How Can I Believe from My Heart When Something Inside Keeps Rejecting Islam?

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question

I was born into a Muslim family, but did not practice Islam much. In 2021, I started praying and followed Islam to the utmost, but now I don’t feel as much as before. I am always logically trying to see why Islam is true, but something inside me keeps me away from accepting the truth, as though I have become arrogant. It feels as if my heart has become locked. Why am I rejecting it? Help me to accept Islam. From the core of my heart, I want to believe Allah is real and Islam is real. Please help me.

Answer

In the Name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate.

I hope you’re doing well, in sha’ Allah. Your wish to believe, from the core of your heart, is that faith is still alive in you. Begin there.

Thoughts that come to you unbidden, telling you that Islam is false or that Allah is not real, do not make you a disbeliever, so long as you dislike them and do not accept them. Your dislike of these thoughts is itself a sign of faith. A cooled heart is not a locked heart. You find your way back by tending the faith already planted in you, not by winning an argument with yourself each night.

Your Distress at These Thoughts Is Pure Faith

The Companions knew this struggle. Abu Hurayra (Allah be pleased with him) reported that some of them came to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and asked him: “We find within ourselves something that any of us would find too grave to utter.” He said, “Have you actually found that?” They said, “Yes.” He said, “That is pure faith.” [Muslim]

Mulla Ali al-Qari (Allah have mercy on him) explains: “That is, your finding that passing thought ugly; or, on another reading, your knowing those whisperings to be false, and your souls’ refusing and recoiling from uttering them, is ‘pure faith,’ meaning its purest form: it is the sign that shows plainly that faith is firmly rooted in your hearts.” [Qari, Mirqat al-Mafatih] He also records: “It has been said that the meaning is that whispering is a sign of faith, because a thief does not break into an empty house.” [Ibid.]

Your love of faith is Allah’s gift. Allah Most High says: “But rather Allah has made faith beloved to you, and fair in your hearts; And made hateful to you thankless unbelief, sin, and rebelliousness. Those are the rightly guided.” [Quran 49:7; Keller, The Quran Beheld]

Certainty Is a Heart at Rest

What you are asking for has a name: certainty (yaqin). The great Quranic expert, Raghib al-Isfahani (Allah have mercy on him) says that certainty “is the stillness of understanding together with the firmness of judgment.” [Raghib, al-Mufradat fi Gharib al-Quran]

Imam Majd al-Din al-Fayruzabadi (Allah have mercy on him) gives its rank: “The verifying scholars said: certainty is to faith what the soul is to the body. In it, the knowers of Allah surpass one another, and for it the competitors compete.” [Fayruzabadi, Basaʾir Dhawi al-Tamyiz]

Faith Grows Like a Seed That Is Watered—Imam Ghazali’s Wisdom

Imam Ghazali (Allah have mercy on him) explains how conviction becomes firm: “The way to strengthen and establish it is not to learn the craft of debate and dialectic. Rather, one busies oneself with reciting the Quran and its explanation, and reading hadith and their meanings, and with the duties of worship. Then one’s conviction keeps growing firmer through the proofs and arguments of the Quran that strike one’s hearing, the witnessing hadith and their benefits that come to one, the lights of worship and its duties that shine upon one, and what flows into one from seeing the righteous, sitting with them, beholding their look, hearing them, and seeing their bearing in humility before Allah, fear of Him, and lowliness to Him. The first teaching is like casting a seed into the breast, and these means are like watering and tending it, until that seed grows, strengthens, and rises into a good tree, firmly rooted, its root firm and its branches in the sky.” [Ghazali, Ihyaʾ Ulum al-Din]

Imam Zabidi (Allah have mercy on him) comments: “The witnessing texts of the Quran and hadith are like water to that seed; from them comes its very life, for without them it would wither. The lights of worship and sitting with the good are like its tending, guarding it from what harms it.” [Zabidi, Ithaf al-Sada al-Muttaqin]

The sweetness you felt after your return in 2021 was the seed breaking the soil. Its fading is no proof against Islam. It is a seed asking for water.

A Heart That Grieves Is Alive

You fear your heart is locked. Imam Ibn Ataʾillah (Allah have mercy on him) gives the true sign of a dead heart: “A sign of the heart’s death is not grieving over the acts of obedience you have missed.” [Ibn Ataʾillah, al-Hikam]

Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq (Allah have mercy on him), commenting, counts among the signs of a living heart “longing for what sustains it: the heart that seeks what its existence rests upon, which is mindfulness of Allah (taqwa), is alive; otherwise it is not.” [Zarruq, Sharh al-Hikam]

You grieve that you feel less, and you plead to believe. By that measure, your heart is alive and, in sha’ Allah, healthy.

A Practical Path Back to Greater Certainty

Allah Most High says: “And whoever strives their utmost for Our sake: Verily shall We unfailingly guide them the momentous paths to Us; And truly Allah is ever with those who excel in good.” [Quran 29:69; Keller, The Quran Beheld]

One. Learn the foundations of belief calmly with a teacher. The creed of Islam rests on sound proofs. A changing world needs a Maker; its Maker is One, Living, Knowing, and Powerful; and the Quran and the miracles of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) show his truthfulness. Study them step by step in a structured course, such as the free courses on SeekersGuidance, rather than alone at night with your doubts. If particular questions trouble you, write back and name them.

Two. Water the seed of faith each day. Keep your five prayers, even when they feel dry. Read a little from the Quran with its meaning, and add a few minutes of remembrance (dhikr): “There is no god but Allah,” and blessings upon the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace).

Three. Sit with the righteous. Imam Ghazali counts their company among the means that make conviction firm, so find a circle of knowledge or a few God-fearing friends.

Four. Let the passing thought pass. When one tells you Allah is not real, do not debate it. Affirm your faith in Allah and His Messenger, seek refuge in Allah, and turn to something else. Entertained thoughts grow; ignored ones fade. Shaykh Adib Kallas (Allah have mercy on him) would compare such passing thoughts to a barking dog: the smart person ignores the barking dog and keeps heading to their destination; it is folly to ask the dog why it is barking.

Five. Ask Allah for certainty, and keep asking. Imam Ibn Ataʾillah says: “Do not let the delay of the gift, despite your persistence in supplication, bring you to despair. He has guaranteed you an answer in what He chooses for you, not in what you choose for yourself, and at the time He wills, not the time you will.” [Ibn Ataʾillah, al-Hikam]

Imam Munawi (Allah have mercy on him), after citing it, adds: “It is recompense enough for the servant, in place of the answer, that he has been set in intimate converse with Allah, showing his need and his brokenness.” [Munawi, Fayd al-Qadir]

Make the Prophet’s Supplication Your Own

The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) would often say, as Anas (Allah be pleased with him) reports, “O Turner of hearts, make my heart firm upon Your religion.” [Tirmidhi]

يا مُقَلِّبَ الْقُلُوبِ ثَبِّتْ قَلْبِي عَلَى دِينِكَ

Ya Muqallib al-qulub, thabbit qalbi ala dinik.

Mulla Ali al-Qari explains that Allah is the One who turns hearts “at times toward obedience and at times toward disobedience, at times toward presence and at times toward heedlessness.” [Qari, Mirqat al-Mafatih]

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was himself protected from such turning. Anas understood this when he asked whether he feared for them, and Imam Qari notes that “the intent is only to teach the community.” [Ibid.]

He taught it for hearts like yours. Say it in your prostration and before dawn. The One who turns hearts has already turned yours toward Him; your longing is His doing.

And Allah knows best.

Faraz Rabbani

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