Chapter Four: The Inherent and Ethical Nature of Religious Faith

From Deception and Divine Religion by Sadeq Khademi

Disposition and Ethical Conduct: An Inherent and Semantic World

Disposition and ethical conduct constitute a form of inherent, semantic, and self-conscious awareness that serves as the source of justification for actions, inclinations, and deliberate endeavors. This disposition is endowed with an illuminative system and a force of inner inclination, grounded in an individual’s existential heritage.

Divine revelation and illumination in the material world represent God’s command over phenomena endowed with the capacity for change, transformation, and free will. This is distinct from the divine decree on the Day of Resurrection and the Hereafter, which is the Day of Judgment, characterized by permanence and immutability as essential attributes of eschatological existence, necessitating obligatory submission rather than contingent freedom. As the Holy Qur’an states: “Indeed, you do not guide whom you love, but Allah guides whom He wills, and He is most knowing of those who are guided” (Qur’an, 28:56). In truth, you cannot guide to religiosity whomever you desire, but it is God who guides whom He wills to religiosity in an ontological manner, and He is most aware of those who attain guidance and are endowed with inherent faith.

The disposition of religiosity is a natural trait and a divinely bestowed quality, granted to humanity by a pure conscience, a nature aligned with divine revelation, and a disposition reflective of divine ethics. This disposition serves as the source of an individual’s steadfastness in divine religiosity, rooted in sincerity and love. Religion manifests through internalization, refining inherent qualities in the opportunities afforded by material existence through an autonomous, innate guidance.

A natural disposition constitutes an individual’s inner character, shaped by divine exigencies, pre-existent conditions, and divine traditions and laws. When this disposition flourishes, a uniquely divine religion is realized. Thus, the inherent nature of religion must not be conflated with erroneous racial, attributive, or hereditary perspectives, nor should these be considered equivalent.

Both the essence of religion and the invitation to it originate from God, and the acceptance of this invitation is a divinely bestowed grace, a blessing from the Almighty, contingent upon His permission within the inherent and ontological system of religion. The Holy Qur’an declares: “Indeed, Allah has chosen for you the religion” (Qur’an, 2:132). God has selected this religion for you. Divine selection cannot be realized without its inherent and ontological nature. Safw denotes intrinsic purity and freedom from impurity in creation, a distinguished selection, and an unblemished inherent essence. This selection and distinction occur at the moment of creation and ontogenesis. A smooth, pure stone is called safa or safwan, and the mountain in Mecca named Safa possesses a noble creation. In contrast, choice (ikhtiar) pertains to selection after creation, in comparison with other created phenomena, post-ontogenesis.

The vocabulary of the Holy Qur’an is endowed with a sagacious formulation, tied to ontogenesis and characterized by semantic precision and subtlety. Therefore, these terms cannot be reduced to synonymy or semantic equivalence through superficial interpretation. A religion is divine only if it is inherently bestowed by God in its ontogenesis, and a religion that is inherent and attributed to God is wholly untainted, pure, immaculate, and divinely selected.

In opposition to the disposition of religiosity stand capriciousness, recklessness, baseness, rebellion, immorality, and savagery, which foster an inherent aversion to religion or a natural antagonism toward it within the contingent system of the material world. Such dispositions reject the divine revelation’s system and the righteous demands of a God-seeking nature, not out of causal necessity but through contingent freedom.

While it is true that religion is an inherent and ontological matter, humanity is the only creation that, in this world, lives with both an inherent nature, conscience, heart, and love, as well as free will in determining the quality of actions, shaping its distinctive identity and destiny through deliberate creation. Particular attention must be paid to the philosophical proposition that the material world is inherently contingent, and human freedom and choice are never lost, to avoid the fallacy of mistaking the passionate inclinations and efforts of existence, its phenomena, and human free will for determinism, coercion, or compulsion. Nor should one erroneously desire or expect unlimited will in a world replete with contingencies, harmony, and connections to the inner self, heart, love, and the divine will.

Thus, deprivation of the natural disposition of religiosity entails a tendency toward injustice, insincerity, disbelief, hypocrisy, arrogance, denial, misguidance, transgression, rebellion, discontent, belligerence, and carnal greed—not as a complete causal necessity but as a contingent inclination. Such an individual, if they turn to religious knowledge and practice in the presence of divine saints, God’s elect, or divinely charismatic religious figures, may receive religious upbringing. However, if they fall into the clutches of deceivers, their contingent nature, deprived of the disposition of religiosity, may lead them to subvert inherent religion, rendering them averse or antagonistic to faith. We shall later discuss the deceivers who subvert religion.

Divine Charisma in Religion

In ancient sources and the wisdom of pre-Islamic Iranians, the term “divine charisma” (farahmandi) emphasizes the inherent nature of religion in God’s chosen ones. The oldest origin of the religious term “divine charisma” lies in the cultural heritage of Iran. Divine charisma carries both a lexical meaning, applicable to any individual inherently religious, and a technical, philosophical term, denoting divinely bestowed sagacity and sanctification through the system of universal revelation and illumination, i.e., within the descending order of creation. This book employs the latter, technical meaning of divine charisma. Like religion, divine charisma is an ontological matter, and certain individuals, akin to prodigies, possess an ontological superiority and a distinctive, divinely bestowed force of charisma. This inherent nature can be identified in a charismatic individual, and its capacities can be enhanced through appropriate cultivation and flourishing.

The technical term “divine charisma” is not equivalent to charisma, nor to traditional autocratic force or despotism that disregards the rights of others, nor to chaotic religious or traditional authoritarianism that leads to disorder and anarchy. Others have spoken of specific political and social organizations built upon the concept of divine charisma.

Sagacity is not charismatic. If charisma, in its Greek sense of “gift,” is employed, it lexically forms part of the construct of divine charisma and sagacity. Religion is not a set of behaviors driven by emotions, particularly fleeting public sentiments, though it is endowed with inner feelings. Rather, religion is an ontological, inherent, epistemic, and descriptive matter that renders an individual who is conscious, endowed with will, capable of sound choices, and able to act upon inner faith a true believer. Religion is an inner truth requiring discovery, flourishing, and prosperity through the correct path, cultivation, and enhancement with human virtues, action, and practice.

Divine charisma is not merely the possession of heartfelt wisdom or impulsive knowledge that transcends conceptual and rational intellect. Beyond wisdom, it encompasses the component of divine selection and sanctification through divine illumination and revelation. Such an individual is thereby empowered for religious leadership, spiritual guidance, political governance, chivalry, or activism for justice, fairness, freedom, and the defense of the weak, as well as for asceticism or self-sufficiency. Sanctity in this definition refers to the endowment of divine grace and blessing, generally termed “revelation” and illumination, not an otherworldly or celestial quality in opposition to the material world.

The religion of sagacity combines religiosity and ethics, characterized by a disposition of love, a conduct of affection, a creed of benevolence, heartfelt guardianship, sincerity, fairness, truth-seeking, and chivalry, manifesting through will, endeavor, and submission. Sacred divine charisma and sagacity are inherent, divinely bestowed, and descending, not acquirable or teachable, though they are cultivable. This system is directly and unmediatedly connected to God, with its epistemic and empowering origin in God Himself. The poet Muḥiṭ Qumī states: “‘Lord, show me,’ they say, approach the Mount of Proximity / Without intermediary, O Moses of the soul, commune with the Beloved.”

Religion is a divine grace and a revealed blessing from God, and religious practice is an endeavor to extract this divine grace through the inner path of the believer and the recipient of descending revelation.

The oldest written religious source, the Zoroastrian Gathas, derives the term “religion” (din) from daena, meaning a methodical, fulfilling inner self, a binding and committing conscience, and a systematic arbiter. In the perspective of the oldest written religious text, religion is endowed with the construct of an inner arbiter and a God-seeking conscience, which its lexical meaning conveys. Its inherent and innate nature, divine charisma, divine systematicity, methodic nature, binding commitment, and impenetrability—in Islamic terms, its “revealed nature”—align with the concept of religion as divine judgment.

Religion is divine only if its origin and source are divine. Thus, a religion dependent on humanity or human attributes is neither divine nor valid.

Scholars of management, sociology, or psychology who fail to consider all the aforementioned constructs of religion, particularly its divine charisma, have not grasped the truth of religion or the essence of divine charisma and sagacity.

Ḥurr, the Free and Charismatic

A quintessential example of the manifestation of inner faith, divine charisma, inherent religiosity, and noble, God-seeking conduct is Ḥurr ibn Riyāḥī, who embraced divine religion due to his divinely bestowed disposition of freedom and nobility. On the morning of Ashura, Ḥurr, along with a group of his loyal companions, abandoned the disbelief of the dominant army of ‘Umar ibn Sa‘d and joined the religion of Imam Ḥusayn (peace be upon him). After offering repentance and receiving permission, he immediately sacrificed his life in combat and jihad against those he had previously served and commanded.

Significant obstacles to religiosity include affliction with baseness, self-abasement, and servility. Religion manifests prominently in a noble, magnanimous, generous, strong, and capable individual, for it is such a person who can freely cultivate and manifest their natural disposition and inner self.

The Criterion of Divine Guardianship

Beyond the divine charisma of sagacity lies ontological and divinely bestowed guardianship, which, in addition to wisdom, encompasses dimensions of knowledge, truth, and divinely ordained popularity in its identity, choice, and endeavor. The ontological nature of religion renders it a form of existence and realization, a matter of being, becoming, and manifestation. This mode of life in this free and contingent world lacks legitimacy, validity, and security unless it is grounded in sagacity and divine guardianship through a divine intermediary. It also fails to flourish, advance, or prosper.

An individual who submits their inner religion to divine saints and adopts their logic and criterion as the measure of their religion’s correctness adds further light and guidance to their expansion and illumination through the light of religion. They can articulate this ontological religion correctly, codify it in conceptual and written form, or truly and sincerely benefit from the codified revelation of religion. Conversely, one who, in the contingent and free material world, is deprived of inherent and essential religion or, through propriety and fairness, submits to the judgment of sages and acts rightly, may emulate an acquired religion and benefit from its general, civic, and apparent virtues, such as security and dignity. Alternatively, they may become further constricted, opposing and antagonizing the sages of religion, intensifying their inner deprivation into a hellish blaze, becoming more arrogant and severely deprived, and, through stubborn autocracy, inflicting greater harm upon themselves. The consequence of disbelief, arrogance, and denial in the face of the true possessors of religion, life, and the spirit of faith is nothing but semantic beggary, aimless wandering, promiscuity, mental depravity, inner poverty, and an existential manifestation of anxiety, instability, and hellish torment. As the Holy Qur’an states: “And We send down of the Qur’an that which is healing and mercy for the believers, but it does not increase the wrongdoers except in loss” (Qur’an, 17:82).

Religion is both an ontological and an accepted matter, and this ontogenesis, affirmation, and faith reside in people’s nature and manifest in their lives and actions through contingency and choice. Thus, the disposition of religiosity will not reach a people who, through immorality, incur divine wrath, and their religion will be one of disbelief and denial, which they have freely chosen in the contingent material world through their poor choices.

Inner Revelation and Illumination

Religion is the divine word that enters the inner self through the illuminative and descending system and the structure of divine revelation. Illumination refers to the descending process in creation, entirely under God’s control and subject to ontogenesis and divine exigencies. Illumination, as epistemic and enlightening to the inner self, connected to the physical heart, radiates and brings awareness and insight, in contrast to the west, which is a consequence of human knowledge, subject to it, and pertains to the human afterlife.

Divine religion can be found in individuals endowed with the capacity to receive divine revelation and the divine word through divine grace and selection. Believers who, beyond receiving revealed religion, are tasked with conveying and proclaiming it, and express it through divine indication, are referred to in ancient Persian as sages and charismatic figures, and in Islamic terminology as prophets, messengers, and imams. The semantic differences between these will be addressed shortly.

Key components of religion include revelation, illumination, and a divine, sacred, pure, and sanctified connection between the recipient of religion and God. This reception grants religion legitimacy and provides the religious guide and teacher, as the intermediary of divine connection, with insight into the path of guidance and the capacity to lead.

Religion can be defined as the acceptance of a methodical life in the divine manner, through the path of revelation, bestowed by the One God upon the flourishing inner self, proportionate to its rank and position.

In prophetic religion, the intermediary of revelation for conveying divine religion is either granted without systemic divine will and lordship or selected as divine will within a systematic lordship and the exigency of the heart, wisdom, knowledge, and inference for His servants. The granting system is a model derived from the framework of heartfelt living, shaping wisdom and supra-rational perception, which, if empowered by divine illumination in esoteric and mysterious matters, constitutes religion. The intermediary in prophetic religion realizes God’s will and decrees and coexists with His desire.

Prophetic revelation and the legislative system of prophethood have culminated in finality, and the epistemic and semantic system of religion continues through the sacred faculty or divine guardianship and the sagacious and guardianship-based system of imamate, infusing religion with renewed vitality. Thus, revelation encompasses both prophetic and non-prophetic forms, sometimes termed informative revelation. Informative revelation refers to God’s living revelation in its general sense, which even reaches the honeybee. In linguistic terms, revelation is the impartation of awareness and meaning to the inner self, a swift and covert indication. In technical terms, revelation takes various forms and may have verbal or empowering aspects. Impartation is the definitive arrival with conscious and deliberate acceptance, yet necessary. The revelatory path refers to the descending movement and impartation of awareness from the Almighty in the path of descending knowledge and transformative arc, as a superior oversight over the inferior.

The origin of revelation is divine action, not the station of divine attributes or essence. Descending revelation is unrelated to the ascending path or elevation. Anything descending is unique, without likeness or parallel. The recipient of revelation is at a rank and disposition compatible with revelation. The content of revelation includes miraculous active capacities, spiritual, celestial, or esoteric matters, or knowledge and awareness beyond the reach of ordinary human science, intellect, instinct, senses, and power, tailored to the recipient and their intended community. For instance, Moses’ revelation is solely empowering and miraculous, Jesus’ revelation is predominantly spiritual and celestial, and the Prophet Muhammad’s revelation is comprehensive, predominantly epistemic, rendering the Holy Qur’an a book of all sciences and multifaceted knowledge, narrated through divine composition—a heavenly book that encompasses, comprehends, perfects, and completes all religions and their contents.

Revelation and miracles are through God’s power and descending grace, naturally swift and adaptive. Thus, revelation transcends human science, intellect, body, and power, and these cannot substitute for it. I have discussed the nature of revelation, particularly Qur’anic revelation, in Knowledge and Divine Humanity. Sanctity in non-prophetic saints, akin to miracles, is a revealed and descending matter of the same nature. The difference between sanctity and miracles lies in the prerequisite demand for miracles, their basis in public request, and their indication of prophetic truth, whereas the sanctity of divine saints in affirming the inner self does not depend on public demand.

Superficiality Lacking Illumination and Excessive Ritualism

Religion is endowed with a shari‘a. Shari‘a is the specific and unique path of a prophet and their community, leading them to God and religion. Shari‘a may be abrogated or expire for various reasons, unlike religion, which is an unchangeable straight path. The straight path is exclusive to infallible, divinely favored saints, as defined in Surah al-Fatiha, and religion is opened and elaborated through their singular, immutable path. The straight path is a smooth road on which one can hasten, the path of divinely favored and beloved saints and their immutable followers, who do not falter.

Shari‘a in its obligations, traditions, and rituals is not responsible for more than the apparent reality of the obligated. The reality and truth itself are not within the grasp of the obligated mind and body to be tasked with them. As stated in Knowledge and Divine Humanity, the mind perceives the appearance and attributes of any reality (not the truth). Shari‘a, in human understanding of legal rulings and their practical effects, relies on the apparent representation of realities, which yields only probable conjecture. In Shi‘i jurisprudence, appearances, legal indicators, and practical principles hold legitimacy and formality, serving as substitutes for definitive evidence without relying on truth or even reality itself, thus excusing and preventing punishment in cases of error. Therefore, shari‘a possesses legitimacy and a salvific element.

Religion is not confined or concluded by shari‘a, i.e., rituals, traditions, and apparent worship, nor is it merely action-oriented. Ethics and knowledge also fall within the domain of religion. Especially in eternal life, all human actions and behaviors manifest as awareness and knowledge, and knowledge constitutes humanity’s eternal identity.

Religion is realized through legal legitimacy, doctrinal conformity, emotional attachment and heartfelt devotion, submission to God and His decree, and practical adherence to and application of this decree. Thus, performing religious rituals is part of religion. Religion is an inner authority and a conscientious force that manifests, flourishes, and is refined through apparent actions, rituals, and shari‘a. For example, prayer is a specific religious and bodily act of worship that gives practical and physical structure to religious beliefs, enabling the body to participate in religiosity with humility.

If excessive emphasis is placed on the two components of superficiality and ritualism in religion, particularly on a jurisprudence lacking insight and overly obligation-centric, and the logic of understanding the ethics and knowledge of religion—its epistemic orientation rooted in divine revelation and illumination, which pertains to faith in the unseen—is disregarded, and jurisprudence is not approached epistemically by the believer, a reductive fallacy ensues. This fallacy substitutes superficiality, ritualism, and obligation-centricity for the holistic and epistemic essence of religion, producing a merely intellectual and bodily human, devoid of inner progress, lacking general love and guardianship, and, due to excessive conceptualism in jurisprudence, afflicted with rigidity, stubbornness, callousness, obstinacy, and the darkness of a human-centric, Godless jurisprudence. Such a person becomes a lifeless entity that vehemently masquerades as jurisprudential, appearing as a hypocritical religious pretender devoid of true and divine semantic value. Attaining epistemic jurisprudence requires devotion, surrender, and flourishing sincerity and warmth.

Ritualistic jurisprudence lacking inner meaning and healthy emotional intelligence, with blind and meaningless fervor, leads to excess, imbalance, and the jurist’s incompatibility with people and society. Instead of living and explicating divine will and methods, the jurist reveals their own unhealthy and dishonest inner self within a structure that pretends to collaborate with divine prophets, presenting not divine will and ontological truths but something called religion tied to their own unhealthy human orientation, lacking truth, correspondence with reality, or religious conviction. Such a pretentious jurist or pseudo-jurist, with meaningless and biased outcomes, presents these as meaningful religion, using concepts and terminology applicable in sacred jurisprudence. However, in this pseudo-jurisprudence, these terms and rules are misused, misapplied, and rendered vague and ambiguous. Such pseudo-jurisprudence is nothing but innovation, adding to or subtracting from religion.

A pretentious religious jurist with pseudo-jurisprudence and pseudo-religion becomes a highwayman to those thirsting for spirituality and religious truths. As these individuals fail to reach true religion and are not satiated by inherent faith, they turn to false, commercial spiritualities and deceitful movements lacking divine proximity and opposing religion, which exclusively present themselves as paths to salvation and access to the cosmic unconscious. This unconscious is of the same nature as the cosmos itself, not attributable to the absolute divine essence. Thus, the market of these deceivers flourishes through the misconceptions of pretentious jurists. Astonishingly, such pretentious jurists create religious innovations and inconsistencies, demanding their reward—lush paradise and eternal profit—from God for their excessive, narrow-minded, constrictive, and fanatical pseudo-jurisprudence. A dishonest jurist, due to excess, becomes more anxious for religion than God, lacking religious zeal rooted in knowledge and faith, and is instead trapped in a vortex of fanaticism, constriction, and harsh ignorance-based anger, distorting religion.

A religion excessively entangled in rituals and superficial, meaningless emotional fervor, abandoning knowledge, consciousness, and divine revelation and illumination, losing its revealed nature and relying on an unchangeable shari‘a, forfeits its fluidity, flexibility, and gentleness. It becomes rigid, incompatible, harsh, and ineffective, descending to a superficial, conventional, human, interpretive, arbitrary, and authoritarian level. Such a religion, due to its extremism in rituals and confinement to an unchangeable shari‘a, adopts an identity of extremism, rigidity, severity, and insincerity, neither with God nor with people. This religious extremism, being erroneous and failing to satisfy, inevitably produces violence, cruelty, and transgression, even against the sanctity of religion. Superficial extremism threatens the space of healthy thought, culture, psychological security, good governance, and general guardianship, fundamentally destroying and distorting them.

Jurisprudence and leadership lacking the conditions of independent reasoning, justice, competence, and mastery by claimants of jurisprudence who lack comprehensive knowledge of religion’s apparent and inner dimensions render religion superficial, pretentious, and tainted with hypocrisy, deceit, and duplicity. They use the authority of governance to promote dry, hollow appearances of shari‘a, propagate lifeless religious rituals, and foster worship-centric exploitation for the benefit of religious authoritarians. Rituals that do not come to life with awareness and the spirit of divine proximity, failing to transform into knowledge and quality, bring burden, superiority, and arrogance, fostering a divine-racial disposition and haughtiness.

Regrettably, what pertains to the theoretical essence and meaning of religion is not aligned with the history of religion and its practical reality. Except for brief periods, the history of religion has followed a path divergent from the truth of religion and the defined religion, imposing a superficial religion in place of a comprehensive, charismatic religion encompassing both apparent and inner dimensions.

Necessary Conditions for Religiosity and Obstacles of Ignorance, Rigidity, and Tyranny

Inherent and innate religion, if not confronted with suppressive contingencies or ignorance-inducing obstacles and if cultivated with awareness, flourishes in thought and, in practice, is endowed with fairness and will. Such a person, through awareness, fairness, and will, supported by their religious nature, steadfastly reaches true religion and practices religiosity. Through inner and inherent attraction, they find the divine saints and charismatic religious figures and coexist and bond with them.

However, superficial and ritualistic religion requires neither awareness nor knowledge, nor fairness and will. Mere association and companionship with ornate superficialists produce superficial religiosity. Superficial religion lacking truth is adorned by any newcomer through imitation of superficialists with an apparent, polished veneer, but it lacks the truth and meaningful value of religion. Such a person, even if they acquire religious jurisprudence, lacks religious understanding and awareness, merely a vessel of jurisprudential and legalistic terms and rules that does not lead to a religious or sacred outcome.

Such jurisprudence and religion are merely superficiality and self-aggrandizing pretense, detached from divine truths, constantly tainted by human ignorance, self-opinionatedness, unfair desires, self-centered oppression, and autocratic tyranny. In this case, religion itself becomes a source of every oppression and corruption, leading to the destruction of individual and collective identity, capriciousness in actions, and indifference in thought, rendering them devoid of affirmation, judgment, faith, identity, and self-sufficiency.

A claimant jurist or religious individual tainted by ignorance, who has not grasped the spirit and meaning of religion, becomes a rigid falsehood and a weapon in the service of religious deception with cunning calculations. They replace rightful religiosity and faith with the ignorance, rigidity, and cruel, violent tyranny of their inner self. Such a religion brings no peace to its adherents and, devoid of truth, increases their ignorance, rigidity, malice, deceit, hypocrisy, and enmity day by day. These dark masses fill the entire societal space with the mere name of religion, which is nothing but ruin, not with the constructive truth of religion, depriving all of freedom, peaceful coexistence, and tolerance, sowing nothing but emptiness and detachment. Astonishingly, such individuals are so immersed in ignorance and self-deception that they expect the reward of the finest Elysium and eternal inheritance, yet nothing but agonizing regret befalls these chaotic rabble and ever-demanding, wandering gnats. The selfishness, dishonesty, corrupt beliefs, and chaotic mixtures of these individuals must not be attributed to the systematic and truth-endowed divine religion, which is the true religion of God, not that which merely bears the name, shell, mask, display, and game of religion without its meaning and truth. Nevertheless, even this superficial, conventional, and general religion preserves the life, property, and honor of the superficialist.