What every Muslim is required to believe, and why.
Foundational creed in the tradition of Ahl al-Sunnah wa l-Jamāʿah — the articles of faith, the attributes of God, the unseen, prophecy, the Last Day, and the responsibilities of belief.
Notes here are written to be read carefully and in order; the early articles set up the vocabulary the later ones depend on. Where classical works of ʿaqīdah are referenced — al-Ṭaḥāwī's ʿAqīdah, the texts of the kalām tradition, the writings of al-Māturīdī's school — they are introduced as needed.
Where the Khawārij, Muʿtazilah, Karrāmiyyah, Jahmiyyah and Murjiʾah stood on the three components of īmān, tabulated, with two objections to the reduced definitions.
Whether īmān admits of increase and decrease: the Ḥanafī and Mutakallimūn denial, the contrary view of the muḥaddithīn and Shāh Walī Allāh's mujmal / mufaṣṣal resolution.
Whether actions form part of īmān or follow from it: the Mutakallimūn and Aḥnāf against the Jamhūr, with four grounds for treating the disagreement as one of expression.
How Islām and īmān differ in essence yet depend upon one another, and why iqrār bi al-lisān is by consensus a condition for the rulings of Muslims to apply.
A concise treatment of how the classical scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah defined faith — and the relationship between belief, profession, and action.
The root a-m-n and the four constructions of āmana, then the sharʿī definition recorded in Rūḥ al-Maʿānī and the four kinds of tawātur that establish ʿilm al-yaqīn.
How the people of knowledge grade intent into five stages, hājis, khāṭir, ḥadīth al-nafs, hamm and ʿazm, and why only the last of them incurs a reckoning.
