In a bid to state the difference between knowledge and belief...

In a bid to state the difference between knowledge and belief, what is usually cited is an old example whose veracity has not yet been invalidated by time. All of us know that a dead person has no power to move and the corpse that has fallen in a corner can do no harm. Yet, few people are ready to spend the night alone beside a lifeless body or pay a visit to the cemetery at midnight.

Similarly, we have heard a lot of adventurers who would bet on going to the cemetery at night but, in doing so, what emotional disturbances did they not experience?! Well, the difference regarding this issue is between ‘knowledge’ and ‘belief’. We know that the dead can do no harm but we do not believe in it.

Since we do not truly and firmly believe in the lifelessness of the dead, we do have doubts about it and suggest to ourselves, “Don’t say he’s going to get up!” Now if we really believe that the dead has no power to move, we will no longer fear to be with it . Gravediggers and those who wash the dead are among those who really believe that the dead are lifeless; thus, they do not fear whether they are beside the dead or spend the night in the cemetery.

Imām Khomeinī, in a whole chapter, endeavors to clarify this difference and shows that “knowledge is different from faith.”[319] While emphasizing that faith is an affair of the heart, he distinguishes it from knowledge and cites the same example of the dead corpse and concludes thus: You know through your reason that a dead person cannot do any harm and that all the dead in the world do not possess any power of action, even as much power as is possessed by a fly… but since your heart has not accepted it and has not approved of the judgment of the mind, you cannot spend a dark night with a dead body.

But if your heart yields to your mind and approves of its judgment, this job will no more be difficult for you. After some effort the heart resigns to the dictates of reason, then no dread of the dead remains in the heart.[320] The outcome of this distinction is that acceptance of the ethical principles is a form of challenge. Here we are not dealing with the complex principles of philosophy. On the contrary, these principles [of faith] are very simple and straightforward.

The difficulty lies in having faith in them, and in the words of the Imām, passing these principles from the stage of reason to the stage of the heart. It is here that the issue of commitment is raised.