It is in this sense that jāhiliyyah (the Age of Ignorance) received its name: it involves either a lack of knowledge or a failure to act upon it. Another example is the Prophet’s saying to Abū Dharr, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, when he exchanged insults with a man and taunted him about his mother: “You are a man who still has a trait of pre-Islamic ignorance.” Allah Most High has also said:

“When those who disbelieved harboured pride in their hearts—the pride of the Age of Ignorance.”

Anger and pride drive a person to do what harms him and abandon what benefits him. This is ignorance in the sense of acting contrary to knowledge: a person may go so far as to do what he knows will harm him and abandon what he knows will benefit him, because of the hatred and hostility he harbours towards certain people and actions. In this state, he is not entirely devoid of knowledge and assent to the truth. Rather, because of the hatred and envy within him, their demands overpower the dictates of knowledge. The absence of the effects and conduct that knowledge should produce thus indicates its weakness.

Yet this effect and outcome do not arise from knowledge alone, but from knowledge together with the soul’s love of what benefits it and hatred of what harms it. If the soul contracts a disease that corrupts it, it comes to love what harms it and hate what benefits it. It then becomes like a sick person who consumes something harmful because he craves it, despite knowing that it harms him.

I say: This is the meaning of the report attributed to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace:

“Allah loves penetrating insight when doubts arise, and He loves sound reason when desires assail.”

Al-Bayhaqī related it as a mursal report (one attributed directly to the Prophet by a Successor). Allah Most High has said:

“And remember Our servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, men of strength and insight.”

He thus described them as possessing strength in action and insight in knowledge. The foundation of strength is strength of heart, which gives rise to love of good and hatred of evil. The believer’s strength lies in his heart and his weakness in his body, whereas the hypocrite’s strength lies in his body and his weakness in his heart. Thus, faith must