Why not “Natural Disposition”?

If fitrah is understood merely as a disposition, it implies that it is an internal arrangement or positioning of traits "externally positioned" within a person. In Qur'anic usage, however, fitrah is not an externally rearranged internal state but the original creation upon which Allah has created human beings.

Why not “Natural Tendency” or “Inclination”?

A tendency can differ between individuals. Once fitrah is understood in this way, a person may begin to identify whatever they feel, prefer, or incline toward as their fitrah. This can occur when those feelings and inclinations have been shaped by corrupted desires, external influences, or distorted understandings.

The Danger: If personal feelings can be treated as evidence of one's fitrah, it becomes subject to individual interpretation rather than remaining grounded in what Allah has created human beings upon.

Why not “Orientation”?

An orientation is a direction toward something, but toward what? If the answer is left to the individual, then the direction itself becomes open to subjective interpretation. The word therefore does not tell us what the direction is objectively grounded in.

The Secular Definition

In contemporary secular usage, spirituality can refer to subjective experiences of meaning, inner connection, transcendence, personal values, or a personal sense of right and wrong without being grounded in revelation or an objective source of moral truth.

The Danger

This creates a dangerous epistemological shift. If spirituality is understood primarily through subjective feeling, a person's internal experience can become the measure of what feels meaningful, true, right, or morally good.

The Morality Central Stance

This subjective definition is not the basis on which spirituality is understood at Morality Central. Human experience is not treated as the source that determines truth or morality. Rather, spirituality is understood within the framework established by Allah.

Therefore, we use “spirituality” as a functional term while strictly defining its meaning within the Islamic framework, rather than allowing contemporary secular usage to determine its meaning.

The General Definition

In general usage, tradition refers to something transmitted from one generation to another. It may include customs, practices, beliefs, methods, or scholarly approaches.

The term therefore describes continuity and inheritance, while questions of truth, correctness, and authority require a separate basis.

The Problem

The epistemological shift occurs when the Qur’an, Hadith, or Sunnah are themselves reduced to “tradition,” as though their authority arises from their transmission across generations.

Transmission explains how knowledge reaches later generations. It does not itself establish the authority/foundation of that knowledge.

Why Sunnah is Not Tradition

The Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ is not a humanly developed method or practice. It is part of revelation itself, conveyed through the Messenger’s words, actions, and approvals. To call Sunnah “tradition” would wrongly suggest that its authority arises from transmission across generations, like customs or scholarly methods. In reality, its authority rests on Allah, who appointed the Messenger ﷺ and made his guidance binding.

Transmission preserves Sunnah for later generations, but transmission does not create its authority. The Islamic epistemological structure is therefore:

Transmission functions as the means through which knowledge of revelation and Prophetic guidance reaches later generations. We do not follow Islam merely because it has been inherited by us or our forefathers, but because he ﷺ was the Messenger of Allah. The absolute authority rests with Allah.

Inherited Belief & The Qur’anic Critique

The Qur’an highlights disbelievers who inherited their deen from their ancestors.

These verses establish an important epistemological distinction. Something inherited from previous generations does not acquire truth merely through its inheritance.

The Western Conception

In modern Western intellectual discourse, “tradition” can be placed in contrast with reason and critical inquiry, as though following tradition means accepting what has been handed down without engaging one’s own understanding or intellect. This creates a tradition versus reason framework.

Such a conception is incompatible with the Islamic understanding of intellectual engagement. It would be contrary to Islam to suggest that using one’s understanding, intellect, or capacity for reflection stands against following revelation.

The Qur’anic language itself repeatedly directs human beings towards pondering and reflection, using expressions such as تَفَكَّرُونَ (tafakkarūn) and تَعْقِلُونَ (taʿqilūn). The Islamic framework therefore does not place revelation and intellectual engagement in opposition. Revelation provides guidance, while human beings ponder, reflect, understand, and respond to it.

The Morality Central Stance

At Morality Central, tradition means human practices transmitted among people, without making them infallible or absolute authority.

A method may become part of the Islamic tradition because Muslim scholars developed and used it in their efforts to understand and approach the Qur’an and Sunnah. Its transmission across generations identifies it as part of a continuing scholarly tradition. Its validity must be assessed through its relationship with the revealed sources and the principles by which those sources are understood.

Thus, Islamic tradition describes the inherited human effort to approach Islam, rather than functioning as an independent source of Islamic authority.

The General Definition

In general usage, ethics may be defined as the discipline concerned with what is morally good or bad, and with what is morally right or wrong.

This definition describes the subject of ethics, but does not establish the source that determines moral correctness. Consequently, the standard may be derived from personal opinion, social acceptance, cultural practice, professional rules, or changing circumstances.

The Problem

This creates a danger of treating human judgment as the source of moral truth. A principle may appear universal, while its application changes according to individual or collective judgment. For example, lying is generally regarded as wrong. Yet its moral assessment can change when human judgment becomes the determining standard:

• A student lies to protect a friend from punishment. Some may consider it kindness; others may consider it dishonesty.
• A politician lies while claiming that the lie serves the nation. Some may call it strategy; others may call it betrayal.
• A person lies to prevent conflict within a family. One society may tolerate the act, while another may consider it unacceptable.

The question therefore becomes: who determines when an act becomes ethically permissible?

The Islamic Standard

Islam does not leave the permissibility of lying to individual assessment. Instead, gives objective exceptions:

Outside these exceptions, a person cannot make lying permissible simply because he considers his purpose beneficial.

The Morality Central Stance

At Morality Central, ethics is therefore not founded upon custom, habit, social acceptance, or human opinion. The Qur’an and Sunnah establish the standard by which right and wrong are determined.

Human customs and habits remain relevant because ethics guides and evaluates them, but they do not establish the ethical standard. What society accepts is not automatically what Islam considers right. Likewise, a practice being widespread does not establish its moral validity.

Custom is therefore evaluated against the ethical standard, rather than becoming the source of that standard.

The Epistemological Shift

The shift occurs when:

This can produce a framework in which:

• Worship becomes “religious.”
• Education becomes separate.
• Ethics becomes separate.
• Law becomes separate.
• Economics becomes separate.
• Social life becomes separate.

Islam does not establish these as independent spheres detached from the Deen.

Deen: A Comprehensive Word

Allah سبحانه وتعالى says:

The command to enter into submission completely reflects the comprehensive character of Islam.

Deen therefore concerns the human being as a whole, including what one believes, how one worships, how one conducts oneself, how one acquires knowledge, how one deals with others, and how one orders one's affairs.

Religion As A Category

The word “religion” may appropriately describe traditions whose religious conception is fundamentally organised around a distinct religious sphere, particularly traditions shaped by separation between sacred and worldly life, ritual practice, or forms of religious withdrawal and monasticism.

This category does not adequately describe Islam.

Islam does not establish a monk-like separation between religious existence and ordinary human existence. Submission to Allah extends into the whole of life.

Application

At Morality Central, the word “religion” may be used when referring to religions as a comparative or descriptive category, particularly when discussing systems whose conception of religious life is organised around belief, ritual, worship, or a distinct religious sphere.

The term may therefore be used when discussing other religious traditions, their doctrines, practices, institutions, histories, or conceptions of religious life.

When referring specifically to Islam, however, Morality Central will use Deen or Deen of Islam rather than “religion,” in order to preserve the Qur’anic conception of Islam as a comprehensive order of submission to Allah.

The use of “religion” is therefore contextual, while Deen of Islam remains the precise terminology for Islam.

The Problem of Calling Islam a Religion

Calling Islam a “religion” can appear linguistically harmless while carrying a deeper conceptual consequence. It can make Islam appear to be:

The Qur’anic conception presents Islam as:

The issue is therefore not merely the choice of an English word. It is the worldview carried by the category itself.

The Morality Central Stance

At Morality Central, Islam is referred to as the Deen of Islam rather than as a religion.

The term “religion” may be used when discussing religious systems whose conception is centred upon a distinct religious sphere or upon forms of separation between religious and worldly existence.

For Islam, however, Deen preserves the Qur’anic conception of a comprehensive order of submission, obedience, obligation, conduct and accountability.