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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Are you Free or Slave? Chapter 1: Belief Meaning Of Belief The Persian word ‘aqideh’ meaning "belief or opinion is derived from the Arabic root 'aqd’ which has the sense of “tying', 'grafting' 'forming a knot’, and so on. Tying or grafting one object to another may be either literal and physical, such as when we graft a sapling or branch of a tree to another tree or figurative, such as the bond of matrimony, which binds husband to wife.

An 'aqideh' therefore, is something which is figuratively 'tied ' or 'grafted' to a person’s mind, thought or soul.

When his mind accepts that the earth revolves around the sun, or that the sun, revolves around the earth; when it accepts that blood circulates in the body or does not circulate; when it accepts that the world has, or does not have, a creator; when it accepts that there is, or is not a life after death; when, in other words, a person accepts any theory either true or false, this theory is, as it were, tied or grafted or knotted to his mind, and the theory becomes a belief and part of that person's ideology .

The Role Of Belief Since Ideology forms the basis of his quests and objectives in life it plays a crucial role in man's individual and collective life. As the Quran states: 'Every man acts in accordance with his nature.' (17:84). What form a person’s inner or real nature are his beliefs or ideology, and these are what motivate and direct him in life.

If a person's beliefs are correct and in accord with reality his life will follow a correct course, and if they are false his life will lead to a cul-de-sac. For this reason Islam attaches greater importance to the question of correcting beliefs than to anything else.

Without a doubt Islam sets greater store by a person's beliefs than does any other school of thought, and goes so far as to claim that belief is the proper yardstick by which to judge deeds, so that even a good deed, if it is not accompanied by soundness of belief, is without value.

As Imam Baqer says: 'No action is of value if it is based on doubt and denial.[^1] In other words, the soundness of an action, its role in a person’s development and its ‘usefulness' all depend on the soundness of the agent's beliefs.