Ramadan Day 9: Verses from the Quran
Thu Oct 13, 2005 at 04:04:54 PM PDT
Each day during
Ramadan, I am presenting a verse from the Quran with a few thoughts or comments. An introduction to this series is
here. Inshallah (God willing), I hope that this may be of benefit to any who are interested in learning a bit more about Islam and Muslim belief.
Quran 7:172:
And when your Lord took from the loins of the Children of Adam their offspring, and He made them bear witness about themselves: Am I not your Lord?, they said, Yes, we bear witness. This is lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, We were heedless of this
The traditional
commentary on this verse connects it to another verse,
30:30:
So set your purpose (O Muhammad) for the religion as a man by nature upright - the nature created by Allah (fitrah), in which He has created man. There is no altering (the laws of) Allah's creation. That is the upstanding religion, but most people do not know
The fitrah (innate human nature; literally, the way God created us) is an important concept in Islam. Verse 7:172 explains that the fitrah or innate nature of human beings is to bear witness to God's oneness. That is, all people have an innate sense of religion and this is the true religion, that God is One.
What happens next is that we move away from this, either by forgetting what we innately know, or through being brought up in a specific religion, that may contain man-made doctrines. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) explained this in a hadith (which is also referenced in the commentary):
Abu Huraira reported the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) as saying: No child is born but upon Fitra. It is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Polytheist
The purpose of the prophets and scriptures that God has sent is to call people back to their innate religion, to remind them of what they have forgotten, and to help them distinguish between the His message and man-made doctrines.
To put this another way, we do not need the specific form of the religion to give us knowledge we would not otherwise have that is necessary for salvation. A person who remained closely in touch with their fitrah could find the way on their own.
This explains the state of people who die as children, or who were never brought any message or scripture. They will be judged by how true they were to their innate knowledge of right and wrong.
However, most people would be unable to achieve this on their own, without some reminder. So God sent a prophet to every nation with the reminder.
This is the basic Islamic concept of religion.
More information about the fitrah is available at The Definition of Fitrah, which is a bit more technical.
