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True human nature is the right religion: but can anyone “revert” to it?

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 16 February 2024

“So set yourself for religion, being upright, the nature (fitrah) made by Allah in which He has created mankind. There is no altering Allah’s creation. That is the right religion — but most people do not know  — turning to Him; and keep your duty to Him, and keep up prayer and do not be of those who set up partners (with Allah), of those who split up their religion and become sects; each faction rejoicing in what it has.”— ch. 30, Ar-Rūm, v. 30–32

فَاَقِمۡ وَجۡہَکَ لِلدِّیۡنِ حَنِیۡفًا ؕ فِطۡرَتَ اللّٰہِ الَّتِیۡ فَطَرَ النَّاسَ عَلَیۡہَا ؕ لَا تَبۡدِیۡلَ لِخَلۡقِ اللّٰہِ ؕ ذٰلِکَ الدِّیۡنُ الۡقَیِّمُ ٭ۙ وَ لٰکِنَّ اَکۡثَرَ النَّاسِ لَا یَعۡلَمُوۡنَ ﴿٭ۙ۳۰﴾ مُنِیۡبِیۡنَ اِلَیۡہِ وَ اتَّقُوۡہُ وَ اَقِیۡمُوا الصَّلٰوۃَ وَ لَا تَکُوۡنُوۡا مِنَ الۡمُشۡرِکِیۡنَ ﴿ۙ۳۱﴾ مِنَ الَّذِیۡنَ فَرَّقُوۡا دِیۡنَہُمۡ وَ کَانُوۡا شِیَعًا ؕ کُلُّ حِزۡبٍۭ بِمَا لَدَیۡہِمۡ فَرِحُوۡنَ ﴿۳۲﴾

In the last Khutba, I mentioned near the end that God has created every human being in the same way with a pure nature which corresponds to Allah’s own nature. This is stated in the verses which I read above. It is stated here that the “right religion” is the nature (fitrah) in which Allah has created mankind, the nature with which every person is born. The fundamentals of religion mentioned here, that one should turn to God, keep one’s duty to Him, seeking His help through prayer, and call upon Him only, without any partner, these principles, says the Quran, are in-built in human nature, and not artificially forced upon man.

When a child is born, it cries and acts in a way to make those around him meet his needs so that it can survive. It has not been taught what to do by anyone. It is born with this capability and these instincts. That is its natural behaviour. In fact, that is his or her religion. And that behaviour is the same for every child, regardless of the religion, nation or race of its parents. According to the Quran, everything in nature expresses the glory and greatness of God and seeks help through prayer. The Quran says:

“The seven heavens and the earth and those in them declare His glory. And there is not a single thing but glorifies Him with His praise, but you do not understand their glorification. Surely He is Forbearing, Forgiving” (17:44)

and also:

“Do you not see that Allah is He Whom do glorify all those who are in the heavens and the earth, and the birds with wings outspread? Each one knows its prayer and its glorification. And Allah is Knower of what they do” (24:41).

Of course, their prayer and glorification of God is not in the sense that they are aware of doing this, in the way that we human beings are aware of doing these things. Their prayer is not what we think of as prayer, with certain postures, movements and words. Their glorification of Allah does not consist of their saying subhan-Allah. It is their state and condition which reflects their prayer and glory.

A newly-born baby knows how to seek assistance. It is really calling for assistance from Allah, and the mother or the parents act as the agents of Allah to provide the baby with its needs. How does the baby glorify God? When we look at its creation we are amazed at how this tiny thing has come into existence, starting from nothing inside the mother, and is now functioning with all its organs, the heart beating. We also know that it will grow into a full human being with a brain and body that can achieve so much in the world. That state of the baby is declaring the glory of God. An infant’s natural behaviour does not look to us like a religion, because the baby doesn’t utter any words of prayer or perform salaat, but what constitutes its religion is that it is following the laws of Allah.

In a hadith in Bukhari (hadith 7047), the Holy Prophet has related a lengthy dream of his. One part of that dream is that he saw a very tall man in a garden, who was so tall that his head reached heaven and could not be seen. This man was surrounded by a large number of children, so many that the Holy Prophet says he had never seen so many children. In the dream the Holy Prophet was told that the man was Abraham and the children around him were those who had died while still in their natural state or fitrah. In other words, they had died in childhood before they were grown up enough to be held responsible for their actions, and they were in Paradise with Abraham. Some Muslims asked the Holy Prophet: “What about the children of the idol-worshippers?” He replied that they included those as well. The children of the idol-worshippers were also there in Paradise with Abraham. The children he saw around Abraham were all the children of mankind who had died before the age of discretion or maturity, whatever may have been the religion of their parents.

Those children were born in their particular religious communities and may have undergone ceremonies which are carried out in their religions at birth or during childhood. A child born in a Christian home may have been christened or baptised. There are also ceremonies among Jews and Hindus for the infant in its early days. When they died, their funerals would have been conducted in accordance with their own religions. They were known as Jewish, Christian or Hindu children, or to whatever community they belonged. Yet the Holy Prophet Muhammad saw all of them in the garden of heaven around Abraham. In their short lives, they had acted according to the way in which Allah had created them. They did not have the power or choice to defy the will of God and rebel against it. In fact, nothing in the natural world around us can choose to defy the will of God, in the way that an adult human can.

Islam therefore teaches that a child is born pure, and not with a sinful nature and does not inherit the sins of his ancestors. Also, it does not come burdened with any record of a past life and there are no sins leftover from a previous existence for which it will face punishment in this life. He or she is born with a clean, fresh record.

There is a well-known saying of the Holy Prophet Muhammad:

“Every child is born conforming to nature (fitrah). It is his parents who make him Jewish or Christian or Magian” (Bukhari, hadith 1385).

In explanation of this hadith, Bukhari the compiler has added a note to say that by fitrah is meant Islam (hadith 4775). Now consider a child born in a Muslim household. It is obvious that his parents don’t make him into a non-Muslim; on the contrary, most of them try hard to bring it up as a Muslim. So does it mean that the child even after growing up continues to conform to its true human nature that it had at birth? Do we see that those who were born in Muslim homes continue to obey Allah, instinctively and automatically, by their very nature and they are innocent of any disobedience of Allah or any wrong-doing, and retain the innocence of childhood all their lives? Because this is the Islam of every child’s birth. Of course we don’t see this, and it would be absurd to say so. The Islam of true human nature is followed by a child unconsciously, without the child knowing and without any effort by it. The child is not capable of holding some wrong belief or deviating from the path which God has placed in its nature to follow. When he or she grows up, he acquires the capacity to disobey Allah and has to make a conscious effort to submit to God, and has to apply his own thinking and understanding.

While it is true that if the child has Muslim parents they don’t turn him into the follower of another religion, but sad to say many such parents set a bad example to their children. As a result, there are children who grow up with wrong ideas, behave badly, and even commit sins and crimes, after the example of their elders and their Muslim society, even though their parents never made them into actual non-Muslims. It is wrong for an adult Muslim, born to Muslim parents, to be smug and complacent and think that he is still acting according to the nature in which Allah created him as a baby because only non-Muslim parents turn their children away from that nature.

Another wrong conclusion has been drawn from this hadith, which is something we are seeing since the 1990s. It is claimed that when an adult non-Muslim becomes a Muslim he has “reverted” to Islam, meaning that he was born as a “Muslim” and he has now returned and come back to the religion of his birth. The fashion has developed of calling a convert to Islam as a revert to Islam. But the religion with which he was born, with which every human being is born, is of perfect submission to God in each and every respect, instinctively and intuitively, without even the slightest thought of disobeying God. Can a non-Muslim adult by embracing Islam instantly return to this state, become as innocent as a child, with no thought of sin in his mind?

This description of a convert as reverting to Islam is not supported by the Quran or Hadith or the history of the spread of Islam during the Holy Prophet’s life or even afterwards. Everyone knows that people become Muslims through the Kalima Shahada, saying that I testify that there is no god but Allah and I testify that Muhammad is His Messenger. They don’t say: I revert to Islam, the religion of my birth. The Quran does not use any such term for embracing Islam which can be translated as “reverting”. When the Quran asks non-Muslims to become Muslims, it asks them to believe, to submit to God, to follow the revelation and the Prophet, etc. It does not ask them to “revert”.

In Hadith, there are numerous reports of the Holy Prophet inviting people to Islam, and reports by his Companions on how they became Muslims, but in no report do we find any mention of anyone being asked to “revert” to Islam or anyone saying, as they do now, that “I reverted” to Islam. In the Quran and Hadith if there is any word which can translated into English as “reverting”, it is usually applied to someone who has, unfortunately, reverted to unbelief after accepting Islam. The only people who can “revert” to Islam are those who were actually Muslims, who were known to people as being members of the Muslim community, then they themselves chose to leave Islam, and then they chose to become Muslims again.

To conclude, all human beings are created with a pure nature which makes them want to submit to Allah and to do good deeds. In childhood, everyone acts according to this fitrah. After growing up, it requires a hard effort by a person to follow his original fitrah. It is a struggle in which we fail at times and succeed at times, whether we were born as Muslims or accepted Islam as adults. It is only the prophets raised by Allah who are innocent and true to their in-born fitrah all their lives.

So may Allah enable us all to refrain from making claims of superiority over others and to do the best we can in terms of our deeds, Ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk