And [recall] when Abraham said, “My Lord, show me how You give life to the dead.” He said, “Do you not believe?” Abraham said, “Of course, I do, but just so my heart can be reassured.”
The fortification of one’s faith should occupy the mind of every virtuous person throughout their lives. Why else would it be etched in the Qur’an until the end of time that even the great Prophet Ibrāhīm (as)—despite “of course, believing”—was determined to attain even greater heights of certainty, except that he feared his faith falling prey to satanic whispers, or being fractured under the hammers of hardship?
Allah, the Almighty, says in His Noble Book,
And among humanity are those who worship Allah on the verge [of faith]; if some good reaches him, he is reassured by it; but if some trial befalls him, he turns his back [on faith]—losing out on this world and the hereafter. That is truly the clearest loss.
Hence, humanity ultimately yields only two classes of people: those reassured by their faith, and those whose faith depends on being reassured. Put differently, people will either invest their lives in active pursuit of certainty like Ibrāhīm (as), or they will be haunted in this life and the afterlife by letting themselves sink into the swamps of doubt.
A crystal-clear Qur’anic reality is that while Allah grants this world to those He loves and those He hates, He only grants conviction and certainty to those He loves. But like all treasures, conviction’s value is based on its rarity. Abū Bakr b. Abī Maryam narrates that the early scholars would say, “Nothing has descended to this earth in greater scarcity than certainty.”
However, unlike the limited supply of the finite material world, certainty is available to every sincere seeker who makes the sacrifices needed to drink from its fountains and resist its erosion in their hearts. We find this sacred formula in the statement of the Prophet ﷺ,
The earliest of this nation will find strength in its austerity (zuhd) and certainty (yaqīn), and its last will face destruction in its stinginess (bukhl) and false hopes (amal).
Notice the profound interplay between these respective pairs. The certainty of the early Muslims inspired their austerity, for it was their surety of Allah (yaqīn) that allowed them to resist clinging to worldly pleasures at all costs. Likewise, it was their indifference (zuhd) to this world that allowed them to sacrifice it for faith when necessary. On the other hand, the stinginess of many later Muslims is based on their false hopes, as it is their utopian fantasies (amal) about this life that lead to stinginess (bukhl) and an inability to sacrifice for God. It is that very stinginess that bars them from attaining greater certainty in their hearts.
As uncomfortable a truth as it may be, the root cause behind the frail religious commitment of many later Muslims is the absence of adequate certainty in their hearts more so than the lack of Islamic knowledge in their minds. As Sufyān al-Thawrī (rA) once said, “If certainty were to land in the heart as it should, the hearts would take flight out of longing for Paradise and fearing the Hellfire.”
Similarly, Luqmān the Wise (rA) once advised, “My dear son, the labor [of faith] cannot be shouldered except with certainty. Whoever’s certainty wavers, then his actions waver as well.” Similarly, we even find Allah (st) declaring this about the most fundamental acts of submission to Him, the daily prayers,
And seek help through patience and prayer, and it is indeed a burden except for the humble—those certain that they will meet their Lord and to Him they will return.
So whenever the sacred knowledge of Revelation is taken lightly, and its imperatives are observed carelessly, this Qur’anic principle should reverberate in our minds. Highlighting the power of certainty as a driving force towards all good, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (rA) said,
Only through certainty was Paradise ever sought, and only through certainty was the Hellfire ever fled from, and only through certainty were [proper] intentions for the obligations made, and only through certainty was adhering to the truth endured. It is a profound favor [of God] to be spared of trials, for by Allah, everyone appeared comparable during ease, and then they were separated when the trial descended.
The Prophet ﷺ would often appeal to Allah to be kept armored by an ironclad certainty that would make life’s inevitable blows bearable. In one famous supplication, he would say,
...and [grant us, O Allah] a share of certainty (yaqīn) that would lighten for us the calamities of this world.
Indeed, only with the sword of certainty can a person slay the phantoms of grief over the past and anxiety about the future, which paralyze countless souls who are plagued with doubt. Only a heart laced with certainty refuses to blame others for what Allah—in His perfect justice and wisdom—withholds, or risks angering Allah in order to please people, or over-depends on transient beings that were created from dust and will soon be reduced back to it. Only a person whose heart is liberated through certainty is not left stranded to understand life’s hardships solely in materialistic terms. Allah (st) says about the faithless,
They [only] know the apparent nature of this worldly life. As for the hereafter, they are with regards to it completely oblivious.
As for the people of certainty, what they witness with their eyes and heart converge. They view this transient world through His promise that every pain of the believer here (in this life) will very soon mean pleasure there (in the afterlife). Their insight illustrates for them how they will be elevated for their patience, and how they are being cleansed through their ordeals, thereby enabling them to be content in the shade of their conviction.
Finally, and most fundamentally, certainty in faith is a requirement for any good deed to be rewarded in the Hereafter, as the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “I testify that none is worthy of worship but Allah, and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; no servant meets Allah with these statements—not doubting them—except that he will enter Paradise.” In light of this, Bilāl ibn Sa‘d (rA) would say to people,
O servants of the Most Gracious, know that you are working these short days for truly long days, and in this perishing world for a permanent world, and in this realm of grief and exhaustion for a realm of bliss and immortality. But whoever will not act with certainty in that, let them not trouble themselves.
Similarly, Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī (rA)—a companion of the Prophet ﷺ—said,
Oh, how remarkable is the sleeping of the intelligent and their eating, and how it surpasses the sleeplessness of the foolish and their fasting. A speck’s weight of righteousness from a person with piety (taqwā) and certainty (yaqīn) is superior to, heavier, and greater than a mountainload of worship from the deluded.
By that, he was referring to both the validity and multiplied value of a good deed in relation to its doer’s degree of conviction.
