Faith is a cultivated disposition, not a guarantee of God’s existence.

Evidence

The niyya is therefore an integral part of the rite, a form of conscious commitment initiating acts of worship that must itself be cultivated as an aspect of one’s continuous faith. Ima¯n—usually translated into English as “faith”—is not a singular epistemological means that guarantees God’s existence for the believer. It is better translated as the virtue of faithfulness toward God, an unquestioning habit of obedience that God requires of those faithful to him (mu’mini¯n), a disposition that has to be cultivated like any other, and that links one to others who are faithful, through mutual trust and responsibility. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 439

Categorization

• DEFINE: Corrects the standard English translation of iman as epistemological ‘faith’ to the virtue of faithfulness - a disposition cultivated like any other.
• QUESTION: How does this virtue-ethics reading of iman interact with Protestant models of faith-as-belief that dominate secular scholarship on religion?
• XREF: Ties to Asad’s broader project in chapter 1 of genealogizing ‘religion’ against the Protestant belief-model, and to Mahmood’s Politics of Piety on ethical formation. — connects to: Faith is the longing for faith, not perception of God’s presence. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 235; Kierkegaard held that faith dwells in anxiety, not certainty — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 300; Faith’s stillness is tranquillised fatalism, not depression or PTSD — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1061
• SEED: Article angle: the word ‘faith’ has been silently privatized into a matter of private belief; recovering its virtue-disposition sense changes how we read religious communities and their politics.