Fitnah in the Qurʾan

Trenches were dug in the earth, and fire was kindled in them, and those of the people of that town who had believed in their Lord were brought and given a choice: either to apostatize from their religion, or to be cast into that blazing pit. So they did not apostatize, and they were thrown into it while they watched the fire devour those before them, firm and unmoved. That is the story of the People of the Trench that the Qurʾan narrated in Sūrat al-Burūj, and it described the deed of those who kindled that fire with a single word and no other: "Indeed, those who have tried (fatanū) the believing men and believing women and then have not repented will have the punishment of Hell and the punishment of the Burning" [al-Burūj: 10]. "Fatanū" here is a past-tense verb in the position of the greatest crime, and it will not be a long search until we discover that this verbal choice is not incidental; for the material "f-t-n" in its linguistic origin is a real fire before it became a metaphor, and a real fire for the People of the Trench is no metaphor but a reality.

Sixty places in five forms

Researchers count the material "f-t-n" among the broadest of the Qurʾanic words in occurrence and the most varied in meaning; for its root recurs sixty times in five forms: the verb "fatana" and its conjugations (twenty-three times), the noun "fitnah" (thirty-four times), the noun "futūn" [Ṭā-Hā: 40], the active participle "fātinīn" [al-Ṣāffāt: 162], and the passive participle "maftūn" [al-Qalam: 6]^[1]. This breadth in number is matched by a breadth in signification that makes this article, unlike its two predecessors in this series, not exhaustively survey every place separately, but trace the single thread that gathers all this variety, citing the most prominent models in each of its forms.

The goldsmith's fire

And before we trace that thread in its sixty places, we must pause at its first source, where the people of language say: the origin of "fitnah" is the placing of gold or silver into the fire so that its quality is distinguished from its inferiority, and one says: "I assayed the gold (fatantu al-dhahab)" when you melt it with fire to distinguish its pure from its adulterated. Then the Arabs expanded in the usage of the word until it comprised everything by which a person is tested and by which his truthful one is distinguished from his lying one. And Ibn al-Athīr said in his definition: "Fitnah: the trial and the test… and its origin is taken from 'I assayed the silver and the gold' when you melt them with fire so that the inferior is distinguished from the good," and added that fitnah is the greatest of the degrees of testing^[2]. So the word, in its origin, is not a description of a bare evil nor a bare good, but of a process of disclosure: a fire that does not make the metal, but manifests what was originally in it of purity or adulteration.

And it is fitting here to distinguish between "fitnah" and its two sisters "balāʾ" (affliction) and "imtiḥān" (examination), for the three are close in general meaning but are not entirely synonymous. For "balāʾ" is more general, comprising everything with which a person is afflicted of good or evil without necessarily carrying the meaning of disclosure of the hidden, as in His words "And We test you with evil and with good as a trial (fitnatan)" [al-Anbiyāʾ: 35], where fitnah is made an aim of affliction, not a synonym for it, that is: We afflict you in order to try you. But "fitnah" is more specific, for it always carries the meaning of melting the outer to disclose the inner, and this is why "fitnah" is not said except of what carries the possibility of the disclosure of a reality that was covered — truthfulness or lying, sincerity or hypocrisy — and this is what makes it, as Ibn al-Athīr described it, the greatest of the degrees of testing, not a mere passing test.

A single fire in five forms

This single metaphor — the goldsmith's fire — is what gathers the five forms over which "fitnah" is distributed in the Qurʾan, so that they seem at first glance scattered but upon reflection are a single fire taking five shapes. The first form is the fitnah of ease: a person is tested by what he loves rather than by what he hates, such as wealth and children: "And know that your wealth and your children are but a trial (fitnah)" [al-Anfāl: 28, and it recurred verbatim in al-Taghābun: 15]. The second form is the fitnah of hardship: he is tested by what he hates, such as fear, poverty, and illness: "And We test you with evil and with good as a trial" [al-Anbiyāʾ: 35]. The third form is the fitnah of persecution: that the believer be coerced to abandon his religion by harm and torture, as happened to the People of the Trench, and as those who emigrated were described "after they had been persecuted (futinū)" [al-Naḥl: 110]. The fourth form is the fitnah of division: a split and fighting among the Muslims themselves that threatens their unity, and the Qurʾan describes it as "more severe than killing" [al-Baqarah: 191], indeed "greater than killing" [al-Baqarah: 217]. And the fifth form, which closes the circle, is the fitnah of the punishment itself: for when the first four fitnahs come to their outcome in the Hereafter, the word returns to its first origin — the real fire — so it is said to the people of the Fire on the Day of Resurrection: "Taste your trial (fitnah)" [al-Dhāriyāt: 14], and the disbelievers are described as "the Day they will be tried (yuftanūn) over the Fire" [al-Dhāriyāt: 13]. So the word that began as a metaphor from the goldsmith's fire ends as a reality in the fire of Hell, and between the two ends pass all the kinds of affliction that a person passes through in his life.

When the forms intersect

And if the five preceding forms are read separately in most places, then other places gather more than one aspect of them together, and even disclose a sixth aspect not mentioned by the preceding division: fitnah as a training, not a punishment. Some places describe fitnah not as a punishment nor a disclosure only, but as a training that prepares its possessor for a great mission to which these fitnahs were the only path. For when God addresses Moses after his selection for the message, He reminds him of a chain of trials preceding this selection, not following it: killing a soul, fleeing in fear, and estrangement for years among the people of Madyan — all of that under a single word: "And you killed a soul, but We saved you from distress, and We tried you with a [severe] trial (fatannāka futūnan). And you remained years among the people of Madyan" [Ṭā-Hā: 40]. So Moses was not selected for the message despite those trials, but after they refined and prepared him for it; and in this is a correction of a common understanding that supposes fitnah an obstacle to selection, while it is sometimes its only path.

And some other places gather more than one form at once. For the story of Solomon (peace be upon him) — "And We certainly tried Solomon and placed on his throne a body; then he returned [in repentance]" [Ṣād: 34] — and the story of David before him "And David became certain that We had tried him, and he asked forgiveness of his Lord" [Ṣād: 24], show that fitnah does not strike the disobedient alone, but reaches the prophets themselves in a form befitting their standing, so that it is a cause for more returning [to God], not deviation. And in contrast, a verse at the opening of Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt establishes a general rule governing all fitnah: "Do the people think that they will be left to say, 'We believe,' and they will not be tried (yuftanūn)? But We have certainly tried those before them, and God will surely make evident those who are truthful, and He will surely make evident the liars" [al-ʿAnkabūt: 2–3]; for the mere claim is not enough, and fitnah is what manifests — exactly like the goldsmith's fire — who was truthful in his claim from who was a liar in it.

The fitnah of this community

And if the Qurʾan established that fitnah is a general way from which no community escapes, then the Prophet ﷺ singled out for this community specifically a warning that did not come for others with this explicitness. Among the most widely circulated hadiths in this chapter are his words ﷺ: "Indeed, for every community is a fitnah, and the fitnah of my community is wealth," narrated by al-Tirmidhī who said: a good and authentic hadith, and al-Albānī authenticated it^[3]. And in the choice of "wealth" specifically as a fitnah for this community is a direct connection with the first of the forms of Qurʾanic fitnah — the fitnah of ease — and a prophetic warning against supposing that fitnah is only in hardship and trial, while the gravest thing this religion faces, upon the widening of its extent and the abundance of its blessings, is the fitnah of wealth, not the fitnah of poverty. And the precision of this hadith is that for every community is its own fire by which it is tested, not the fire of another; for a community that preceded may have its fitnah be hunger or oppression, and this community, since the world was opened to it and its wealth abounded after scarcity, its greatest test was made in the thing it was given, not in the thing it was deprived of; and this is what explains why the warning against wealth abounded in texts subsequent to the conquest and expansion more than in the early texts of oppression in Mecca.

Why fitnah?

In his exegesis of the two preceding verses of al-ʿAnkabūt, Ibn al-Qayyim clarified that the wisdom in fitnah is disclosure, not punishment: for when a person claims faith, God afflicts him to manifest whether he is truthful in his claim or a liar; so if he was a liar, he turns back at the first test as the one fleeing punishment turns back, and if he was truthful, he stands firm and even increases in faith^[4]. And this is precisely the meaning of His words in another place: "And if a trial (fitnah) strikes him, he turns on his face" [al-Ḥajj: 11] — for the turning back is the sign of one whose faith was adulterated gold that only the fire disclosed. And from another objective-based angle, the exegetes established in the meaning of His words "And fight them until there is no fitnah and the religion is [all] for God" [al-Baqarah: 193] that the permission to fight in Islam was not for coercing anyone to enter it, but for lifting fitnah in its fourth meaning — persecution and coercion to abandon the religion — from the believers; for the aim of legitimate fighting is the lifting of fitnah, not its imposition, and this overturns a common accusation about Islam upside down: the very verse cited at times as evidence for "the spread of Islam by the sword" is the very one that establishes that the aim of fighting is the ending of religious coercion, not its imposition.

And from a third angle, Ibn Taymiyyah spoke of fitnah in the context of the general way of affliction, establishing that God does not afflict His servants in vain or out of revenge, but for a wisdom followed by such reward and elevation as is not attained without it; for patience over fitnah is a cause for the loftiness of rank, not a mere deliverance from its punishment, and this is what explains the hadith in which Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ asked the Prophet ﷺ: Which of people is most severely afflicted? And he said: "The prophets, then the next best, then the next best; a man is afflicted according to his religion"^[5]; for the intensifying of affliction upon the prophets is not a punishment, but because fitnah, the more it intensifies, the deeper the disclosure it produces and the greater the reward that follows it.

Which fire are we in?

This fivefold division grants us a lens for reading our reality: many of those who attend to the fitnah of hardship — when they are afflicted with illness, loss, or constriction — are entirely heedless of the fitnah of ease that the hadith warned against specifically, so they suppose that their safety from the first is proof of their deliverance from fitnah absolutely, while the abundance of wealth and preoccupation with the world may be their real fitnah of which they did not become aware because it does not hurt as poverty hurts. And many of those who attend to the fitnah of manifest persecution — explicit harm on account of religion — are heedless of the fitnah of division that the Qurʾan described as more severe than killing, so they plunge into disputes within the single ranks without awareness that they are kindling the very fire they were warned against, even if by a different hand. And the creedal fitnah — following the ambiguous seeking [its] interpretation [Āl ʿImrān: 7] — takes today the form of an accelerating media and intellectual discourse, presenting the doubt in the garb of certainty, so that none distinguishes between the pure and the adulterated except one who knew the origin before the branch was presented to him. So the question this article poses is not "Am I in a fitnah?" — for the answer is always yes, since no one is free of a fire by which he is afflicted — but "Which fire am I in now, and do I know that I am in it?" And the story of Moses adds another dimension to this question: for some of what we suppose today an obstacle to our path — a failure, or estrangement, or lost years as Moses supposed them in Madyan — may be the very training that prepares us for what we could not yet imagine; for the effect of fitnah is not measured by its severity alone, but by what it makes in its possessor when he looks upon it after years.

Conclusion

From the goldsmith's fire that distinguishes pure gold from adulterated, to the fire of the Trench into which the first believers were cast, to the fire of the Hereafter to whose people it is said "Taste your trial" — the word "fitnah" passes through five forms of a single fire, all of whose aim is one: that the truthful be manifested from the liar, and the pure from the adulterated. And God will not leave the people to say "We believe" while they are not tried; so God will surely make evident those who are truthful, and He will surely make evident the liars. And God, the Exalted, knows best; He is the Guardian of success.