Uṣūl al-Dīn: The Grounding Principles of the Faith

He says: wa mā yaʿtaqidūna min uṣūl al-dīn. In the Arab lands, at al-Azhar for example, there is a faculty of hadith study, and another faculty of uṣūl al-dīn. ʿAqīdah is normally referred to as uṣūl al-dīn. Uṣūl is the plural of aṣl. Aṣl means a fundamental, a grounding principle. So the uṣūl are the grounding principles of the faith, and those come first: the fundamentals come before the furūʿ, the branches, the fiqh. How to pray is important; but before that, what we are supposed to believe is even more important. That is the foundation. That is why it is called uṣūl al-dīn.

Another name for it is al-fiqh al-akbar: the greater science, the greater or the superior science, because it is more important than al-fiqh al-aṣghar, the smaller or the shorter science, which refers to fiqh. Normally the word fiqh refers to jurisprudence; but Imam Abū Ḥanīfah called his book al-Fiqh al-Akbar. Many times people pick up this book and think it is a book about how to pray and so on; but it is actually about the greater science, which is ʿaqīdah.

So he has called it uṣūl al-dīn. The dīn is the religion. It is something that Allah (swt) has put into the Ummah, which calls people with any form of sensibility and understanding, even a small amount, to take that which He has sent through the prophets. That is a dīn. Wa yadīnūna bihi li-Rabbi al-ʿālamīn: this is what they adopted.

Any science that is studied has certain aspects that need to be understood, beginning with its definition. ʿIlm al-tawḥīd is another name for this science. That is the main component of this discussion: to know the oneness of Allah (swt). The word tawḥīd, in Arabic, is a transitive noun, a mutaʿaddī noun, which means not to be one, but to declare something to be one. Tawḥīd is a word we use all the time. Tawḥīd means to declare something to be one. Allah is one: that is His reality. If nobody believed that, it would not affect Allah (swt) in the least. Tawḥīd for us is that we declare Allah to be one, in every sense of that. That is what tawḥīd means.

Tawḥīd, theoretically speaking, is defined as knowledge of the tenets of faith based on convincing proofs. Convincing proofs are needed to establish the knowledge of our beliefs, of our dīn.

What is going to be discussed in this science? What is its main object of discussion? A discussion of pharmacy will probably concern the reaction of certain chemicals with the human body. A discussion of medicine concerns the human being from a biological, health perspective. The study of ʿilm al-ḥadīth looks at hadith from the various perspectives related to that. What, then, is the object of study in this ʿilm al-tawḥīd, or ʿilm uṣūl al-dīn? It is the discussion of the things which are known to us, in terms of how those things relate to true belief, which includes Allah (swt) and His attributes, His beginninglessness and endlessness, and everything else that relates to that. That is what is going to be studied.

What is the benefit of this? What is hoped for? What is its aim and goal? As already said, it is to get to know Allah (swt) better, so that we can have saʿādat al-dārayn, which means fortune in this world and in the hereafter. That is the perspective. So to take up this study for anything else, such as learning something in order to argue with others, is incorrect. If it is so that we become more firmly grounded, so that our faith is not shaken by somebody else, then that is one of the intentions we should have, and that is the correct intention.