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26chapter oneThe basis of human nature is to eat and drink and to satisfy hungerand thirst; it is not to fast. It is to reveal emotions and even to shoutinsults as a spontaneous expression of anger and provocation, andnot to hold back because of Ramadan’s sacredness. In contrast, thespecific rituals of MuÈammad’s community are all against humannature. If these rituals were part of our human nature we all wouldperform them naturally (like drinking and eating) and we would notneed explicit commands from God to do so (as they are given in theBook!)—we would act perhaps similar to a herbivorous cow whichinstinctively eats only grass because Allah made this the inherentdisposition of cows. We, however, do not perform any of these ritualsby instinct or on impulse, which means that the specific forms ofprayer, fasting, and pilgrimage and so on cannot be part of al-isl§m,the religion of all humankind. Instead, they are only part of thedefinite (and hence more particular) section of Allah’s Book. 8 Theywere stipulated only for the Muslim-Believers ( al-mu"minån), not forall Muslim-Assenters ( al-muslimån) who, by their natural disposition,instinctively follow the religion of al-isl§m, and not of al-Êm§n.Towards a New Understanding of al-isl§m and al-Êm§nSo far we have shown that the traditional definitions of al-isl§m andal-Êm§n are incompatible with Allah’s text. What we need to do nowis to explore the definitions that are more faithful to the Book. Weneed to explain the differences between ‘those who assent to God’8MS distinguishes between verses that are ambiguous (mutash§biha), designatingverses relating to prophethood; and those that are definite (muÈkama), the verses relatingto messengerhood. These are supplemented by verses that are neither fully definitenor fully ambiguous. The ambiguous verses represent what MS calls al-Èaqq: theobjective sources of existence, inasmuch as they are the general, absolute, and eternallaws of the universe, unaltered since the creation of the world, but for the firsttime revealed in a human (Arabic) language. The definite verses designate al-sulåk:guidance for human attitude and specific rules of social behaviour. They are not partof al-Èaqq. The distinction between ambiguous and definite verses is fully explainedin chapter 3, but it is already clear from this that MS departs from the conventionalexegetical understanding of ‘ambiguous’ and ‘definite’, in which the latter refers todivine commands that are universal and never change, and the former refers to commandsthat are limited and do change. In this understanding, the muÈkama versescontain the basic commandments, shared by all religions, while the mutash§biha versescontain the practical aspects of these commandents and may vary from one religionto another (Encyclopaedia of the Qur"an, s.v. “Ambiguous.” (L. Kinberg), 70–77). InMS’s interpretation it is exactly the opposite.