Is there a Kafir or a Mu'min? No. Among the majority, no. Only helpless beings who remain as they are.

Is there a Kafir? Among the majority, no.

Is there a Mu'min? Among the majority, no.

Kumaran, Dineshan, Usman, Latheef, Mathew and Joseph are alike: none of them is a kafir, and none is a mu'min.

They are helpless human beings, people who remain as they are without knowing what to become or what not to become, without ever having decided.

Why is none of them a kafir or a mu'min? Because a kafir and a mu'min are not people who became what they are, or remain what they are, through ignorance or by not knowing.

They merely remain as they were made by birth.

Muslims and non-Muslims who became what they are, and remain what they are, are alike. There is no difference between them.

They became what they are communally, without any choice.

Iman (commonly and casually called "belief") is a conviction. It is not caste, it does not create caste, and it is not received through caste.

Birth does not determine anyone's faith, nor does it make faith a matter of choice.

By birth, no one is a mu'min (believer) or a kafir (denier), nor becomes one.

No one is a kafir because they were born to a kafir. No one is a mu'min because they were born to a mu'min.

At most, those who became what they are by birth are communal Muslims, Hindus and Christians.

As long as they live honestly in conscience, those who became what they are by birth stand alike before the All-Merciful and the All-Knowing, if there is such.

Only if all such people are treated alike would it be ultimate justice and reason, and something that endures.

In the heaven that may exist, beyond what can be understood in material terms, they would all go alike.

Anyone who lives honestly in conscience, having helplessly remained as they were by birth, regardless of Muslim or non-Muslim, in no way deserves to go to the hell that may exist, beyond what can be understood in material terms.

Iman (faith) must be a conviction itself, not luck of birth and not like caste. So must kufr (denial) be a denial that is carried out despite conviction.

No one becomes a mu'min, one made fearless by conviction, because birth is like a lottery.

Therefore, in truth, there is no kafir among the vast majority of people. The vast majority are not kafirs.

The vast majority are also not mu'mins who possess iman. Among the vast majority there are no mu'mins with iman.

Even where they exist, there are very, very few. Apart from a very few, there is neither a kafir nor a mu'min with iman.

Iman and kufr are not things anyone else can pass judgment on from outside.

Who is a kafir and who is a mu'min is not something others can know, nor something to be claimed before anyone else.

To be a kafir, a denier, one must first know.

One must deny despite knowing and being convinced, in order to be a kafir.

Iman lies in a conviction that gives clear knowledge, in awareness, in certainty, in the conscious fearlessness that conviction gives.

Therefore kufr is denial in spite of conviction.

Kufr is not the state of lacking conviction or of conviction never having come.

Only one who denies despite being convinced becomes a kafir.

Kufr lies in the dread that comes when one denies despite being convinced.

Only one who says "I did not see" after seeing, and one who conceals, can be a denier and be in that dread.

Kafir and mu'min are not made by birth or by society.

In other words, a denier is not one to whom conviction has not come. He is one unwilling to be convinced, one who turns away so as not to be convinced.

A denier (a kafir) is one who has not entered fearlessness because he turned away so as not to be convinced.

A believer (to say "believer" is the poorest, most shriveled and most misleading common meaning and usage of the word mu'min) is one to whom conviction has come, who has turned toward the direction of conviction, toward the qibla.

A believer is one who has entered fearlessness because conviction has come: the mu'min.

That is to say, literally, there are no kafirs who deliberately and knowingly deny despite knowing. If there are, they are very few.

What exists, entirely, are people who do not know, poor souls, people without conviction.

Those who do not know, who lack conviction, are not kafirs.

Those who deny because they do not know are not kafirs.

They are those who have not attained the iman called fearlessness because they do not know.

They deny because they do not even know that it cannot be known.

Not everyone who has failed to attain the iman called conviction is a kafir.

Not all Muslims are mu'mins either.

Thus the vast majority, Muslims and non-Muslims, are neither kafirs nor mu'mins.

They are social Muslims, Hindus and Christians, exactly as they became by birth and by society.

They became Muslims, Hindus and Christians without choosing, without bearing witness.

But those who do not know, who have not come to know, havw not been convinced, have not borne witness and not entered fearlessness, are not mu'mins.

Iman is not believing because one does not know.

Iman is not carrying around what one happened to receive as a veil against seeking.

Those who believe because they do not know are not mu'mins.

Those who believe because they do not know have not attained the iman called fearlessness.

Such people are the vast majority.

Such people are the vast majority of Muslims and of non-Muslims alike.

Even among Muslims, the vast majority are only Muslims, and not necessarily mu'minin.

"Say (to them): You have not attained iman (the conviction that gives fearlessness) (you have not believed); rather say that you have become (communal-social) Muslims." (Quran)

For those who have become believers through awareness and conviction must have fearlessness.

"You will not be degraded, you will not grieve, if you are mu'minin (if you have fearlessness, if you have conviction), you are the highest." (Quran)

"Those who are mindful of Allah (who see with subtle awareness) will have neither grief nor fear." (Quran)

What that conviction needs, what is needed to hold firm in it, is an awareness, a vigilance: the sense of mindfulness called taqwa, which must arise as soon as iman is attained.

"The noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the one with the most mindfulness/minute seeing-ness." (Quran)

Look: fasting is not observed for anything else, but "so that you may become mindful/minute seeing (taqwa)" (Quran).

Fasting is only to build up the vigilance called taqwa.

Therefore, not everyone who is not with me is a kafir.

Not everyone who does not understand me is a kafir.

It also does not mean that those who are with me are mu'mins.

To be a kafir one must deny, out of entrenched vested selfish interests and arrogance, and conceal what one has known.

Only one who conceals what he knows, who denies after concealing what he knew and saw, is a kafir.

One who is otherwise because he does not know, or because he did not understand what he was told, is not a kafir.

One who remains as he is because he does not know, or did not understand what was conveyed, is just like any communal Muslim.

Whatever he believes or does not believe, he comes within the mercy of the All-Merciful.

"He disobeyed, he was arrogant, and so he became one of the kafirs (the concealers, the deniers)." (Quran)

This is what the Quran said even of Satan, who despaired and denied.

One who denied knowledge. One who denied despite knowing.

Only by yielding to habit and arrogance and denying does one become a kafir; only then does a kafir come to be.

Therefore kafirs are few.

What exists, entirely, are not kafirs but people who understand nothing.

They live along the path they were born on.

Just like the vast majority of Muslims.

By imitation, by mechanical habit.

All of them carry along what they received by birth and by society.

They have lost their own face in the shade of influences; they are unable to form their own opinion and decision.

Those unable to form their own opinion and decision are not kafirs.

They are everyone, everywhere.

They are also like social, communal Muslims.

Iman, the intention (niyyah) that iman gives, and the taqwa that intention gives, are, and must be, things that do away with imitation and mechanical habit.

For iman and the niyyah it gives lie in awareness, in the inner self, not in slogans and gestures.

The conviction that knowledge gives is iman.

The courage and absence of fear that conviction gives is iman, that fearlessness.

No one has firm enough knowledge and firm enough sight to produce iman.

That is why the Quran itself instructed it to be said:

"You have not attained iman (the conviction that gives fearlessness); rather say that you have become (communal-social) Muslims." (Quran)

The mu'min (the convinced, fearless one) begins in himself and ends in himself.

The path of the mu'min and the muttaqi is solitary, in solitude. He and Allah face each other directly, with no one in between.

There is one thing that is essential to sustain iman and taqwa: purification of the heart. Only in a purified, clear heart will iman and taqwa germinate and take root.

That is why the Quran said, beyond any doubt:

"He who purifies it has succeeded. He who corrupts it has failed." (Quran)

However much it is said that one is alone, no one is alone, no one is single.

Everyone can be alone only as the One who is All, God, is one.

There is only a solitude that exists together with everything, experiencing everything, experiencing in every grain of rice and every bean the fruit of everyone's labor.

What is on the skin is not what should be taken seriously.

The skin is meant to be peeled off.

One who sees only the husk as the coconut and turns back cannot experience the coconut,

cannot taste the coconut water.

The conviction called iman, and the mindfulness and devotion it gives, are within. That inside must be pure, must have been made pure.

That is the meaning of "He who cleansed and purified it has succeeded; those who stained it have failed." (Quran)

The bride's dress is only for the townspeople to see. The groom does not need it in his experience.

The bride's dress is, in truth, unnecessary, something that isn't there.

The bride's dress is a burden, to be discarded, something that does not last in experience.

That is the point of the reminder: "Taqwa is here (in the heart), it is here (in the heart)." (Hadith)

"The best of you is the one with the most mindfulness (maximum thaqwa)." (Quran)

"Know that there is a piece of flesh in the body: if it is sound, the whole body is sound; if it is corrupt, the whole body is corrupt. Know that it is the heart." (Hadith)

The world is made of subtle particles.

Everything in life depends on and is sustained by subtle, small things.

Everything that seems big came into being and endures through subtle, small things.

All the big-seeming things, matters and jobs are done, and have to be done, so that subtle, small things may happen.

The subtle and small things are in truth the big ones.

Atoms, particles, cells, DNA, electrons, protons, neutrons and photons are in truth the big ones.

"Neither their flesh nor their blood reaches Allah (is wanted); what reaches Him (is wanted) is the subtle mindfulness (thaqwa) from you." (Quran)

Apart from that, being a Muslim by birth is not a merit, and being a non-Muslim is not a demerit.

Kufr, iman and taqwa are not by birth, not by the community one lives in, not by imitation, not by ignorance.