Origin 657 to 900 CE
Faith, distinguished in the tradition from islam, submission, and from ihsan, excellence. Its content is set out as the six articles: belief in God, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Last Day, and divine decree. Twelver Shia theology arranges its own five roots of religion differently, adding divine justice and the imamate.
The doctrinally live question is not the list but the relation between faith and action. Does a Muslim who commits a grave sin remain a believer? The Kharijites answered no and treated the grave sinner as an unbeliever, with the consequence that he could be fought. The Murjia answered that judgement should be deferred to God and that faith is affirmation in the heart, unaffected by deeds. The Mutazila took an intermediate position, holding the grave sinner to be neither believer nor unbeliever. The position that became mainstream Sunni holds that faith increases and decreases with deeds but that the grave sinner remains a believer, subject to God's judgement.
This is not an antiquarian dispute. The question of when a Muslim may be declared an unbeliever, takfir, follows directly from it, and it is the doctrinal joint at which modern militant movements have made their argument. Mainstream scholarly authorities across the schools have restricted takfir tightly and the restriction is argued on exactly these classical grounds.
Facts
Status
Status Within the TraditionDefined and binding within this tradition 1Tradition: Islam An article of the creed Status Within the TraditionRejected, or not held, within this tradition 1Tradition: Islam The Kharijite position that grave sin removes faith was rejected by the Sunni consensus The Claim
The ClaimIman names faith in Islamic theology, conventionally analysed into belief in God, the angels, the scriptures, the prophets, the Last Day and divine decree, and is paired with correct practice as the two component parts of religion. 2 Origins
Origin Period Learn More
Faith, and What It Is Made Of
Iman, usually translated "faith," is the inward counterpart to the outward acts of Islam, and the question of what exactly it consists of produced the first great theological dispute in the religion. A widely cited prophetic report, the "hadith of Gabriel," distinguishes three levels: islam (submission, the outward practice), iman (faith, the inward assent), and ihsan (excellence, worshipping God "as though you see him"). Faith itself is commonly analysed into belief in God, his angels, his books, his messengers, the Last Day, and the divine decree.
The disputed part is the relationship of faith to works. If faith is purely inward assent, can a grave sinner still be a believer? If faith requires righteous action, does sin put a person outside the community of the faithful? Because the earliest Muslims had to decide how to regard fellow Muslims who had committed serious wrongs, above all in the civil wars of the first century, the abstract question of what faith is had immediate and violent stakes.
Five Answers to One Question
The atlas records the positions that formed around the standing of the sinning believer, each presented as the considered view of a movement rather than a deviation.
The Kharijites held that the grave sinner is thereby an unbeliever, and drew fierce practical conclusions; their modern descendants, the Ibadis, reject the extreme form. The Murji'a took the opposite line: judgement on the sinner is deferred to God, and faith in the heart is not cancelled by wrong action, a position later partly absorbed into mainstream Sunnism. The Mu'tazila proposed an intermediate standing, the grave sinner being neither believer nor unbeliever but in a category between. The mainstream Sunni theologians, al-Ash'ari, al-Maturidi and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, settled on the view that faith increases with obedience and decreases with sin, but that the sinner remains a believer, spared the takfir of the Kharijites and the limbo of the Mu'tazila. Twelver Shia theology frames faith around its own "five roots," including divine justice and the imamate, so that acknowledgement of the rightful Imams belongs to the content of faith itself. The dispute is not antiquarian: the Kharijite logic of declaring other Muslims unbelievers (takfir) recurs whenever modern movements revive it, and the mainstream rejection of that logic traces directly to this early settlement.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Iman is foundational to Ahmadiyya.
Iman is foundational to Ismaili Shia Islam.
Iman is foundational to Twelver Shia Islam, understood as inseparable from acceptance of the Imamate.
Iman, faith defined by belief in God, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Last Day and divine decree, is foundational to Sunni Islam.
Iman is foundational to Zaydi Shia Islam.
Held Differently
Ibadism, Denominations The Ibadis reject the extreme Kharijite form, holding that the grave sinner is an ingrate rather than an idolater and may not be killed for it.
Positions on This Question
Ashari theology holds that faith is assent of the heart, that it increases and decreases, and that the grave sinner remains a believer under judgement, which is the settled Sunni position against both the Kharijites and the Mutazila.
Iman is affirmed in Kharijite doctrine in the movement's founding form: faith and act are inseparable, so the grave sinner has left the faith. This is the position the whole later argument about iman was conducted against.
The Mutazila held the intermediate position, al-manzila bayn al-manzilatayn: the grave sinner is neither a believer nor an unbeliever but occupies a station between the two.
Iman is affirmed in Salafi doctrine in the traditionalist form: faith is statement, conviction and act together, and it increases and decreases.
The five roots, which add divine justice and the imamate to the articles the Sunni creeds carry.
Iman is affirmed in Sufism as the second of the three terms of the hadith of Gabriel, with ihsan as the third and the ground on which the Sufi claim to a discipline of its own rests.
Faith increases and decreases with works, and the grave sinner remains a believer. The mainstream Sunni settlement between the Kharijite and Murjiite extremes.
Iman is affirmed in Wahhabi doctrine in the traditionalist form: statement, conviction and act together, increasing and decreasing.
Sources
1. Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought
Michael Cook, Cambridge University Press, 2000On the link between the standing of the sinner and the licence to act against him
2. Islamic Creeds: A Selection
An Introduction to Shi'i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi'ism
The Ismailis: Their History and Doctrines, 2nd edition
The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition
P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), Brill, 2005View the Source Sahih Muslim
Muslim ibn al-HajjajBook of faith, the report defining islam, iman and ihsanView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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