Belief and unbelief in classical Sunnī theology - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Schöck, Cornelia
Leiden
Brill
(5,840 words)
Belief and unbelief are signified by the Arabic verbal nouns īmān and kufr , respectively. The question "what is 'belief'?" (mā l-īmān) has been answered in Muslim theology through two different linguistic approaches. One focuses on the relation of name (ism) to sense and explains the intension of "belief" as a technical term of religion (dīn) . The other focuses on the relation of name to reference and interprets "belief" as a general expression that represents the extensional class of actions of obedience (ṭāʿa) and submission (islām) to God. 1. Systematical