Faith: Maarifah of God

Faith: Maarifah of God to us? We yearn for our Lord to admit us among the righteous.’ And for their words God will reward them with Gardens through which rivers flow, wherein they shall abide forever. That is the reward of those who do good.” (The Quran, 5:83-85) By studying both these verses, we learn what constitutes faith. Those fortunate souls who are recognized and accepted in the Hereafter by God will be ushered into Paradise, where they will live in a world of unending happiness and comforts. The first thing that God desires is that faith should enter in one’s heart (The Quran, 49:14). Just mouthing some words is not an act which will earn God’s acceptance or which will establish the utterer of those words as a believer. Words which fall from the tongue are, in fact, only a verbal expression of the acceptance of faith. To God, the truly desirable faith is that which so penetrates to the innermost recesses of one’s heart, that it becomes the most important part of one’s consciousness. It is from this that a person’s spirituality begins to build. From another verse, we learn that faith is another name for the realization of truth. That is, when man is truly able to realize faith and his Creator and is deeply aware of the fact that he is a helpless, powerless servant of God. When he reserves all greatness and all perfection for God, belief has so become a part and parcel of his personality that he surrenders himself before God. It is this deep experience of faith which is called maarifah or