Rule Twenty-Eight: On the comprehensive attributes with which Allah has described the believer

Because faith is the root of every form of goodness and success—and because, once it is lost, every religious, worldly, and eternal good is lost as well—Allah mentions it in the Qur’an with remarkable frequency: commanding it, forbidding its opposite, urging toward it, describing the people who possess it, and clarifying the rewards that await them both here and in the Hereafter.

When the context is an address to the believers that commands or forbids, or the establishment of worldly rulings that hinge on the description “believer,” the term covers every believer, whether he has fulfilled all the duties and requirements of faith or is deficient in some of them.

But when the context is one of praise, commendation, and the exposition of the believer’s complete reward, what is meant is the true believer who embodies all the meanings of faith (1).

This is what we intend to clarify here. We say:

In His Book Allah portrays the believer as acknowledging and affirming every article of the religion, as wanting what Allah loves and approves, as acting upon what Allah loves and approves, as shunning every sin, as hastening to repent from any slip, and as having a faith whose wholesome effects appear in his character, speech, and deeds.

He depicts the believers as holding to the comprehensive fundamentals: faith in Allah, His angels, His Books, His messengers, the Last Day, and destiny—its good and its evil; as believing in everything brought by all the messengers and in the unseen; as listening, obeying, and submitting outwardly and inwardly; and as those of whom He says, “True believers are only those whose hearts tremble when Allah is mentioned, and when His verses are recited to them, they are increased…"