بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
In the Name of Allah Most-Compassionate, Most-Merciful
Introduction
In the recent post ‘The Heart as a Prosperous City Pt2‘, I concluded by mentioning something about Certainty in Virtues:
When we realise good virtues do not change and are not altered by people practicing its opposite and when our belief in good virtues does not bend nor alter because of experience of people exhibiting bad qualities then we become certain of what is truly good. In this realisation of the absolute nature of goodness we possess something that is unbreakable and unshakeable which is absolute certainty in good virtues. And this is true because all goodness comes from Allah and Allah is not subject to change in the least.
Now, what this statement referred to in the context of that post was the idea of maintaining one’s absolute belief in goodness because all goodness was from Allah and because He was absolute, one’s belief in goodness also remained absolute irrespective of whether people in different times in human history reflected that goodness in practice or not. People had after all been endowed with freewill and with the ability to apply that freewill through their own volition, an idea supported numerous times in the Qur’an with God’s instruction to the Prophet (sall’allahu alayhi wasallam) that he was sent only as a guide and a warner and not commanded or expected by Allah to stand over people and dictate to them how to exercise their freewill. In essence this has always been the prophetic instruction and has always been the methodology of the prophets and messengers towards the people to whom they were sent. Thus, it was that people, once in possession of the Divine Commandment and the intuitive gift endowed by God to man of discerning the truth, could and should of their own accord choose the truth over falsehood – for which one would then be rewarded or punished. So, this how revelation and prophetic guidance related to freewill and human existence. Either one chose the path of using one’s freewill as one willed without thought or consequence or one applied it in the context of his overall existence within the context of the universe in which he had come to reside and what that actually meant as far his thoughts and actions were concerned.
Certainty in Certainty
In the context of certainty in goodness I wanted to take this idea further towards examining the idea of possessing certainty in certainty. As we previously mentioned what we know is differentiated by how we know something and how we know something is differentiated by how we understand it and that understanding is governed by the extent to which we are certain of the truth of something. The greater our certainty towards a particular knowledge the greater is our conviction in upholding that knowledge and all its prerequisites. Thus in this respect the highest state of understanding is that of certainty, or yakin, because all knowledge and worship are ultimately directed towards increasing a believers certainty of what they know. And through possessing this greater certainty one is brought closer to understanding God because one’s belief in God and in His commandments becomes increasingly certain, as opposed to wavering. Thus, in this context Islam presents the idea that it is not necessarily the quantity of knowledge a person possesses but the certainty with which he knows it. He may know a little of which is has greater certainty than the one who possesses a lot about which he has little certainty. In Islam there is greater merit in the former.
But simply understanding this idea of certainty requires certainty in itself. In other words, one needs to possess certainty of certainty and knowledge of what certainty means in order then to be able to direct one’s knowledge and worship towards increasing in one’s certainty. The extent to which possessing certainty and knowledge of what certainty means cannot be underestimated. It is the path to which all knowledge and worship are directed. In other words, the purpose of our existence is to know God and the path by which we come to know God is through both knowledge and worship. Thus, if knowing God is dependent on our knowledge and worship, and if knowledge and worship are dependent on certainty, then it stands to reason that the extent to which we know God depends on our certainty. Knowledge and worship in this regard are not independent of one another but both inform each other whose root stems from the sincerity with which both are undertaken, not as a means to simply achieving the outward rites of religion, but those outward practices are inspired and informed by a fountain pouring from one’s heart of sincerity in one’s desire to gain closeness to one’s Creator.
If we’re aware of this very idea that everything we do in religion, every knowledge we acquire, the sum of our good deeds and actions, all of our noble aspirations, all of our worldly desires for the sake of Allah and His religion, and all observances of the Prophetic path are directed towards certainty, then this understanding places our entire existence into one single defining context. That single defining context tells us that all of these efforts are all directed towards achieving greater certainty of what we know. Thus, every year we read the entire Qur’an in the month of Ramadan, the same text, the same chapters and the same verses, and yet each year we become more certain of what we read last year, and hence of what we understand to be true. We gain a deeper, richer and more profound understanding of the same text we had read only twelve months ago. But in reading this text and in observing the Sunnah we find a different nuance and an entirely different context when we approach our entire being and existence in the context of seeking to increase our certainty of what we know and our knowledge of certainty. Certainty is ultimately the heart, it is that most beautiful vessel created by God and placed within our breast to contain the most purest knowledge in the universe, that of His knowledge. The stronger and purer that vessel the deep and purer will be the knowledge it can contain. As Allah says:
“Allah has not made for any man two hearts in his (one) body” (Al-Ahzab, 33:4)
May Allah grant us all a greater certainty of the truth and of His knowledge. Ameen
