The word as it is recited in the Quran: Mahmoud Khalil Al-Hussary, Al-Hujurat 49:7.
Iman in Islam
The word occurs forty-five times in the Quran, which says: “Allah has endeared faith to you and made it beautiful in your hearts” (49:7). Asked by Jibril, the Prophet ﷺ defined it: “That you believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, His messengers and the Last Day, and that you believe in destiny, its good and its bad” (Muslim 8).
Meaning of the name Iman
Iman is the verbal noun of amana, “to believe, to trust”, from the root ʾ-m-n of safety and faithfulness (amn, amana): to believe is to find safety by trusting Allah. For Sunni scholars, faith is conviction of the heart, word of the tongue and deeds of the limbs. A very common feminine name (Imane in the Maghreb, Iman in the Middle East).
And know that among you is the Messenger of Allāh. If he were to obey you in much of the matter, you would be in difficulty, but Allāh has endeared to you the faith and has made it pleasing in your hearts and has made hateful to you disbelief, defiance and disobedience. Those are the [rightly] guided.
The bedouins say, "We have believed." Say, "You have not [yet] believed; but say [instead], 'We have submitted,' for faith has not yet entered your hearts. And if you obey Allāh and His Messenger, He will not deprive you from your deeds of anything. Indeed, Allāh is Forgiving and Merciful."
Our Lord, indeed we have heard a caller [i.e., Prophet Muḥammad (ﷺ)] calling to faith, [saying], 'Believe in your Lord,' and we have believed. Our Lord, so forgive us our sins and remove from us our misdeeds and cause us to die among the righteous.
And [recall] when We took your covenant and raised over you the mount, [saying], "Take what We have given you with determination and listen." They said [instead], "We hear and disobey." And their hearts absorbed [the worship of] the calf because of their disbelief. Say, "How wretched is that which your faith enjoins upon you, if you should be believers."
One day, we were sitting with the Messenger of Allah (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) when there appeared before us a man dressed in extremely white clothes and had very black hair. No traces of travel were visible on him, and none of us knew him. He came in and sat down opposite the…