your faces toward the east or the west. Rather, righteousness is found in one who believes in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets … until His words, “Such are the ones who have been true, and such are the God-fearing.”
As for the hypocrites, Allah characterises them with lying in many verses. He says in al-Baqarah: “In their hearts is a disease, and so Allah has increased their disease; for them is a painful punishment because they used to lie” (2:10). He says at the opening of Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn: “When the hypocrites come to you they say, ‘We bear witness that you are indeed the Messenger of Allah.’ Allah knows that you are indeed His Messenger, yet Allah bears witness that the hypocrites are surely liars” (63:1). And He says in at-Tawbah: “So He caused hypocrisy to pursue their hearts until the Day they meet Him, because they broke the promise they had made to Allah and because they used to lie” (9:77). Verses of this import are plentiful in the Qur’an.
One should also realise that truthfulness (ṣidq) and affirmation appear in both words and deeds. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said in the sound hadith: “The son of Adam has his share of fornication decreed for him; he cannot escape it. The eyes commit fornication and their fornication is the glance; the ears commit fornication and their fornication is listening; the hands commit fornication and their fornication is grasping; the feet commit fornication and their fornication is walking; the heart yearns and desires, and the private parts either confirm that or belie it.”
Likewise people say, “They charged the enemy with a truthful assault,” when their resolve to fight is firm and sincere, or “So-and-so is true in his love and affection,” and the like. Hence a person may be called “truthful” because he is genuine in his will, intention, and pursuit—that is, truthful in his action—or because he is truthful in his report and speech. The hypocrite stands opposite the truthful believer: he lies either in what he reports or in what he does, like the one who shows off in his deeds. Allah the Exalted says in al-Nisāʾ: “Surely the hypocrites seek to deceive Allah, yet He is the One who deceives them. When they stand for prayer, they stand lazily, showing off to people …” (4:142-143).
Sincerity (ikhlāṣ) is the very reality of Islam, for Islam is to surrender oneself to Allah alone and to none besides Him. Allah the Exalted says in al-Zumar: “Allah sets forth a parable: a man belonging to partners at variance with one another, and a man devoted wholly to one master—are the two equal?” (39:29). Whoever does not submit to Him has been arrogant, and whoever submits to Allah and to another alongside Him has committed shirk (associating partners with Allah). Both arrogance and shirk oppose Islam, and Islam opposes shirk and arrogance—this is stated repeatedly in the Qur’an.
For that reason Islam is the testimony that there is no god but Allah, a testimony that entails worshipping Allah alone and abandoning the worship of anything else. This is the universal Islam, the only religion Allah will accept from any of the first or the last. He says in Āl ʿImrān: “Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers” (3:85). He also says: “Allah bears witness that there is no god but Him—and so do the angels and those endowed with knowledge—maintaining His creation in justice. There is no god but Him, the Almighty, the All-Wise. Truly, the religion with Allah is Islam” (3:18-19).
What we have mentioned makes clear