Fitrah

What is the “Fiṭrah” (the innate human disposition)?

God has gifted human beings, instilling cognitive faculties to acquire & understand true beliefs about Him.

All mankind has an innate natural constitution (fiṭrah) that urges them to recognize, know, and worship God.

The Religion of the fiṭrah —of the sound human nature on which God has created us— is Islam.

The fiṭrah functions in tandem with other cognitive faculties to produce beliefs; when it functions properly, it triggers an immediate awareness of God within the heart/mind(qalb).

This awareness is produced by the fiṭrah's natural workings upon the heart/mind(qalb), and arises from one's direct experience of the signs that God has placed in the world.

We naturally & meaningfully conceive belief in God by the rational projection of our inner workings.

While there are a number of knowledge-bearing faculties such as perception, reason, & the heart/mind(qalb), the fiṭrah is not considered an independent faculty; it's a disposition that guides our cognition towards truth, that resides in the heart/mind(qalb) & has a power/urge to believe in truth, to know the Creator, & to acknowledge His Oneness.

The affirmation of God —and knowledge of Him— is innate & necessary for those whose fiṭrah remains intact; and this knowledge originates through an apprehension or experience of God's signs.

The Messengers are sent by God with some of these signs (in the form of miracles or revelation) to awaken the fiṭrah within all human beings.

The Messengers serve as reminders to people and reawaken their intimate knowledge of God that was already present within them.

The signs do not serve as proof without their intrinsic connection to fiṭrah; when the fiṭrah is sound, it apprehends the signs and produces basic beliefs about God that are immediate and involuntary.

Without fiṭrah, speculative reasoning, demonstration, discourse, and language would not be possible.

Fiṭrah is a divinely placed inclination that provides guidance to the intellect and separates right reason from misguided reasoning.

It is through fiṭrah that one's knowledge of God is actualised by recognition of theistic signs in the natural world and scripture.

Thus affirmation of God's existence & perfection is innate & necessary for those whose fiṭrah is unadulterated.

Pure reason ('aql ṣarīḥ) is always in alignment with sound religious tradition (naql ṣaḥīḥ), and any apparent conflict between the two can be attributed to either contaminated rationality (bid’ī 'aqlī) or contaminated revelation (bid’ī naqlī).

Ideal reason cannot conflict with true revelation; rather, it is "concrete reason" (such as the prevailing conception of reason in a given time) that conflicts with true revelation.

Sources: IslamQA (11783 & 103524 & 248517), Dr. Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Ustadh Jamie Turner