How can one differentiate between doubt in matters of religion and creed, and obsessive whispers (waswas)?
The difference between doubt leading to disbelief and obsessive whispering (waswasah) is that the person afflicted by waswasah dislikes and recoils from thoughts of disbelief that contradict their creed, because these thoughts assail them involuntarily and oppose their faith, and they do not yield to them or become convinced by them. As for the doubter, they are not disturbed by these thoughts except with the unease of one who is bewildered, because these thoughts do not contradict anything firmly established within them. They ponder these thoughts by choice and can dispel them through research and and inquiry. Waswasah afflicts many people of faith. Ibn Abbas said, "No one is safe from it." He advised anyone who finds such thoughts within themselves to say: "{He is the First and the Last, the Manifest and the Hidden, and He is, of all things, knowing}" (Quran 57:3).
Summary from Ftawy's records · added here
Reviewed by El Fatwa's sharia committee.
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