 in the Islamic tradition, angels are considered to believe wholeheartedly in God, and one does not speak about the relative strength of angelic faith. In the same way, early Hanafis held that those who verbalise the shahada — that is, Mus­lims — believe perfectly and completely.}

Since belief does not rise nor fall, evil actions have no deleterious impact on belief, and, conversely, righteous actions do not increase belief?⁵ Belief and ac­tion, therefore, are completely separate. This, Hanafis argue, is of necessity; since one can never truly know when their actions accord with the Divine Truth, it would be unfair for humans to only gain in belief when they act correct­ly, or to lose belief when they act incorrectly. Humans can only be held account­able for following commands that they know to be in accordance with the Divine Truth. The only command that humans know for sure is the very command to believe in God and the Prophet.

The main task for humans, then, is to verbalise the shahada and thereby be­come believers.2⁶ Once they fulfill that task, then God will forgive their sins and evil deeds, and enter them into paradise. Salvation is thus a matter of having be­lief, not a matter of performing righteous actions. The early Hanafis were ada­mant on this point, and interpreted both sacred texts and Islamic law in that light. Take Abu al-Layth al-Samarqandi’s (d. 370) interpretation of the following verse,

‘You are the best nation (umma) raised from amongst humankind, you command what is good, and you prohibit what is evil, and you believe in God.’ (3:110)

This verse appears to say that commanding good and prohibiting evil is an es­sential characteristic of the Muslim umma.

The phrase ‘You are’ in this verse... refers to the Companions of Muhammad, as if saying to them ‘You all are the best nation’. That is in line with Muhammad’s statement; ‘the best generation is that of my companions and those who succeed them’. God then describes [the Companions] saying, ‘You command what is good’ — meaning monotheism (tawhιd) and Islam — ‘and prohibit what is evil’ — meaning polytheism (shirk).’

Here, al-Samarqandi isolates the Companions of Muhammad as the verse’s addressees, and then clarifies that their commanding good and prohibiting evil has only to do with belief, not with performing deeds. Al-Maturidi was even clearer in his interpretation of the verse and extended it apply to all Mus­lims, and not just the Companions:

‘“Command what is good” means command belief (ιman), and “prohibit what is evil” means prohibit disbelief (kufr). The proof of this is that the verse [continues to say] “and you believe in God.” [So the people being described in this verse] themselves believe, they command others to believe, and they prohib­it [others] from disbelief.’^[46]

Since ‘belief ’ hinges only on a verbal testament, commanding good and pro­hibiting evil is about the simple act of encouraging others to verbalise the sha- hada, and discouraging others from refusing to verbalise it. In this interpretation of Q. 3:110, it is easy to count oneself part of the ‘best umma’.

Of course, if good and evil are primarily about encouraging belief, and belief is achieved by a mere verbal attestation, then religious law seems superfluous. What is the point of a religious law that does nothing to increase one’s belief or prospects in the afterlife? Why would anyone feel compelled to obey religious laws if they only need to believe in the Lawgiver to be saved? When belief and action are connected, it is easy to see why someone would obey the law; in that case obeying religious laws would lead to an increase in belief and would save one in the hereafter.

To this, early Hanafis had two answers, one religious and one social. The re­ligious answer was: one does good deeds because they are good, and they might bring one closer to God. One avoids evil actions based on the same logic. God might decide to punish someone who commits evil deeds with a stint in hell^[47] — God can do whatever God pleases — but Hanafis held that God would most likely forgive believers and enter them into paradise.2^[48] One can never be sure about God’s ultimate decision to punish or not, but worrying about the hereafter misses the point of religiosity and obeying the law. One should strive to be a good person out of love for God, and Islamic law contains rules for being good.

For instance, the law that commands drinking water with the right hand is not to be obeyed because drinking with the left hand will send one to hell. Rath­er, Hanafis believed that drinking with the right hand was part of being a good person, much as we think that rules of etiquette make one a good citizen. One lane of the road is for driving slowly, the other is for overtaking; we say ‘please’ when asking for something, and ‘thank you’ when receiving it; these are not hard and fast laws, but are rules for good conduct. Similarly, saying ‘Praise be to God’ after sneezing will not enter one into paradise, just as omitting it will not lead one to hell, but it does represent good conduct and fidelity to God.

When viewed this way, many Islamic laws can be seen as instructions about etiquette. Proposed procedures for prayer, fasting, giving charity, and performing the hajj pilgrimage — rules of worship that comprise the bulk of most legal man­uals — are, in this conception, exhortations for ethical conduct rather than what we might call ‘religious laws’.

Early Hanafis saw their approach to law as especially virtuous, claiming that they followed the law merely out of a desire to embody good conduct and out of love for God. They chided others who linked belief and actions, denouncing them as deeply cynical for assuming that people only follow laws to increase in belief, attain heaven, or avoid hell.^[49] By contrast, Hanafis saw themselves as submitting out of pure devotion.

The second reason that early Hanafis gave for obeying Islamic law had to do with social cohesion. This was predicated on their belief that the only thing that separates believers from disbelievers is a verbalised shahada. Thus, being a be­liever, aside from entering one into paradise, was a statement about identity, and a desire to align oneself with others who profess faith.^{[50] [51] [52] When verbalizing the shahada, one is claiming a shared identity with a group of individuals who live in a society that has shared social practices and is governed by a shared set of rules and laws. Verbalizing the shahada, then, is an implicit agreement to align oneself with the Muslim community, and to follow Muslim laws and practices when living amongst Muslims?2 These laws are termed ‘Islamic laws’ not because they are somehow divine, but because they describe a social con­tract that Muslims agree to abide by when living with one another. They are Is­lamic only in the sense that they are rooted in Muslim traditions and pertain to those who identify as Muslim, not because they are revealed or accord to the Di­vine Truth.}

This is essential to the early Hanafi approach to law and justice. When Islam­ic law has no metaphysical or salvific content, it moves away from spiritual law, and moves toward civil law. These are laws that guide the community, not be­cause they will lead to salvation, but because they order Muslim practice.

In a nutshell, early Hanafis believed that Islamic laws describe the social contract to which Muslims agree to abide while residing within the political boundaries of Muslim society (dar al-Islam).33 This social contract serves as a backdrop for laws related to both religious rituals (^,ibdddtj and interpersonal re­lations (mu^,amalat). In the realm of religious rituals, Hanafis believed that there are some religious rituals that are so unanimously agreed upon — namely, pray­er, fasting in Ramadan, giving the prescribed charity, and performing hajj — that to deny them would be tantamount to renouncing one’s membership in the Mus­lim community. Only God may legislate these rituals in the first place, but believ­ers are free to enact them in many different ways — or, indeed, not to enact them at all — so long as they recognise that these actions define the boundaries of cit­izenship within the community.^{[53] [54] [55]}

Laws related to interpersonal relations are likewise subject to continual com­munity interpretation; there can be no interpersonal law that is universally or in­herently just and thus enforced in perpetuity. If the community decides to follow new or modified laws, then those laws would become Islamic law. That is true even for laws that appear deeply entrenched in Islamic legal texts and traditions. Early Hanafis were resolute on this point, and said that even when a specific law is stipulated in the Quran, that does not make the law inherently just or univer­sally applicable?⁵

To understand exactly how they saw Quranic laws as only relatively just, we can take the example of corporal punishments. The Quran prescribes corporal punishment for acts like theft, adultery, and brigandage. For theft, the Quran prescribes amputation, for adultery flogging, and for brigandage both cutting off opposing limbs and crucifixion. If we were to presume that laws have some connection to the Divine, then we might think that these corporal punish­ments are the embodiment of Divine Justice. Early Hanafis, however, did not make such a connection, and indeed they did not think that these laws were in­herently just. We can see exactly how and why by taking a closer look at one prominent early Hanafi, Abu Mansur al-Maturidi, and his views on corporal pun­ishment.