52 M. Sait Özervarli
hood and the rejection of it.^51 Every individual is aware of his or her
knowledge or lack of it by the fiṭra; as such, individuals usually do not
contest an issue unless they have knowledge about it. When truth is
there and accessible by the mind, the fiṭra will naturally accept and feel
satisfied with it, but when it is false, it will naturally withdraw from
it.^52 This impulse is the natural inclination towards virtue and wisdom.
God is the highest truth, and human knowledge about Him is the high-
est wisdom. Therefore, remembrance (dhikr) of Him is the foundation
of all goodness, which allows direct contact with His wisdom. By doing
dhikr, the individual receives spiritual guidance to protect himself or
herself from falsehood. When a human individual remembers God, he
has knowledge of Him naturally. Reflecting upon Him, however, does
not provide the same knowledge, since reflection (naẓar or tafakkur)
depends on using metaphors and comparisons; whereas God is abso-
lutely incomparable to anything and has no equal or similar. Although
some may feel satisfied with rational methods, the natural capacity of
fiṭra differs from reason (ʿaql) and does not function through inferen-
tial methods. The knowledge of fiṭra is simply there, and its source
is God’s creation (that is why it is attributed to God in the Koran as
fiṭrat allāh). Thus, Ibn Taymiyya, referring to the Koranic verses (6:91,
22:74, 39:67), argues that dhikr pertains to God, and tafakkur pertains
to the created world, as the human mind will never be able to make an
exact estimation of God.^53
In the modern period, Muslim theologians showed more interest in
the fiṭra argument than post-Taymiyyan scholars, though with a dif-
ferent terminology. The Syrian Salafi reformist Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī
(d. 1914), the Indian modernist thinker Shiblī Nuʿmānī (d. 1914), and
the Ottoman Turkish theologian İzmirli İsmail Hakkı (d. 1946) are the
prominent figures who discussed the relation between human nature
and belief in God. In his Dalāʾil al-tawḥīd, which counts 25 proofs
of the existence of God in its first chapter, al-Qāsimī names the first
proof burhān al-fiṭra. Al-Qāsimī explains that despite its being neces-
sary, he regarded fiṭra as a burhān (decisive argument), due to its reli-
ability and its being unaffected by doubts and other skeptical views.
Quoting al-Iṣfahānī and referring to many Koranic verses, al-Qāsimī
51 Idem, al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn, edited by Syed Sulaiman Nadwi, Bombay
1949, p. 428.
52 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn, p. 381.
53 Madjid, Nurcholis: Ibn Taymiyya on Kalam and Falsafa, Ph. D. thesis (The
University of Chicago) 1984, pp. 70–72.
Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University
Authenticated