Rethinking the Concept of Fiṭra Natural Disposition, Reason and Conscience
Main Article Content
Keywords
Human natural disposition, fitra, human agency, instinct, conscience
Abstract
Little attention has been given to the role of innate human nature or fiṭra in the motivation behind human action. This article examines the views of contemporary Western thinkers to creatively rethink the concept of fiṭra, not only from a theological perspective but also a scientific perspective. Drawing upon Islamic scholarship and previous research on the subject that explore the wide spectrum of connotations couched in the Islamic term fiṭra in comparison with Western perspectives, this study offers a fresh look at, and approach to, the concept of human disposition or primordial nature, giving special attention to the biological, epistemological, and ethical dimensions, while most studies of fiṭra focus mainly on the theological and spiritual sides. It is hoped that this conceptual analysis will serve as a stepping stone towards a more nuanced understanding of fiṭra not only as (i) a natural tendency to act or think in a particular way, but also as (ii) the religious instinct, (iii) the power of the mind to think and understand in a logical way, and (iv) the inner voice or conscience of what is right and wrong in one’s conduct or motives that drives the individual towards right action.
References
Endnotes
1 See, for example, Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (Notre Dame, Indiana:
Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1959); Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980; A. Mele (ed.), The Philosophy of Action (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1997); John Hyman and Helen Steward (eds.), Agency and Action
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004).
2 One may, inter alia, refer to M. J. Kister, “Pare Your Nails: A Study of an Early
Tradition,” in Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 11 (1979): 63-70; Yasien
Mohamed, Fiṭra: The Islamic Concept of Human Nature (London: Ta-Ha Publishers,
1996); id., “The Interpretations of Fiṭra,” in Islamic Studies, vol. 34, no. 2 (1995):
129–51; Geneviève Gobillot, La Fiṭra: la conception originelle, ses interpretations et
functions chez les penseurs musulmans (Damascus: Institut français d’archéologie
orientale, 2000); Camilla Adang, “Islam as the inborn religion of mankind: the concept
of fiṭra in the works of Ibn Hazm,” in Al-Qantara vol. 21 (2000): 391-410; Frank
Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī’s use of “original human disposition” (fiṭra) and its background
in the teachings of al-Fārābī and Avicenna,” in The Muslim World 102 (2012): 1–32;
Jon Hoover, “Fiṭra”, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd Ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2016); and
Raissa A. von Doetinchem de Rande, “Is the fiṭra mutable? A reformist conception
of human perfection in Shāh Walī Allāh’s Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha,” in Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society 33/1 (2023): 87-109.
3 There is no consensus among scholars on how to translate fiṭra, which has been
rendered as ‘primordial nature’ (by Oliver Leaman), ‘natural disposition’ (Camilla
Adang), ‘natural intelligence’ (Anke von Kugelgen), ‘original human disposition’
(Frank Griffel), ‘original normative disposition’ (Carl El-Tobgui), ‘innate inclination’
(Andrew March), ‘la disposition originelle’ (Guy Monnot), ‘l’authentique prédisposition’
(Marie-Th. Urvoy), ‘la conception originelle’ (Geneviève Gobillot), , ‘tendance
naturelle humaine bonne’ (Olivier Carré), ‘élan originel’ (Paul Valadier), ‘un état
naturellement pur’ (Géraldine Mossière), ‘nature religieuse naturelle ou innée’ (Yves
Gonzalez-Quijano), ‘der Stand der Unschuld’ (Josef van Ess), ‘natürliche Bestimmung’
(Mathias Rohe), ’die gottgegebene Ordnung’ (Joachim Langner).
4 See al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī, al-Ta‘rīfāt (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1357/1938),
p. 147 and al-Ghazālī, al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl, in Majmū‘at Rasā’il al-Imām
al-Ghazālī, ed. Aḥmad Shams al-Dīn, 7 parts (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyyah,
2007), p. 26.
5 Muslim (1: 223). Another ḥadīth transmitted by al-Bukhārī tells us that five practices
belong to the sunan al-fiṭra, namely, (i) circumcision, (ii) keeping the nails pared,
(iii) trimming the moustache, (iv) letting the beard grow, and (v) removing underarm
hair.
6 For further discussion, see M. J. Kister, “Pare Your Nails: A Study of an Early
Tradition,” in Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 11 (1979): 63-70.
98 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISL AM AND SOCIE T Y 40:3-4
7 See the relevant entry in al-Mawsūʿah al-Fiqhiyyah (Kuwait: Wizārat al-Awqāf
wa-l-Shu’ūn al-Islāmiyyah, 1415/1995), vol. 32, p. 182: “wa-al-fiṭra bi-kasr al-fā’
jā’at ayḍan bi-maʿnā ṣadaqat al-fiṭr”.
8 Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-‘Arab (Būlāq: al-Maṭba‘ah al-Amīriyyah, 1300/1882), vol. 5, p.
363; cf. Edward W. Lane, Arabic English Lexicon (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968),
vol. 6, p. 2416.
9 For example, a Darwinist science popularizer writes: “Up to 10 million years after
the appearance of our earliest ancestors, Homo Sapiens not only look, move and
breathe like an ape, they also think like one.” See Dr Hwa A. Lim, PhD, Multiplicity
Yours: Cloning, Stem Cell Research, and Regenerative Medicine (Singapore: World
Scientific Publishing, 2006), pp. 53-54.
10 It has been reported that college students who frequently listen to loud rock bands
suffer some hearing loss. See D.M. Lipscomb, “Ear Damage from Exposure to Rock
and Roll Music,” in Archives of Otolaryngology, 90 (1969): 545-555.
11 Kostas N. Fountoulakis et al., Psychobiology of Behaviour (New York: Springer Verlag,
2019), 88. For a comparative discussion, see William James, “Instinct” [originally
published in 1890], in Psychology: The Briefer Course, ed. Gordon Allport (Indiana:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 258–281; C.L. Morgan, “Some Definitions
of Instinct,” in Natural Sciences, vol. 7 (1895): 321-329; Paul Baker, “Is the Instinct
Theory Reliable as an Explanation of Human Behavior?” in Social Science, vol. 2,
no. 4 (1927): 341–348; Mark S. Blumberg, Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006); Robert M. Winston, Human Instinct:
How Our Primeval Impulses Shape Our Modern Lives (London: Bantam Books,
2008); and Kenneth R. Miller, The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason,
Consciousness, and Free Will (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).
12 See Nichola Raihani, The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World (London:
St. Martin’s Press, 2021); Amy Chua, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate
of Nations (New York: Penguin Press, 2018); Bernd Heinrich, The Homing Instinct:
Meaning and Mystery in Animal Migration (Boston: H.M. Harcourt, 2014); Gene
Wallenstein, The Pleasure Instinct: Why We Crave Adventure, Chocolate, Pheromones,
and Music (New York: Wiley, 2008).
13 Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (New York:
Harper/Perennial, 2007); Namhee Lee et al., The Interactional Instinct: The Evolution
and Acquisition of Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Kevin
Warwick et al., Computing with Instinct: Rediscovering Artificial Intelligence (Berlin:
Springer, 2011); Andreas Nieder, A Brain for Numbers: The Biology of the Number
Instinct (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019); Philip Ball, The Music Instinct: How Music
Works and Why We Can’t Do without It (London: Oxford University Press, 2011);
and Francis Cholle, The Intuitive Compass: Why the Best Decisions Balance Reason
and Instinct (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
ARIF: RE THINKING THE CONCEPT OF FIṬRA 99
14 Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler, The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct (New York: Norton, 2011).
15 Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Mufradāt Alfāẓ al-Qur’ān, ed. (Damascus: Dār al-Qalam, 1412/1992), s.v. “f-ṭ-r”.
16 The ḥadīth in its various versions as cited above is transmitted in Mālik ibn Anas, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, ed. M. Fuʾād ‘Abd al-Bāqī. 2 vols. (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1406/1985), 1: 241; al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ (Beirut: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1423/2002), 327-328 and 334; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ (Riyadh: Dār al-Salām, 1421/2000), 1157-1158; Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arna’ūṭ and Muḥammad Kāmil Qurabillī. 7 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Risālah al-ʿĀlamiyyah, 1430/2009), 7: 97.
17 Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, ḥadīth no. 6089 (kitāb al-Da‘awāt – bāb idhā bāta ṭāhiran).
18 See Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006) and Andre Newberg, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (2002).
19 Henry Rosemont and Huston Smith, Is There a Universal Grammar for Religion? (2008).
20 For further illumination, see Frank Milton Bristol, The Religious Instinct of Man (Cincinnati: Jennings & Pye 1904); Thomas John Hardy, The Religious Instinct (New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1913); William K. Wright, “Instinct and Sentiment in Religion”, in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1916), pp. 28-44; Jay Schulkin, “An Instinct for Spiritual Quests: Quiet Religion,” in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 21, no. 4 (2007): 307–320; Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures (New York: Penguin, 2009); Howard P. Kainz, The Existence of God and the Faith-Instinct (New Jersey: Rosemont Publishing, 2010); Jesse Bering, The Belief Instinct (New York: Norton, 2011); Jesse Bering, The God Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life (London: Nicholas Brealey, 2013); Justin L. Barrett, Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief (New York: Free Press, 2012).
21 Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʿah al-ʿUthmāniyyah al-Miṣriyyah, 1352/1933), vol. 1, pp. 93–94.
22 Ibn Taymiyyah, Darʾ Taʿāruḍ al-ʿAql wa-al-Naql, ed. M. Rashād Sālim (Riyadh, 1399–1400/1979–1980), vol. 8, p. 482. Henri Laoust calls it l’innéisme et l’universalité de notre croyance en lui (‘innate and universal belief in Him’) in his Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Takī-d-dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taimīya (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1939), p. 153, n. 1.
23 Ibn Taymiyyah, Minhāj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyyah fī Naqd Kalām al-Shīʿah wa-al-Qadariyyah, 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘ah al-Amīriyyah, 1321/1903), vol. 3, pp. 100-101. For further discussion, see Wael B. Hallaq, “Ibn Taymiyya on the Existence of God,” in Acta Orientalia 52 (1991), pp. 49-69.
100 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISL AM AND SOCIE T Y 40:3-4
24 See Michael Raposa, “Instinct and Inquiry: A Reconsideration of Peirce’s Mature
Religious Naturalism,” in Pragmatism and Naturalism: Scientific and Social Inquiry
After Representationalism, ed. Matthew Bagger (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2018), pp. 27–43.
25 See Martin Luther, Consilia Theologica Witebergensia (Frankfurt am Main: Wust,
1664), p. 866; and Luther und Melanchthon: Referate und Berichte des Zweiten
Internationalen Kongresses für Lutherforschung, ed. Vilmos Vajta (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), p. 59.
26 Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 13–20, cited by M. Sait Özervarli, “Divine
Wisdom, Human Agency and the Fiṭra in Ibn Taymiyya’s Thought,” in Islamic
Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,
ed. Birgit Krawietz and Georges Tamer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), p. 53.
27 Martini Lutheri theologia pura et sincera ex viri divini scriptis universis, ed. Johannes
Henricus May (Frankfurt am Main: Maximilianus a Sande, 1709), p. 129: “Duplex est
cognitio Dei, generalis et propria. Generalem habent omnes homines, scilicet quod Deus sit,
quod creaverit coelum et terram, quod sit Justus … Deinde satis testantur etiam cultus et
religions, quae fuerunt et manserunt apud omnes gentes, quod omnes homines habuerunt
generalem quondam notitiam Dei. Hoc lumen in omnium hominum cordibus est.”
28 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, tr. Ford Lewis
Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), vol. 1, pp. 43–44.
29 Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifā’ fī al-Ilāhiyyāt, ed. G.C. Anawati and Said Zayed (Cairo: al-Hay’ah
al-‘Āmmah li-Shu’ūn al-Maṭābi‘ al-Amīriyyah, 1380/1960), p. 29.
30 Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifā’: al-Manṭiq: al-Burhān, ed. A.E. Afifi et al. (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘ah
al-Amīriyyah, 1956), p. 64.
31 See Asad Q. Ahmed, Avicenna’s Deliverance: Logic (Karachi: Oxford University
Press, 2011), pp. 3–5 and 89–93; Frank Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī’s Use of “Original
Human Disposition” (fiṭra) and Its Background in the Teachings of al-Fārābī and
Avicenna,” in the Muslim World, vol. 102 (2012), pp. 11–25; and Jon Hoover, “Fiṭra”,
in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd Edition (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
32 Ibn Sīnā, Kitab an-Najāt. ed. Mājid Fakhrī (Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīdah, 1405/1985),
pp. 99; translation in Dimitri Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” in Oriens, vol.40,
no.2 (2012), pp. 408-409, and Deborah Black, “Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The
Logical and Psychological Dimensions,” in Dialogue, vol. 31, no. 2 (1993), p. 233. For
the other references to fiṭra in Ibn Sīnā’s works, see A.-M. Goichon, Lexique de la
langue philosophique ďIbn Sīnā (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer), p. 19.
33 Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt wa-al-Tanbīhāt, ed. J. Forget (Leiden: Brill, 1892), vol. 1, p. 58
and Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifā’: al-Manṭiq: al-Burhān, ed. A.E. Afifi and I. Madkour (Cairo:
al-Maṭba‘ah al-Amīriyyah, 1956), p. 64.
ARIF: RE THINKING THE CONCEPT OF FIṬRA 101
34 Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt, vol. 1, p. 56.
35 Ibn Taymiyyah, Naqḍ al-Manṭiq, ed. M. Ḥāmid al-Fiqī et al. (Cairo, 1370/1951), p. 29. Ibn Taymiyyah’s extensive treatment of fiṭra is found in his Darʾ Ta‘āruḍ, vol. 8, pp. 359-535; as well as in his “Risālah fī al-kalām ‘alā al-Fiṭra” in Majmūʿat al-Rasāʾil al-Kubrā, vol. 2, pp. 332-349 and his al-Radd ʿalā al-Manṭiqiyyīn, pp. 420-432.
36 Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 255-256.
37 Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Furqān bayna Awliyā’ al-Raḥmān wa-Awliyā’ al-Shayṭān (Damascus: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1382/1962), pp. 88-89.
38 See Ibn Taymiyyah, Dar’ Ta‘āruḍ, vol. 7, pp. 37-38. According to Sophia Vasalou, Ibn Taymiyyah was trying to disavow the binary opposition of Muʿtazilism and Ashʿarism on moral philosophy; he called for a new position that would be neither one but something in between which is both rooted in the scripture and explained in rationalist terms. “Right and wrong, he claimed, are known by reason [ʿaql]. And while the language of reason would indeed be deployed in couching this claim, Ibn Taymiyya in many places replaced it with another—that of fiṭra. The claim then became: We know what is right and wrong by the human fiṭra.” See S. Vasalou, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theological Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 3-4.
39 Robert T. Pennock, An Instinct for Truth: Curiosity and the Moral Character of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019).
40 Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. and tr. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), 980a 22, vol. 1, p. 2.
41 See Kenneth R. Hammond, Beyond Rationality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 30. Cf. Amanda Spink, Information Behavior: An Evolutionary Instinct (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2010)
42 Robert T. Pennock, An Instinct for Truth: Curiosity and the Moral Character of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019), p. 2.
43 Charles Darwin, “Letter to John Stephens Henslow,” April 1, 1848. Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1167,” http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/DCP -LETT-1167.
44 Victoria Talwar et al., “Children’s conception knowledge of lie-telling and its relation to their actual behaviors: implications for court competence examination,” in Law and Human Behavior 26 (2002), pp. 395–415 and Salman Akhtar et al., Lying, Cheating, and Carrying On: Developmental, Clinical, and Sociocultural Aspects of Dishonesty and Deceit (Lanham: J. Aronson, 2009), pp. 34-35.
45 See Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Perspectives on Justice and Morality: The Moral Punishment Instinct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) and Patricia S. Churchland, Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition (New York: Norton, 2019). There was a debate in the 1960s over whether human nature is primordially good or evil. The claim that human beings were instinctually aggressive found its most
102 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISL AM AND SOCIE T Y 40:3-4
articulate spokesmen in Lorenz and Ardrey, while the claim to the contrary was
expressed in Montagu’s writings that humans were naturally cooperative. Aside
from their basic disagreement about the inherent tendency of human behavior, both
camps actually agreed that there was such a thing as “human nature”, possessing a
definable essence and grounded in biological tendencies evident throughout the natural
and animal worlds. See Nadine Weidman, Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of
Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2021), p. 142.
46 The ḥadīth is considered authentic and transmitted in the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim, 32: 6195
and 32: 6196.
47 Transmitted by Aḥmad in his Musnad, al-Dārimī in his Sunan, and al-Ṭaḥāwī in his
Sharḥ Mushkil al-Āthār.
48 See Dacher Keltner et al., The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2010) and Michael McCullough, Beyond Revenge: The
Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2008).
49 See Arnold M. Rothstein, “Shame and the Superego,” in The Psychoanalytic Study
of the Child, 49/1 (1994), pp. 263-277. Cf. Hisham Abu-Raiya, “Western Psychology
and Muslim Psychology in Dialogue: Comparisons Between a Qura’nic Theory of
Personality and Freud’s and Jung’s Ideas,” in Journal of Religion and Health, vol. 53,
no. 2 (2014), pp. 326-338.
50 For a recent discussion on this issue, see Raissa A. von Doetinchem de Rande, “Is
the fiṭra mutable? A reformist conception of human perfection in Shāh Walī Allāh’s
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha,” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 33/1 (2023): 87-109,
who argues against the interpretation of fiṭra as human perfection that can fit
different ages without essentially changing.
51 For an extensive discussion, see Peter J. Awn, Satan’s Tragedy and Redemption: Iblīs
in Sufi Psychology (Leiden: Brill, 1983), especially pp. 18-56; and Edmund Beck, “Iblis
und Mensch, Satan und Adam: Der Werdegang einer koranischen Erzahlung,” in
Muséon 89 (1976), pp. 195-244.
52 See the Qur’an 2:36; 3:155, 4:60, 5:91, 6:68, 12:42, 18:63, 7:27, 47:25, and 17:53.
53 The Qur’an 14:22 relates: “And Satan will say to his followers after the judgment has
been passed, “Indeed, God has made you a true promise. I too made you a promise,
but I failed you. I did not have any authority over you. I only called you, and you
responded to me. So do not blame me; blame yourselves. I cannot save you, nor
can you save me. Indeed, I denounce your previous association of me with Allah in
loyalty. Surely the wrongdoers will suffer a painful punishment.”
54 The ḥadīth is transmitted in varying word by al-Bukhārī and Muslim in their Ṣaḥīḥs,
Aḥmad in his Musnad, al-Tirmidhī in his Sunan, as well as al-Dārimī and al-Ṭaḥāwī
in their respective collections.
55 See Muslim, al-Jāmi‘ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, 8: 139.
ARIF: RE THINKING THE CONCEPT OF FIṬRA 103
56 See, for example, Nadine Weidman, Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021); Jonathan H. Pincus, Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill? (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002) and Charles Stewart, Dire Emotions and Lethal Behaviours: Eclipse of the Life Instinct (London: Routledge, 2007).
57 Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifā’: al-Manṭiq: al-Burhān, ed. A.E. Afifi (Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-‘Arabī, 1955), p. 111.
58 See Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 263-264.
59 Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 42. The analogy is based on a ḥadīth reporting the incident in which the angel Gabriel, on the occasion of the Night Journey (isrāʾ) to Jerusalem and Ascent (mi‘rāj) to the heaven, presented the Prophet with a cup of milk and a cup of wine, then told him to choose between the two. When the Prophet instinctively preferred the milk over the wine, the angel Gabriel responded, “You have chosen the fiṭra; had you chosen the wine, your community (ummah) would have gone astray.” See al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 852; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 87; and al-Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ, 5:201–202.
60 For further discussion on fiṭra according to her, see Livnat Holtzman, “Human Choice, Divine Guidance and the Fiṭra Tradition: The Use of Hadith in Theological Treatises by Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, ed. Y. Rapoport and S. Ahmed (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 163–188; Nurcholish Madjid, Ibn Taymiyya on Kalām and Falsafa, PhD diss. University of Chicago, 1984, pp. 65-76; Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 39-44; and Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 260-264.
61 See Ibn Taymiyyah, Minhaj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyyah fī Naqd Kalām al-Shī‘ah wa-al-Qadariyyah, 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘ah al-Amīriyyah, 1321/1903), vol. 3,
pp. 100-101; id., Bayān Muwāfaqat Ṣarīḥ al-Ma‘qūl li-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Manqūl, printed on the margin of the Minhaj al-Sunnah, vol. 3, pp. 101-102. For more discussion on Ibn Taymiyyah’s argument on human fiṭra as the basis for proving God’s existence, see Muḥammad al-Sayyid al-Jalayand, aI-Imam Ibn Taymiyyah wa Mawqifuhu min Qaḍiyyat al-Ta’wīl (Cairo: al-Maṭābi‘ al-Amīriyyah, 1393/1973), pp. 327-338.
62 Transmitted by Muslim in his Ṣaḥīḥ (kitab al-jannah wa-ṣifat naʿīmihā wa-ahlihā) ḥadīth no. 2865.
1 See, for example, Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action (Notre Dame, Indiana:
Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1959); Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980; A. Mele (ed.), The Philosophy of Action (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1997); John Hyman and Helen Steward (eds.), Agency and Action
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004).
2 One may, inter alia, refer to M. J. Kister, “Pare Your Nails: A Study of an Early
Tradition,” in Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 11 (1979): 63-70; Yasien
Mohamed, Fiṭra: The Islamic Concept of Human Nature (London: Ta-Ha Publishers,
1996); id., “The Interpretations of Fiṭra,” in Islamic Studies, vol. 34, no. 2 (1995):
129–51; Geneviève Gobillot, La Fiṭra: la conception originelle, ses interpretations et
functions chez les penseurs musulmans (Damascus: Institut français d’archéologie
orientale, 2000); Camilla Adang, “Islam as the inborn religion of mankind: the concept
of fiṭra in the works of Ibn Hazm,” in Al-Qantara vol. 21 (2000): 391-410; Frank
Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī’s use of “original human disposition” (fiṭra) and its background
in the teachings of al-Fārābī and Avicenna,” in The Muslim World 102 (2012): 1–32;
Jon Hoover, “Fiṭra”, in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd Ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2016); and
Raissa A. von Doetinchem de Rande, “Is the fiṭra mutable? A reformist conception
of human perfection in Shāh Walī Allāh’s Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha,” in Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society 33/1 (2023): 87-109.
3 There is no consensus among scholars on how to translate fiṭra, which has been
rendered as ‘primordial nature’ (by Oliver Leaman), ‘natural disposition’ (Camilla
Adang), ‘natural intelligence’ (Anke von Kugelgen), ‘original human disposition’
(Frank Griffel), ‘original normative disposition’ (Carl El-Tobgui), ‘innate inclination’
(Andrew March), ‘la disposition originelle’ (Guy Monnot), ‘l’authentique prédisposition’
(Marie-Th. Urvoy), ‘la conception originelle’ (Geneviève Gobillot), , ‘tendance
naturelle humaine bonne’ (Olivier Carré), ‘élan originel’ (Paul Valadier), ‘un état
naturellement pur’ (Géraldine Mossière), ‘nature religieuse naturelle ou innée’ (Yves
Gonzalez-Quijano), ‘der Stand der Unschuld’ (Josef van Ess), ‘natürliche Bestimmung’
(Mathias Rohe), ’die gottgegebene Ordnung’ (Joachim Langner).
4 See al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī, al-Ta‘rīfāt (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1357/1938),
p. 147 and al-Ghazālī, al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl, in Majmū‘at Rasā’il al-Imām
al-Ghazālī, ed. Aḥmad Shams al-Dīn, 7 parts (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyyah,
2007), p. 26.
5 Muslim (1: 223). Another ḥadīth transmitted by al-Bukhārī tells us that five practices
belong to the sunan al-fiṭra, namely, (i) circumcision, (ii) keeping the nails pared,
(iii) trimming the moustache, (iv) letting the beard grow, and (v) removing underarm
hair.
6 For further discussion, see M. J. Kister, “Pare Your Nails: A Study of an Early
Tradition,” in Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 11 (1979): 63-70.
98 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISL AM AND SOCIE T Y 40:3-4
7 See the relevant entry in al-Mawsūʿah al-Fiqhiyyah (Kuwait: Wizārat al-Awqāf
wa-l-Shu’ūn al-Islāmiyyah, 1415/1995), vol. 32, p. 182: “wa-al-fiṭra bi-kasr al-fā’
jā’at ayḍan bi-maʿnā ṣadaqat al-fiṭr”.
8 Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-‘Arab (Būlāq: al-Maṭba‘ah al-Amīriyyah, 1300/1882), vol. 5, p.
363; cf. Edward W. Lane, Arabic English Lexicon (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1968),
vol. 6, p. 2416.
9 For example, a Darwinist science popularizer writes: “Up to 10 million years after
the appearance of our earliest ancestors, Homo Sapiens not only look, move and
breathe like an ape, they also think like one.” See Dr Hwa A. Lim, PhD, Multiplicity
Yours: Cloning, Stem Cell Research, and Regenerative Medicine (Singapore: World
Scientific Publishing, 2006), pp. 53-54.
10 It has been reported that college students who frequently listen to loud rock bands
suffer some hearing loss. See D.M. Lipscomb, “Ear Damage from Exposure to Rock
and Roll Music,” in Archives of Otolaryngology, 90 (1969): 545-555.
11 Kostas N. Fountoulakis et al., Psychobiology of Behaviour (New York: Springer Verlag,
2019), 88. For a comparative discussion, see William James, “Instinct” [originally
published in 1890], in Psychology: The Briefer Course, ed. Gordon Allport (Indiana:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 258–281; C.L. Morgan, “Some Definitions
of Instinct,” in Natural Sciences, vol. 7 (1895): 321-329; Paul Baker, “Is the Instinct
Theory Reliable as an Explanation of Human Behavior?” in Social Science, vol. 2,
no. 4 (1927): 341–348; Mark S. Blumberg, Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006); Robert M. Winston, Human Instinct:
How Our Primeval Impulses Shape Our Modern Lives (London: Bantam Books,
2008); and Kenneth R. Miller, The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason,
Consciousness, and Free Will (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018).
12 See Nichola Raihani, The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World (London:
St. Martin’s Press, 2021); Amy Chua, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate
of Nations (New York: Penguin Press, 2018); Bernd Heinrich, The Homing Instinct:
Meaning and Mystery in Animal Migration (Boston: H.M. Harcourt, 2014); Gene
Wallenstein, The Pleasure Instinct: Why We Crave Adventure, Chocolate, Pheromones,
and Music (New York: Wiley, 2008).
13 Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (New York:
Harper/Perennial, 2007); Namhee Lee et al., The Interactional Instinct: The Evolution
and Acquisition of Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Kevin
Warwick et al., Computing with Instinct: Rediscovering Artificial Intelligence (Berlin:
Springer, 2011); Andreas Nieder, A Brain for Numbers: The Biology of the Number
Instinct (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019); Philip Ball, The Music Instinct: How Music
Works and Why We Can’t Do without It (London: Oxford University Press, 2011);
and Francis Cholle, The Intuitive Compass: Why the Best Decisions Balance Reason
and Instinct (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).
ARIF: RE THINKING THE CONCEPT OF FIṬRA 99
14 Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler, The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct (New York: Norton, 2011).
15 Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Mufradāt Alfāẓ al-Qur’ān, ed. (Damascus: Dār al-Qalam, 1412/1992), s.v. “f-ṭ-r”.
16 The ḥadīth in its various versions as cited above is transmitted in Mālik ibn Anas, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, ed. M. Fuʾād ‘Abd al-Bāqī. 2 vols. (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1406/1985), 1: 241; al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ (Beirut: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1423/2002), 327-328 and 334; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ (Riyadh: Dār al-Salām, 1421/2000), 1157-1158; Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arna’ūṭ and Muḥammad Kāmil Qurabillī. 7 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Risālah al-ʿĀlamiyyah, 1430/2009), 7: 97.
17 Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, ḥadīth no. 6089 (kitāb al-Da‘awāt – bāb idhā bāta ṭāhiran).
18 See Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006) and Andre Newberg, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (2002).
19 Henry Rosemont and Huston Smith, Is There a Universal Grammar for Religion? (2008).
20 For further illumination, see Frank Milton Bristol, The Religious Instinct of Man (Cincinnati: Jennings & Pye 1904); Thomas John Hardy, The Religious Instinct (New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1913); William K. Wright, “Instinct and Sentiment in Religion”, in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1916), pp. 28-44; Jay Schulkin, “An Instinct for Spiritual Quests: Quiet Religion,” in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 21, no. 4 (2007): 307–320; Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures (New York: Penguin, 2009); Howard P. Kainz, The Existence of God and the Faith-Instinct (New Jersey: Rosemont Publishing, 2010); Jesse Bering, The Belief Instinct (New York: Norton, 2011); Jesse Bering, The God Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life (London: Nicholas Brealey, 2013); Justin L. Barrett, Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief (New York: Free Press, 2012).
21 Al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʿah al-ʿUthmāniyyah al-Miṣriyyah, 1352/1933), vol. 1, pp. 93–94.
22 Ibn Taymiyyah, Darʾ Taʿāruḍ al-ʿAql wa-al-Naql, ed. M. Rashād Sālim (Riyadh, 1399–1400/1979–1980), vol. 8, p. 482. Henri Laoust calls it l’innéisme et l’universalité de notre croyance en lui (‘innate and universal belief in Him’) in his Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Takī-d-dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taimīya (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1939), p. 153, n. 1.
23 Ibn Taymiyyah, Minhāj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyyah fī Naqd Kalām al-Shīʿah wa-al-Qadariyyah, 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘ah al-Amīriyyah, 1321/1903), vol. 3, pp. 100-101. For further discussion, see Wael B. Hallaq, “Ibn Taymiyya on the Existence of God,” in Acta Orientalia 52 (1991), pp. 49-69.
100 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISL AM AND SOCIE T Y 40:3-4
24 See Michael Raposa, “Instinct and Inquiry: A Reconsideration of Peirce’s Mature
Religious Naturalism,” in Pragmatism and Naturalism: Scientific and Social Inquiry
After Representationalism, ed. Matthew Bagger (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2018), pp. 27–43.
25 See Martin Luther, Consilia Theologica Witebergensia (Frankfurt am Main: Wust,
1664), p. 866; and Luther und Melanchthon: Referate und Berichte des Zweiten
Internationalen Kongresses für Lutherforschung, ed. Vilmos Vajta (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), p. 59.
26 Martin Luther, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 13–20, cited by M. Sait Özervarli, “Divine
Wisdom, Human Agency and the Fiṭra in Ibn Taymiyya’s Thought,” in Islamic
Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,
ed. Birgit Krawietz and Georges Tamer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), p. 53.
27 Martini Lutheri theologia pura et sincera ex viri divini scriptis universis, ed. Johannes
Henricus May (Frankfurt am Main: Maximilianus a Sande, 1709), p. 129: “Duplex est
cognitio Dei, generalis et propria. Generalem habent omnes homines, scilicet quod Deus sit,
quod creaverit coelum et terram, quod sit Justus … Deinde satis testantur etiam cultus et
religions, quae fuerunt et manserunt apud omnes gentes, quod omnes homines habuerunt
generalem quondam notitiam Dei. Hoc lumen in omnium hominum cordibus est.”
28 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, tr. Ford Lewis
Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), vol. 1, pp. 43–44.
29 Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifā’ fī al-Ilāhiyyāt, ed. G.C. Anawati and Said Zayed (Cairo: al-Hay’ah
al-‘Āmmah li-Shu’ūn al-Maṭābi‘ al-Amīriyyah, 1380/1960), p. 29.
30 Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifā’: al-Manṭiq: al-Burhān, ed. A.E. Afifi et al. (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘ah
al-Amīriyyah, 1956), p. 64.
31 See Asad Q. Ahmed, Avicenna’s Deliverance: Logic (Karachi: Oxford University
Press, 2011), pp. 3–5 and 89–93; Frank Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī’s Use of “Original
Human Disposition” (fiṭra) and Its Background in the Teachings of al-Fārābī and
Avicenna,” in the Muslim World, vol. 102 (2012), pp. 11–25; and Jon Hoover, “Fiṭra”,
in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd Edition (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
32 Ibn Sīnā, Kitab an-Najāt. ed. Mājid Fakhrī (Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīdah, 1405/1985),
pp. 99; translation in Dimitri Gutas, “The Empiricism of Avicenna,” in Oriens, vol.40,
no.2 (2012), pp. 408-409, and Deborah Black, “Estimation (Wahm) in Avicenna: The
Logical and Psychological Dimensions,” in Dialogue, vol. 31, no. 2 (1993), p. 233. For
the other references to fiṭra in Ibn Sīnā’s works, see A.-M. Goichon, Lexique de la
langue philosophique ďIbn Sīnā (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer), p. 19.
33 Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt wa-al-Tanbīhāt, ed. J. Forget (Leiden: Brill, 1892), vol. 1, p. 58
and Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifā’: al-Manṭiq: al-Burhān, ed. A.E. Afifi and I. Madkour (Cairo:
al-Maṭba‘ah al-Amīriyyah, 1956), p. 64.
ARIF: RE THINKING THE CONCEPT OF FIṬRA 101
34 Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt, vol. 1, p. 56.
35 Ibn Taymiyyah, Naqḍ al-Manṭiq, ed. M. Ḥāmid al-Fiqī et al. (Cairo, 1370/1951), p. 29. Ibn Taymiyyah’s extensive treatment of fiṭra is found in his Darʾ Ta‘āruḍ, vol. 8, pp. 359-535; as well as in his “Risālah fī al-kalām ‘alā al-Fiṭra” in Majmūʿat al-Rasāʾil al-Kubrā, vol. 2, pp. 332-349 and his al-Radd ʿalā al-Manṭiqiyyīn, pp. 420-432.
36 Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 255-256.
37 Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Furqān bayna Awliyā’ al-Raḥmān wa-Awliyā’ al-Shayṭān (Damascus: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1382/1962), pp. 88-89.
38 See Ibn Taymiyyah, Dar’ Ta‘āruḍ, vol. 7, pp. 37-38. According to Sophia Vasalou, Ibn Taymiyyah was trying to disavow the binary opposition of Muʿtazilism and Ashʿarism on moral philosophy; he called for a new position that would be neither one but something in between which is both rooted in the scripture and explained in rationalist terms. “Right and wrong, he claimed, are known by reason [ʿaql]. And while the language of reason would indeed be deployed in couching this claim, Ibn Taymiyya in many places replaced it with another—that of fiṭra. The claim then became: We know what is right and wrong by the human fiṭra.” See S. Vasalou, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theological Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 3-4.
39 Robert T. Pennock, An Instinct for Truth: Curiosity and the Moral Character of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019).
40 Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. and tr. Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), 980a 22, vol. 1, p. 2.
41 See Kenneth R. Hammond, Beyond Rationality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 30. Cf. Amanda Spink, Information Behavior: An Evolutionary Instinct (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2010)
42 Robert T. Pennock, An Instinct for Truth: Curiosity and the Moral Character of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019), p. 2.
43 Charles Darwin, “Letter to John Stephens Henslow,” April 1, 1848. Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1167,” http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/DCP -LETT-1167.
44 Victoria Talwar et al., “Children’s conception knowledge of lie-telling and its relation to their actual behaviors: implications for court competence examination,” in Law and Human Behavior 26 (2002), pp. 395–415 and Salman Akhtar et al., Lying, Cheating, and Carrying On: Developmental, Clinical, and Sociocultural Aspects of Dishonesty and Deceit (Lanham: J. Aronson, 2009), pp. 34-35.
45 See Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Perspectives on Justice and Morality: The Moral Punishment Instinct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) and Patricia S. Churchland, Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition (New York: Norton, 2019). There was a debate in the 1960s over whether human nature is primordially good or evil. The claim that human beings were instinctually aggressive found its most
102 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ISL AM AND SOCIE T Y 40:3-4
articulate spokesmen in Lorenz and Ardrey, while the claim to the contrary was
expressed in Montagu’s writings that humans were naturally cooperative. Aside
from their basic disagreement about the inherent tendency of human behavior, both
camps actually agreed that there was such a thing as “human nature”, possessing a
definable essence and grounded in biological tendencies evident throughout the natural
and animal worlds. See Nadine Weidman, Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of
Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2021), p. 142.
46 The ḥadīth is considered authentic and transmitted in the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim, 32: 6195
and 32: 6196.
47 Transmitted by Aḥmad in his Musnad, al-Dārimī in his Sunan, and al-Ṭaḥāwī in his
Sharḥ Mushkil al-Āthār.
48 See Dacher Keltner et al., The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2010) and Michael McCullough, Beyond Revenge: The
Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2008).
49 See Arnold M. Rothstein, “Shame and the Superego,” in The Psychoanalytic Study
of the Child, 49/1 (1994), pp. 263-277. Cf. Hisham Abu-Raiya, “Western Psychology
and Muslim Psychology in Dialogue: Comparisons Between a Qura’nic Theory of
Personality and Freud’s and Jung’s Ideas,” in Journal of Religion and Health, vol. 53,
no. 2 (2014), pp. 326-338.
50 For a recent discussion on this issue, see Raissa A. von Doetinchem de Rande, “Is
the fiṭra mutable? A reformist conception of human perfection in Shāh Walī Allāh’s
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha,” in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 33/1 (2023): 87-109,
who argues against the interpretation of fiṭra as human perfection that can fit
different ages without essentially changing.
51 For an extensive discussion, see Peter J. Awn, Satan’s Tragedy and Redemption: Iblīs
in Sufi Psychology (Leiden: Brill, 1983), especially pp. 18-56; and Edmund Beck, “Iblis
und Mensch, Satan und Adam: Der Werdegang einer koranischen Erzahlung,” in
Muséon 89 (1976), pp. 195-244.
52 See the Qur’an 2:36; 3:155, 4:60, 5:91, 6:68, 12:42, 18:63, 7:27, 47:25, and 17:53.
53 The Qur’an 14:22 relates: “And Satan will say to his followers after the judgment has
been passed, “Indeed, God has made you a true promise. I too made you a promise,
but I failed you. I did not have any authority over you. I only called you, and you
responded to me. So do not blame me; blame yourselves. I cannot save you, nor
can you save me. Indeed, I denounce your previous association of me with Allah in
loyalty. Surely the wrongdoers will suffer a painful punishment.”
54 The ḥadīth is transmitted in varying word by al-Bukhārī and Muslim in their Ṣaḥīḥs,
Aḥmad in his Musnad, al-Tirmidhī in his Sunan, as well as al-Dārimī and al-Ṭaḥāwī
in their respective collections.
55 See Muslim, al-Jāmi‘ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, 8: 139.
ARIF: RE THINKING THE CONCEPT OF FIṬRA 103
56 See, for example, Nadine Weidman, Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021); Jonathan H. Pincus, Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill? (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002) and Charles Stewart, Dire Emotions and Lethal Behaviours: Eclipse of the Life Instinct (London: Routledge, 2007).
57 Ibn Sīnā, al-Shifā’: al-Manṭiq: al-Burhān, ed. A.E. Afifi (Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-‘Arabī, 1955), p. 111.
58 See Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 263-264.
59 Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 42. The analogy is based on a ḥadīth reporting the incident in which the angel Gabriel, on the occasion of the Night Journey (isrāʾ) to Jerusalem and Ascent (mi‘rāj) to the heaven, presented the Prophet with a cup of milk and a cup of wine, then told him to choose between the two. When the Prophet instinctively preferred the milk over the wine, the angel Gabriel responded, “You have chosen the fiṭra; had you chosen the wine, your community (ummah) would have gone astray.” See al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 852; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 87; and al-Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ, 5:201–202.
60 For further discussion on fiṭra according to her, see Livnat Holtzman, “Human Choice, Divine Guidance and the Fiṭra Tradition: The Use of Hadith in Theological Treatises by Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,” in Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, ed. Y. Rapoport and S. Ahmed (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 163–188; Nurcholish Madjid, Ibn Taymiyya on Kalām and Falsafa, PhD diss. University of Chicago, 1984, pp. 65-76; Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 39-44; and Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 260-264.
61 See Ibn Taymiyyah, Minhaj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyyah fī Naqd Kalām al-Shī‘ah wa-al-Qadariyyah, 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘ah al-Amīriyyah, 1321/1903), vol. 3,
pp. 100-101; id., Bayān Muwāfaqat Ṣarīḥ al-Ma‘qūl li-Ṣaḥīḥ al-Manqūl, printed on the margin of the Minhaj al-Sunnah, vol. 3, pp. 101-102. For more discussion on Ibn Taymiyyah’s argument on human fiṭra as the basis for proving God’s existence, see Muḥammad al-Sayyid al-Jalayand, aI-Imam Ibn Taymiyyah wa Mawqifuhu min Qaḍiyyat al-Ta’wīl (Cairo: al-Maṭābi‘ al-Amīriyyah, 1393/1973), pp. 327-338.
62 Transmitted by Muslim in his Ṣaḥīḥ (kitab al-jannah wa-ṣifat naʿīmihā wa-ahlihā) ḥadīth no. 2865.
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Arif, S. (2023). Rethinking the Concept of Fiṭra: Natural Disposition, Reason and Conscience. American Journal of Islam and Society, 40(3-4), 77–103. https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v40i3-4.3189
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