Chapter Five: The Acceptability of Illumination and the Resilience of Popular Religiosity

Religion, as an inherent, dispositional, and natural phenomenon, is characterized by gradations, intensification, and adaptability to the nature and station of each group or individual, as well as to the comprehension and capacity of every human being. Religion possesses both hierarchical levels and, in accordance with the human capacity for synthesis, embodies a collective unity.

God has made religion and the life program of each individual accessible through their inherent nature and disposition. Consequently, religion, in accordance with the varying stations of humanity, operates within a hierarchical system of knowledge and gradated insights. There is no one who exists outside the domain of divine religion or lacks a divinely ordained program and decree.

The inner religion and its original, inherent archetype naturally guide humanity toward God in a free and balanced environment through an appropriate and temperate path—a program accessible through the heart and inner being. God, who loves humanity, grants the religious individual, through revealed religion, a path for living and resilience in its practical application. Thus, God seeks from humanity in worldly life a free, voluntary, expansive, and non-coercive faith and religiosity, and nothing more.

Among the distinct, prominent, and overarching levels of religion, one may identify religion at the level of the general populace, who are utility-driven or adhere to religion through disposition, civility, or legal compliance; religion at the level of truth-seekers and chivalrous individuals, who are self-sacrificing; and religion at the level of goal-oriented believers, characterized by divine guardianship and finalist theology. The rulings for each of these levels, in matters specific to each station, differ from one another due to the variation in subject matter.

Religious leadership, with oversight of the levels of religion and the diverse strata of religiosity, guides each believer systematically and without violence, oppression, or corruption toward the station befitting their capacity.

The ultimate aim of voluntary religion is an intensifying matter, proportionate to the station of the follower and their degree of acceptability, and possesses a longitudinal relativity.

By virtue of their inherent freedom and varying stations, humans seek diversity and excellence in all things. This is equally true in religiosity, where each individual lives an inner religion in accordance with their creation and nature in a natural environment, considering it the best in terms of alignment with their disposition and possessing truth and completeness relative to the entirety of their body and soul. However, in the material realm (nasut), governed by the principle of freedom and choice, the law of contingency prevails, not causal necessity or the superstition of deterministic fatalism, which negates human will and choice, compelling submission to fate, discouraging resistance against divine will, or fostering neutrality, rebellion against God, or passive indifference.

Religious Mercy with Universal Acceptability and Popular Resilience

Based on the foregoing, inner religion and the practical application of manifest faith are alive within the fabric of the people, intertwined with their vitality and truth, rather than being a written, codified, or revealed program devoid of influence in the lives of the people, stagnant, or consisting of symbolic, ostentatious religious markers detached from the populace and unrepresentative of their religiosity.

To achieve divine satisfaction and the social implementation of divine will, religion must value universal and global acceptability. To honor such general acceptance and social integration, it is necessary first to identify and articulate divine teachings and doctrines that are clear, documented, and grounded in ontological, natural, divine, scientific, and research-based truths within the framework of organizations, structures, collective convergence, networked systems, and collective rationality. Superstitions must be eradicated, and religious data must be classified through engineering, presented, and implemented in accordance with the audience, regionally tailored, and considerate of general tolerance and resilience, ensuring practical application with enforceable guarantees. In this manner, religion possesses both scientific truth and completeness, avoiding social hardship, conflict with humanity’s pleasure-seeking nature, the arrogance of self-satisfied religious authorities, or the hypocrisy of deceitful religious figures.

Through cultural development, gradual education, and the attainment of executive power and acceptability, religion facilitates the path to the next station. In this way, religion assumes a visage of dignity, mercy, sweetness, compatibility, convergence, and social integration, avoiding difficulty, harshness, bitterness, violence, disdain for the populace, or disregard for their role in shaping their own destiny. The Holy Qur’an explicitly states:

“Allah does not burden a soul beyond its capacity. It will have [the consequence of] what [good] it has gained, and it will bear [the consequence of] what [evil] it has earned.” (Qur’an, 2:286)

Religion, within its deductive framework, considers the capacity and resilience of the people. Such is the disposition of God and His religion, which avoids causing hardship and eschews burdens, severity, constriction, intensity, and constraint that lack social acceptability and popular resonance, preemptively ensuring that religion fosters voluntary embrace and devoted participation with a compassionate and faithful God who desires not to lose His servant. This is achieved through truth, love, humility, gentleness, and freedom.

The Admonitory and Reminding Nature of Religion

Given the inherent nature of religion, it serves as a reminder and recollection of inner and conscientious endowments, a means of manifesting and refining the hidden inner realm, and an admonitory and guiding force, rather than an institutive one. The Holy Qur’an states:

“And Allah invites to Paradise and forgiveness by His permission and makes clear His verses to the people that they may remember.” (Qur’an, 2:221)

Religion is a natural goal and aim, inherently embedded in the disposition of the religious individual, guiding them toward the path of truth and a divine lifestyle characterized by purity and righteousness through intellectual enlightenment, the blossoming of the heart, love, truth, and divine guardianship. In the limited worldly life, God seeks from humanity faith, affirmation of Him, and love—manifested as submission, truth, and guardianship.

The Freedom of Religious Acceptance

Inherent religion pertains to free will and voluntary acceptance, devoid of coercion, imposition, or compulsion. Instead, the groundwork is laid for awareness, proclamation, and reminder, and through the expansion of knowledge, exposition, and recollection, the decision to embrace or reject one’s inner nature and disposition rests with the informed and free individual. This choice may align with or oppose their inherent nature. The material realm is governed by the principle of freedom and contingency. If a society practices inherent or civic religiosity and remains free of transgressions, there is no basis for enjoining good and forbidding evil.

The modern human, liberated by their scientific orientation and managerial capacity, differs from the premodern, traditional human subjected to authoritarian rule. Each constitutes a distinct subject for divine rulings, with prescriptions tailored to their capacity and aligned with their nature.

God’s religion is neither coercive, violent, dictatorial, nor characterized by arrogance or condescension. Although true religion, by virtue of its truth, righteousness, and completeness, possesses inherent strength and internal authority, and with maximal support, it also gains external and social power. However, if religion fails to uphold divinely granted freedoms and succumbs to militaristic domination, the triumph of militarism over divine wisdom and luminous reason, fostering fear, intimidation, violation of sanctity, intrusion into private matters, accusations, and case-building, or the rigid and forceful dominance over bodies—where the fate of religion and the cultural trajectory of society are determined by authoritarian, jackbooted soldiers, star-shouldered commanders, or the threats of quasi-militant affiliates, rather than the divine, luminous wisdom, enlightened hearts, and compassionate, noble sages of religion characterized by forgiveness, magnanimity, and dignity—such a religion, regardless of its content, will inevitably face deadlock, stagnation, collapse, and failure. Even admonition, at its standard and righteous level, requires the groundwork of proclaiming truth. Religion succeeds wherever it enters with a predominant visage of proclaiming righteousness, accompanied by practical application, glad tidings of truth, refuge in sincerity, genuine security, joyfulness while preserving private boundaries and outward dignity, fostering hope, purification, expansion, problem-solving, creativity, innovation, flourishing, freedom, patience, resilience, and truth-seeking. Otherwise, a fear-inducing, terrifying, authoritarian, autocratic, and self-opinionated religion, captive to inferior authorities and executors plagued by complexes, drives people toward exhaustion, despair, divergence, recklessness, and libertinism in all domains, becoming a significant obstacle to growth and flourishing and an embodiment of systemic corruption and mischief on earth.

In reality, any religion that possesses power and sovereignty, meaning dominance in exposition and enlightenment, provided it is intellectually and substantively robust, enjoys general and global acceptability, social tolerance, and popular support, exercises its inherent power—derived from the Divine Truth, namely its scientific rigor, luminous wisdom, divine knowledge, enlightenment, divine will, justice, truth, and fairness—through divine policy and management without leniency, avoiding negligence, laxity, or weakness in executing its capacity for enlightenment and expanding freedom in accordance with social awareness. The greater the awareness and freedom in society, the more religion perfects itself and finds a greater scope for expression.

The power of religion derives its executive capacity from general and global acceptability. If religion enjoys the maximal acceptability of society, the non-religious minority must align with the majority and practically adhere to the majority’s religion. The opposing minority cannot make decisions for the majority or engage in negative conflict with it, lest it jeopardizes its own security and immunity, prompting the majority to confront them.

However, if the majority is subjugated by a minority—whether the minority is righteous or false—the dominant minority is compelled to resort to force and tyranny against the majority, resulting in oppressive, authoritarian, and arrogant interactions that breed general dissatisfaction and opposition. The religiosity of a dominant minority does not lead to the sanctification of their confrontation and dominance. Religion never pits itself against the majority of the people, nor does it become domineering or tolerate religious tyranny, as it exists to benefit the people through their will and freedom, not to deprive the majority through coercion and hegemony.

Without free individual and social acceptability, which constitutes the components of religious legitimacy, religion cannot achieve completeness, and consequently, no righteousness will be attributed to it. Religions with popular and global acceptability draw closer to faithful coexistence.

If it is said that the purpose of embracing religion is to attain the pleasure of the One God, and this purpose is intensifying and proportionate to the station of the follower and the degree of popular acceptability, the element of popular acceptability and the prioritization of the people’s interests through their own choice, which elevates religion and faith to practical social application, necessitates that beliefs, ethics, jurisprudential rulings, rituals, and worship be engineered across various levels and stations. By emphasizing commonalities, the policy of a faithful life and the unity of the devout must be pursued. The highest point of convergence among monotheistic religions is God, which enjoys global acceptability.

Religion without acceptability cannot be practically implemented or operationalized, and what lacks the capacity for execution, due to its absence of power and capability, does not constitute a binding religious obligation.

Religion must be capable of relative adaptation to time, place, audience, and regional populations, among other conditions, through the classification and stratification of beliefs, ethics, and rulings, with a scientific and natural arrangement. Through soft and gradual groundwork in an environment of free exchange of information and ideas, via dialogue and mutual understanding rather than unilateral discourse or lecturing, it must possess the capacity for practical application and general acceptance. Religion is compelled, in cases of weakness or lack of acceptance, to accommodate social realities and, on the international stage, to engage in compromise with outsiders to avoid hardship and distress for the faithful. The philosophy of religion is to provide the believer with a program that ensures a life of tranquility, ease, and expansion, not hardship, conflict, or tension. Religion with popular and global acceptability is not subject to rational rejection or social ridicule, remaining divine.

If religion is precisely engineered and programmatically classified with determined levels of priority, importance, and popular acceptability, implemented step-by-step and stage-by-stage, cleansed of accretions, distortions, and deviations, and scientifically articulated, it will be immune to coercion, authoritarianism, and religious tyranny. However, the truths of religion must not be lost amidst the plethora of contemporary realities in the era of occultation and general disfavor. Instead, a collective system of collaborative reflection must be established to scientifically articulate religious truths transparently, ensuring that beliefs and religious truths, along with their righteousness and truth, find a scientific, intersubjective, and rationally assured expression.

Humans, including the followers of religions in the era of scientific dominance, are science-oriented and choose their beliefs and lifestyles based on their knowledge and expertise. If religion adopts the language and standards of science, it will attract followers and adherents; otherwise, it will fade into obscurity.

The foundation for the popular acceptability and social integration of religion lies in the scientific articulation of its beliefs, ethics, and rulings. Even in its devotional rulings, religion possesses ontological bases, true criteria, natural methodology, and knowledge. If articulated with justified reasoning and sound deduction, it achieves transparency in awareness, clarity in legislation, conscious popular acceptability, and guaranteed practical application, manifesting the spirit of belief, ethics, and rational religious legislation.

As an authentic and deeply rooted knowledge, religious guidance directs toward the inherent disposition and natural inner being, where God and heartfelt divine pursuit—or rather, divine possession—are paramount.

The outcome of religious rationality is faith, belief, religious resilience, and epistemological and passionate obligation from the depths of the soul, not merely committed, emotional, or intellectual acceptance.

Investigative, scientific, rational, and transparent religion does not succumb to the distortion or deviation of malicious, organized groups, becoming a timeless phenomenon. A religion articulated with scientific and philosophical criteria for scholars and thinkers in contemporary language, with its rationale transparently explained, becomes timeless, meaning that wherever its subject is realized, it enjoys scientific, rational, conscious, and general acceptability.

Religious Tolerance

The divine and illuminative nature of religion, coupled with its mentor-centricity, grants inherent religion credibility, authority, and legitimacy. Its alignment with the prophet and community, and the divinely appointed infallible guardian in the era of occultation, renders religions diverse, each conditionally and relatively authoritative, paving the way for religious tolerance, mutual understanding, and peaceful faithful coexistence among the followers of valid religions.

The alignment of the community with a living imam in each era is both intertwined in this world and collective in the hereafter, where communities are resurrected and judged collectively under their imams. An imam who is divine, enlightened by divine knowledge, and legitimately appointed grants vision to the community. Conversely, if the imam is inwardly blind and deceitful, lacking divine appointment, the community is collectively raised blind like their imam, without the slightest injustice. As the Holy Qur’an states:

“The Day We will call every people by their leader. So whoever is given their record in their right hand—those will read their record, and they will not be wronged, even as much as a thread. And whoever is blind in this [world] will be blind in the Hereafter and even more astray from the way.” (Qur’an, 17:71–72)

With its sagacity, religion engineers divine rulings, particularly the prohibitions and forbidden acts of established law, to enter the beautiful divine realm, benefit from His eternal love, and attain salvation and tranquil truth, a pleasant state, and a healthy and delightful life on a specific, expedited path that leads to divine connection. However, those devoid of the system of sagacity, even if religious and self-referential, may at best find guidance on a general path or discretionary ways but often remain perplexed and tainted by certain sins and obstacles in achieving divine connection and enlightenment.

In religious tolerance, matters disputed among religious scholars, theologians, and jurists of a religion—particularly if they involve accretions, distortions, or organized group deviations, or lack intersubjective evidence and are merely the beliefs of specific individuals or groups—are not imposed on society as religious doctrines, nor are people legally obligated to adhere to them. Instead, practical adherence to disputed matters is left to the discretion of the people, with their degree of acceptability considered, ensuring that each region adheres to a religion with non-disputed doctrines, establishing the foundational and fundamental beliefs as social institutions. In this way, religion is implemented fluidly and adaptably, in accordance with regional acceptance, preventing societies from falling into either lawlessness and negligence or pressure and hardship. Religion is operationalized in harmony with the people’s capacity, empathetically, interactively, and under the aegis of religious compassion and mercy.

In prioritizing religious programs, affirmations, permissions, and obligations should take precedence over prohibitions, restrictions, and negations, allowing society to experience vitality, freedom, breathing room, freshness, and a natural, joyful, and contented life.

Religion and Economy

Economic poverty is one of the greatest obstacles to religiosity and a significant factor in religious poverty. Underprivileged individuals generally exhibit weakness and fragility in understanding issues correctly, failing to grasp religion as it truly is. Awareness and freedom are essential foundations for the proper discovery and flourishing of religiosity. An underprivileged society cannot attain awareness and freedom, becoming deficient in these as well, resulting in financial poverty leading to religious poverty. Insisting on religiosity in such societies transforms religion into rigidity, stagnation, tyranny, and hypocrisy, with religious truths never being understood or valued.

A religious civilization without economic growth, prosperity, and equitable distribution of sustenance is an unattainable fantasy. The economy plays a more critical role than religious culture in shaping any civilization. Even if religion achieves dominance and becomes civilization-building, without an economy, it breeds decline and corruption, becoming, in the name of religion, a force for religious destruction.

The economy is the lifeblood of a nation, empowering, dignifying, and identity-forming. The strength of city-states is assessed by their economies, and cultural decline and social disorder are directly linked to economic weakness, stagnation, and crises. Religion and faith do not find acceptance in a poor and underprivileged society preoccupied with securing food and basic expenses, where individuals are either indebted and ashamed or thieves of others’ property.

Religion and Family

The family is the most fundamental and foundational institution of socialization. The social integration of religion is realized only through its acceptance within the family. Within the family, the foundational role of upbringing and guidance lies with the lady of the household. Women’s adherence to religiosity surpasses that of men. If the lady of the family, with her style of religiosity, is neither swayed by virtual media nor entangled in authoritarianism, rigidity, or control, and embodies a natural, inherent, sincere, free, and sweet religiosity, she imparts her diverse and vibrant religious disposition to her spouse and children, preparing the ground for the emergence of their inherent religiosity or inclining them toward emulative or aspirational religiosity in her faithful style. This is a key factor in increasing the population of the religious.

Religion is effective and beneficial for those with a healthy personality, free from personality disorders, complexes, and deficiencies. Ensuring mental health, a critical factor in religious acceptance and efficacy, is shaped within the family through proper upbringing by the lady of the household.

Social Integration of Religion

Religion achieves social integration through universal truth and guardianship, manifested as love, goodwill, service to humanity, and the preservation of the levels and stations of religiosity.

Religiosity begins with an outward and general entry into religion. To enter this level, it suffices for an individual to believe in God and His oneness. This is followed by the stage of upholding fairness, truth-seeking, love, and goodwill. Its perfection lies in heartfelt faith and acceptance of divine guardianship.

Given the definition provided for religion and its precision, beauty, and sweetness, who would turn away from divine religion and religiosity? The Holy Qur’an states:

“And who would be averse to the religion of Abraham except one who makes a fool of himself? And We had chosen him in this world, and indeed he, in the Hereafter, will be among the righteous. When his Lord said to him, ‘Submit,’ he said, ‘I have submitted to the Lord of the worlds.’ And Abraham instructed his sons [to do the same] and [so did] Jacob, [saying], ‘O my sons, indeed Allah has chosen for you this religion, so do not die except while you are Muslims.’” (Qur’an, 2:130–132)

Foolishness, stemming from mental disorders, weakness in theoretical perception, inability to discern truth, failure to comprehend intellectual subtleties, practical ineptitude, baseness and ignominy in conduct, and natural weakness in controlling emotions, is among the worst obstacles to perfection and growth. The foolish are credulous, superstitious, fearful, emotional, and boundary-violating. Such individuals lack religious receptivity and are fickle, akin to wandering gnats. In dealing with the foolish, respect must be shown, and they should be guided toward self-belief.

Religion and Civilization

Major religions can serve as the foundation for the emergence or expansion of civilizations, urban systems, and the management of cohesive city-states with shared identities, unified under centralized, authoritative, and progressive religious organization. Such civilizations directly or indirectly foster the collective identity, including the inherent religiosity, of these city-states and the interests of their populace. The axis of unity and cohesion, preventing sectarianism and division in a religious civilization, is the sagacity and charisma of religious leadership.

For instance, the Zoroastrian religion fostered the Achaemenid civilization and the empire of Cyrus the Great; Judaism gave rise to the kingdom of the Israelites under Moses, David, and Solomon; and Islam produced the civilization of Medina under the Prophet and the spiritual and Persian-Islamic civilization under Shaykh al-Islam Baha’i at the outset of the Safavid era, leveraging his political influence, elevating the divine monotheistic religion to empire-building and civilization-forming status.

Authentic religious civilizations, untainted by deceitful distortions, despite their ups and downs and weaknesses, make divine will, luminous wisdom, and sagacity the dominant culture. A critical pillar of unity in a religious civilization is the living presence of a sanctified sage at the apex of guidance and religious leadership.

While there is a connection between unadulterated, undistorted religion led by a sanctified sage and true knowledge, divine law and discovered nature represent distinct modes of awareness. Given that the religion and law of divine sages and saints are attributed to God, wherever revelation or a clear, unambiguous text is authentically attributed to God, religious devotion and trust in religion supersede trust in science and discovered nature. Humanity lacks the capacity to equate human knowledge and discovered nature with religion or assign them equal value. Divine and revealed religion, deriving its credibility from God, is more reassuring and superior in reliability. Faithful devotion and reliance on God and the religion of His sages provide a higher degree of assurance and trust in awareness.

Based on the definition provided for religion, civilizations lacking the components of defined religion, particularly luminous wisdom and rationality, are not truly religious but are dominated by superstitions masquerading as religion, governing as secularized religion. Even if such civilizations emerge, the unifying force among their city-states and populace is not divine faith, sagacity, or authentic religious content but a statist, secular religion that dominates in place of divine religion. Such a religion, devoid of inherent connection to the life-giving essence and unnatural, leads to a coerced, abortive, and futile existence, with its survival guaranteed only by the persistence and coercive force of its militaristic apparatus.

The greatest hallmark of a religious civilization is the conscious, scientific, successful, expansive, tolerant, and prosperous leadership of a wise sage with objective inner attainment and sanctified guidance based on the revealed text of religion. A leader who truly possesses the capacity for objective connection with God and precise understanding of the revealed text based on sanctified rationality, and whose guidance—rooted in the revealed text and luminous rationality—is followed by the rulers and citizens of the cohesive city-states within the civilizational domain as a religious community, provides a roadmap.

A civilization whose rulers and leaders are charismatic and sagacious grants its people security, economy, free and tolerant religiosity, satisfaction, hope, high authority, resilience, pride, dignity, awareness, knowledge, and universal love and sincerity, ensuring everything is utilized appropriately and effectively.

Such a religious civilization appears to have been realized, for example, during the reign of the charismatic Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenids, the divine rule of the Israelite kings (sons of God) such as Moses, David, and Solomon, the sanctified governance of the Prophet in Medina, and the brief, justice-spreading rule of Imam Ali over the Islamic empire. The ministries of Prophet Joseph, the governorship of Salman the Persian, the ministry of Khwaja Nasir al-Din Tusi, and the Shaykh al-Islam role of Shaykh Baha’i also produced limited, shadowed spiritual civilizations.

Without luminous rationality and wisdom, religion cannot build a religious civilization, and even if it becomes the dominant discourse, it will lack global acceptability, endurance, and sustainability, becoming ensnared by time, stagnation, decline, and demise.

It is the luminous charismatic figure who can inspire scientific elites and cultural engineers to action and scientific endeavor, articulating the essence and mechanics of systematic life, serving as its executive manager, and harmonizing religiosity with contemporary civilization, revitalizing and prospering the eternal Persian culture. A civilization of sagacity and luminous wisdom does not clash with other civilizations, nor does it seek their destruction or demise. If it cannot assimilate them into its culture, it does not pursue domination or supremacy but fosters compatibility and peaceful interaction with enduring civilizations.

The Domain of Religion and the Nexus of Religion and Politics

Religion, characterized by submission to a codified, comprehensive, transparent, and justified divine program and revealed knowledge, ensures the health and felicity of humanity across three domains: belief, behavior, and action.

The domain of the systematic and revealed life program encompasses three areas: beliefs and theological, philosophical, and mystical worldviews; true obligations and prohibitions in the science of ethics and behavior; and practical rulings and the science of jurisprudence, governing all actions, including political conduct, in the realm of reality.

In a hostile world where vengeful wolves wage war, and wherever a power finds an opportunity, it pursues, besieges, and tears others apart, it is implausible to believe that all are indifferent to others, leaving Jesus to his religion and Moses to his.

In the Gospel, with the severance of the institution of power and society from religion, and in a fragmented and oppositional dichotomy between Caesar and God, it is stated:

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Such content, which renders religion incomplete or deviant, even if attributed to sacred texts, stripped the Church of political dominance and reduced Christianity to a reductive, fragmented definition lacking the collective and social dimension of religion and the religious individual, limiting it to beliefs concerning spiritual, otherworldly, or divine matters.

Not only religion but also the politics of states and human interactions are subject to the material principle of oppressing the weak in a world of weak-oppressors.

If true religion cannot, through its scientific and cultural power, pure truth, and sagacity, elevate faith to a superior force, penetrate the core of falsehood, and, in the face of aggressive waves such as systematic secularization supported by the world’s wealthy elites, manifest its inner sagacity in prevailing discourses, presenting itself as a descriptive life program endowed with knowledge, collectivity, perfection, and completeness, and achieve systematic and effective practical application, the forces of falsehood, polytheism, and truth-opposing elites will, with initial blows, drive faith and belief toward disbelief, secularization, laicism, or self-referential, self-indulgent religion. Alternatively, the religion of sages will emerge as a revolutionary, destructive force to end deceitful, secular, or self-referential religion. Similarly, if the front of falsehood fails to maintain its position, it will undoubtedly be driven to oblivion and decline by true religion.

Laicism entails the non-interference of religious institutions in the institution of power, and vice versa, with the source of governmental power being ordinary people and custom. Secularization, meaning the confiscation of Church property for the benefit of worldly statesmen, signifies the separation of the material world from spiritual and otherworldly religion. The secular relegates piety and the deferred hereafter to religious figures and clergy, detached from the world, while pursuing the legitimacy and formalization of human reason, even in rationality-resistant domains, in the immediate material world. The secular cannot withstand inherent religiosity and is overcome by the intrinsic and dispositional religiosity of the people.

The notion of a novel strategy or initial strike does not refer to preemptive military assaults but to spiritual influence, scientific authority, the purity of truths, luminous wisdom, divine sanctity, righteous management of society with joyful religious virtues, divine characteristics, and the heralding disposition of the Divine Truth, characterized by magnanimity, freedom, broad-mindedness, non-interference in the private and personal domains of individuals and society, respect for outward boundaries and dignities, and governance through devotion and guardianship over hearts. This is the factor in the success of religious power—namely, a divine disposition and the will of God embodied in divinely appointed beloved imams, not merely the deployment of detached military forces, modern weaponry, or offensive or defensive operations, which are specific to times of war, confronting enemy disturbances, curbing their overreach, and ensuring security, health, and survival. It is noteworthy that only living divine saints can guide the stream of divine servitude, religious justice, and social opposition to oppression without contradiction and with proper solutions.

In the absence or inaccessibility of such sagacious leaders, contemporary hypocritical and superficial religiosity not only lacks commitment to operational engagement with governance or violence to establish justice or organize a governmental system but also cannot ensure the efficacy of any constructed system or safeguard the interests of the majority. Any belligerence on its part is neither legitimate nor religious, and worse, it installs the germ of deceit and fraud in place of the sage and imam of religion.

Given the stringent and contingent conditions of religious governance in the era of occultation, not every government that rises in the name of religion can be considered a religious government or the way of sages and divine scholars.

Governments in the era of occultation generally contradict the purpose of ensuring the health, security, and felicity of the people, and by this measure, they are not religious. If such authoritarian figures govern in the name of religion, they embody religious deceit.

Global Religiosity

According to official statistics, faith and religion hold significant importance in many countries. Religion is important to over seventy percent of Germans above the age of 18. Most Germans adhere to the Protestant Church. The rate of religiosity, particularly self-referential and individual religiosity among the masses, is on the rise. However, interest in the priesthood among Germans has significantly declined.

Religiosity rates in the United States range between 60 and 89 percent. The latest statistics on religiosity and inclination toward religion and faith can be sourced from the external and virtual memory of this book, namely the internet.

Religiosity in America is experiencing growth and increasing vitality. However, profound inner knowledge in the West lacks an inherent and natural foundation, with the roots of divine sagacity lying in the East.

In cultural Iran, due to the inherent nature of religion among the majority of the population in its specific domain and geography (the Iranian plateau and cultural Iran, encompassing Iran and parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan today), the vast majority of people possess both a high level of religious awareness and strong belief in the essence of religion. This has forged a knowledgeable and enduring culture. However, the religious awareness of Iranians, particularly among today’s educated strata, prevents superstition, and they either oppose or avoid religious accretions.

Iran is the first Shi‘i country. The Iranian religion, which can also be termed the national religion, is inherent in the Iranian plateau and cultural Iran. As an inherent religion, it forms part of the Iranian and national identity. The Iranian religion is one that, through the outward religiosity of the believer—namely their Iranian culture and lifestyle—leads to their singular truth collectively, freely, and in alignment with their disposition, leveraging the latest divine description. However, it must be clarified that the inherent nature of religion does not impose geographical or ethnic boundaries on religion, nor can an impenetrable boundary be drawn in the contingent and mutable material realm to ensure that religion remains perpetually inherent or that a people can boast of enduring religiosity. The inherent nature of religion is neither a geographical, historical, nor ethnic phenomenon limited by time or period but an exclusive and singular relationship between an individual’s truth and God, with a destiny that is descending and contingent. In the material realm, it is subject to contingency, not complete causation, capable of refinement and flourishing or weakening, declining, and extinguishing. As a dispositional matter, religion can forge a people and cultural society, as society is based on the unity of ideas and dispositions, possessing a true composition, not a mechanical, geographical, or separable additive structure. Iranian religiosity will be discussed in detail later.

In Iran, where Islam and the religiosity of the people have thus far been inherent, and the identity of Iranians is a religious identity and personality, God has ordained the program of religiosity for the majority of Iranians and the Iranian people. The inherent and dispositional Muslim is characterized by universal love and guardianship and, consequently, religious tolerance and freedom through rationality and magnanimity, unlike nominal and civic Muslims who lack the custom of affection and are dominated by discord and violence. Such individuals, particularly those hostile to the Ahl al-Bayt, lack inherent and divine Islam and are not Muslims. Those who are predominantly beastly with a high degree of bestiality, not subdued humans, lack inherent and divine Islam and are not subjects of inherent religion or divine obligation, even if, in social life, by virtue of citizenship and civic status, they cannot practically avoid commitment to a program systematically tailored to their nature and legally enacted. God’s religion, in its general sense, for them is their beastly existence, not the advanced and complex religion of Islam with its profound inner depth. Even if their religion is Islam, it does not transcend a nominal, superficial, and documentary religion, and they live their primitive, beastly nature, not the advanced and complex laws of Islam.

The Righteousness of Islam

In this book, I have spoken little of Islam and have not devoted a separate discussion to it. Compared to other religions, Islam is highly scientific, advanced, and complex. The necessary and significant discussions about it are included in Chapter Two of the book Knowledge and Divine Humanity.

A study of this book reveals that the content of religions prior to Islam, particularly ancient religions, was highly superficial and rudimentary, and religion has evolved and progressed alongside human growth and the expansion of knowledge and awareness. This is also a requirement of the inherent and ontological nature of religion, and God’s creation is also progressing.

The criterion for the righteousness of actions and their divine nature, and the measure of their acceptability and approval by God, is the narrative of divine religion in Islam, particularly the school of Islam of Amir al-Mu’minin and the Twelve-Imam Shi‘ism, which enjoys bestowed infallibility, inherent guardianship, the pinnacle of religiosity, servitude, divine lordship, belovedness, and love. For this reason, it can serve as the logic of religiosity for all others and the criterion and standard of divine religion for all religious individuals, including followers of previous religions.

The Holy Qur’an, as the final revelation and divine speech, by calling for the acceptance of and faith in all previous divine religions, explicitly states that for God, no religion other than Islam possesses finality, perfection, completeness, righteousness, authority, and legitimacy:

“Say, ‘We have believed in Allah and what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants and what was given to Moses and Jesus and the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [submitting] to Him.’ And whoever desires other than Islam as religion—never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers.” (Qur’an, 3:84–85)

Separating the Record of Religious Followers from True Divine Saints

In all religions, the essence of religion and its illuminative truth are one thing, while the performance and record of its followers, along with the errors and distortions of its scholars, are another, distinct from the essence of revealed religion. Islam is one thing, and Muslim practice is another. Repeatedly, detractors have used the vilest demonic and malevolent terms for the followers and clergy of religion to argue that the origin of the religion is its deviant and deceitful followers and their claims. They suggest that anyone who holds the beliefs of such a religion or seeks to critique their anti-religious claims is, like those followers and clergy, demonic, malevolent, reprehensible, and ostracized.

The Fallacy of Islam’s Mythical Origin

Opponents and enemies contemporary with the Prophet raised the fallacy of Islam’s mythical origin and committed the fallacy of origin—namely, that the source and essence of the subject under critique stem from a myth-making personality—in early Islam, and the Holy Qur’an responded to it.

This fallacious attack, relying on emotions and imaginative, pleasurable representations, has always existed and will recur, with adversaries of religiosity and religious conduct replicating it.

All religions, particularly divine religions, wherever they have spoken of realities and those realities have not been distorted by their followers, share commonalities due to their reporting of reality. However, one cannot infer a shared, disgraceful, or defamatory origin, attribution, or reference from shared data. Repeatedly employing these fallacies in various forms—books, documentaries, and films—to lead the audience to a familiar and desired conclusion is invalid.

Fifteen centuries ago, the Holy Qur’an depicted this assault to enlighten audiences across all eras:

“And among them are those who listen to you, but We have placed over their hearts coverings, lest they understand it, and in their ears deafness. And if they should see every sign, they will not believe in it. Even when they come to argue with you, those who disbelieve say, ‘This is not but legends of the former peoples.’” (Qur’an, 6:25)

Some denials by anti-religious and faith-opposing writers exemplify blatant obstinacy and are driven by anger and bias rather than healthy and precise investigation or reference to the Holy Qur’an as the primary document of Islam to ascertain reality, instead covering up this reality by invoking the legends of former peoples.

The history of the Prophet and the Holy Qur’an, like the history of Jesus, is among those historical events that, due to their breadth, transmission, and prevalence, are indisputable and certain for the general populace, leaving no room for concealment, censorship, or elimination. Similarly, the Hijri calendar, established by Amir al-Mu’minin, taking the seven-day migration of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina as the starting point and official governmental calendar during Umar’s time to facilitate administration, is undeniable.

Blinding the Audience

Denialist writings have no aim but contention, belligerence, and obstinacy in rejecting the established facts of Islamic history. Such writers are not open to dialogue but, through one-sided and biased discourse, employ interwoven semantic fallacies, committing the fallacy of blinding the audience with captivating and pleasurable imagination instead of commitment to science and investigation. This leads the audience to accept all their data with enthusiasm and zeal, without any critical reaction or rational response, as the imaginative representations in writing or displays so enthrall the audience that they are immersed in a pleasurable illusion, familiarizing their mind with fabricated data about an event, albeit enjoyable, blocking any path to critical and intellectual scrutiny. This is especially true since abandoning this habit and moving away from that pleasurable imaginary zone is distressing and painful. Moreover, this pleasurable imagination, particularly in novels with simple phrasing and in films with thrilling visuals and eloquent dialogues, is achieved easily. Simplicity, being familiar and aligned with the logic of propaganda and acceptance, is so pervasive that most people accept simple and familiar texts and content, even if devoid of reasoning or containing erroneous and fallacious arguments, over texts with valid reasoning and correct conclusions but expressed in complex, obscure, difficult, or challenging terms that fail to enter the audience’s familiar imaginative zone to evoke pleasure.

Anti-religious advocates strive to counter the scientific and rational realities of religion, which they cannot combat, with writings and creations that meticulously employ simplicity and familiarization to realize the element of pleasure, coupled with harsh denialism. As the Holy Qur’an elucidates, some, even if they witness reality with their own eyes, persist in denial with obstinacy and tenacity, not only lacking the disposition to accept religion but often expending all their resources, wealth, and lives in opposing religion.

The Scene of Denial by Deniers

The Holy Qur’an describes those who deem the religion of Islam, the prophethood of the Prophet, and the miracle of the Qur’an as falsehoods and exert hostile efforts driven by negative emotions to keep people away from this religion. Even if they engage in discussion or speech, it is without reason and riddled with labeling and fallacies, calling the book of truth and the religion of guidance mere legends of former peoples, showing no interest in understanding, logic, or receiving guidance. Their dispositional commitment is to deny and ignore the truths and realities of Islam. The Holy Qur’an considers such individuals entangled in denial, where denial itself and the act of ignoring serve as their reason for denial. The mental denial of such anti-religious figures stems from their inherent and dispositional denial, with veils over their hearts. They are wholly committed to transferring their heart’s veils to the hearts of others, afflicting them with the same heart-covering affliction. In the book Knowledge and Divine Humanity, I discussed the independent perception of the heart and its significance, which further elaborates and refines this matter. As the Holy Qur’an states:

“Indeed, the worst of living creatures in the sight of Allah are the deaf and dumb who do not use reason. And if Allah had known any good in them, He would have made them hear. And if He had made them hear, they would still have turned away, while they were refusing.” (Qur’an, 8:22–23)

Anti-religious figures, whose hearts, ears, and other faculties of perception are veiled, obscure their lack of valid reasoning and deduction through spectacles and verbose reiterations of their repetitive, baseless, and invalid denials, which they term clamor. The Holy Qur’an firmly and accurately depicts the scene of denial by these deniers: if a fallacious individual, upon seeing reality, is granted reprieve, despite having witnessed and experienced the reality with their eyes and entire perceptual apparatus, they will persist in denial, obstinacy, and disbelief—covering, concealing, and ignoring reality—resorting again to false and deceitful propositions, refusing to take the side of truth and righteousness. The Holy Qur’an states:

“And they prevent [others] from it and are [themselves] remote from it. And they do not destroy except themselves, but they perceive [it] not. If you could but see when they are made to stand before the Fire and will say, ‘Oh, would that we could be returned [to life] and not deny the signs of our Lord and be among the believers.’ But what they concealed before has [now] appeared to them. And even if they were returned, they would return to that which they were forbidden; and indeed, they are liars.” (Qur’an, 6:26–28)

The Holy Qur’an elucidates the inherent and dispositional denial of these anti-religious figures, sometimes dominant powers intolerant of an emerging, enlightened doctrinal school endowed with culture and knowledge. Their aim is to employ every means, tactic, and policy to keep popular favor away from this religion and maintain its perpetual weakness, articulated in simple, clear, and eloquent terms in response to fabricated substitutes, lies, and myth-making regarding the origin of the Holy Qur’an and the religion of Islam.