Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin — Islam

What the specification asks for

Paper 1, Section 1, 1.3 (Islam). Assessed on AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and AO2 (analysis and evaluation), weighted equally. Incandio is aligned to this specification. It is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson, and it reproduces none of Pearson's indicative content — the point numbers are given so you can check every unit against your own copy.

1 · Understand it

You know you should not do the thing. You do it anyway. Nobody made you, and afterwards you cannot honestly say you did not understand. Every religion has to account for that moment, and the account it gives decides almost everything else it says about forgiveness. Islam's answer is unusually direct, and its most striking feature is what it says next — that the door back is never locked.

What it means

Wrongdoing in Islam is what happens when the nafs — the lower self, the seat of appetite and ego — pulls harder than what a person knows. It is not a defect in the design and it is not somebody else's fault. Because there is no inherited sin, every wrong act belongs to the person who did it.

Shaytan has a real place in the account, and the exact word matters. He whispers. He tempts. He cannot compel. Removing that limit would remove the accountability the whole account rests on, so an answer that has the devil making people sin has changed the teaching rather than described it.

Against all of this stands tawbah — sincere repentance. It has a shape: recognise the wrong, be sorry for it, stop doing it, and resolve not to return. There is no priest and no confessional in Islam, so tawbah is available at any moment directly. Mercy is not a footnote in the Islamic account of sin; it is the point of it.

One wrong is described differently from all the others. Shirk — associating partners with God — is the one sin said not to be forgiven if a person dies unrepentant. Two more terms fill the picture out: israf, wastefulness and excess, which the Qur'an condemns repeatedly, and the greater jihad, the struggle against the lower self.

Why believers hold it

The account is holding two things together that could easily come apart, and seeing that is what makes it more than a list. Wrongdoing has to be real and serious, or accountability is theatre. But nobody can be beyond return, or fitrah was a lie and mercy is conditional on not needing it. Islam refuses to give up either half.

That is why the struggle is called the GREATER jihad. It is not against an external enemy and it is not against an inherited defect; it is against a self that is capable of better and knows it. A struggle against an enemy can be won by force. A struggle against yourself can only be won by returning, repeatedly.

And it is why the exception for shirk is stranger and better than it first looks. The obvious reading is that God is offended by rivals, which makes it sound petty. The tradition's own reasoning is structural: shirk denies the oneness that forgiveness itself depends on, so a person who does not believe in one merciful God has nowhere to turn for mercy. The exception describes a locked door on the inside.

Where it comes from

• The Qur'an — Qur'an 42:40 (with 42:43) (translated)

  The recompense for an injury is an injury equal to it; but whoever forgives ... his reward is with Allah.

  Justice permits proportionate retaliation, and forgiveness is explicitly the higher path. Both are held in one verse.

  What it is doing here: Sets the whole balance of the unit in one verse — justice is permitted and forgiveness is better rewarded, which is why mercy is presented as the higher road rather than as weakness.

• The Qur'an — the Opening — Qur'an 1 (Surah Al-Fatihah) (translated)

  Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

  The chapter recited in every unit of salah. It names God as Creator, as merciful and as judge, and asks for guidance.

  What it is doing here: The attributes a Muslim rehearses in every single prayer are the merciful and the compassionate ones — use it to show that mercy is structural in Islamic practice, not occasional.

• The Qur'an — Qur'an 3:185 (with 75:1–4) (translated)

  Every soul shall taste death ... and only then will you be paid your full recompense.

  Death is certain and judgement follows it. Akhirah — the afterlife — with Barzakh, the Day of Judgement, and Jannah or Jahannam.

  What it is doing here: The reckoning that makes wrongdoing serious. Without it, tawbah would be consolation; with it, it is a genuine remedy for a genuine debt.

Where it bites

It shapes the shape of a Muslim's day and year. Salah five times daily is a repeated return; Ramadan is a month of disciplining the nafs on purpose; and tawbah can be made at any moment, alone, with no intermediary. A tradition that believed people were beyond return would not build its calendar this way.

There is one qualification that learners routinely miss and examiners routinely reward. A wrong done to another person has to be put right WITH THAT PERSON as well as with God. Seeking forgiveness upward does not discharge a debt owed sideways — which is a much more demanding position than the easy caricature of a religion that lets you off.

What people get wrong

People think: Muslims believe humans are born sinful.

Actually: There is no inherited sin in Islam. People are born in fitrah, inclined to good. Every wrong is the person's own, which is harder rather than easier — you cannot blame a condition you were born into.

People think: Shaytan makes people sin.

Actually: He whispers; the choice stays with the person. This is not a fine distinction — if Shaytan could compel, judgement would be unjust, and the entire account of accountability would collapse. An answer that gets this wrong has removed the foundation.

People think: Repentance to God wipes out everything.

Actually: Not where another person was wronged. That has to be put right with them too. Say this and you have shown you know the teaching rather than the slogan.

What the examiner expects you to understand

• Name and define the terms: nafs, shirk, tawbah, israf, the greater jihad. The vocabulary is what separates a Level 3 answer from a Level 1 one on this unit.
• Explaining WHY shirk is the exception — that it denies the oneness on which forgiveness depends — is doing theology rather than reciting, and it is the strongest single move available here.
• For the extended question, the useful line is whether a religion that always allows return takes wrongdoing seriously enough. Both sides are arguable, and Islam supplies the material for both.
• Do not import original sin, and do not describe Shaytan as compelling. Both are accuracy errors, not stylistic choices.
• A named practice — Ramadan, the five prayers, putting a wrong right with the person wronged — is what develops the point rather than restating it.

2 · Grade 9 Notes

Core belief / issue

Islam teaches that wrongdoing comes from the nafs — the lower self — pulling against what a person knows, and from following desire instead of guidance. Because there is no inherited sin, every wrong act is the person's own, and every one of them can be forgiven through sincere repentance. Allah's mercy is not a footnote in the Islamic account of sin; it is the point of it.

Key terminology

Incandio's mark schemes credit the religion's own vocabulary; spelling variants are accepted, a vague paraphrase is not.

Nafs

The lower self — the seat of appetite and ego, which must be disciplined.

Shirk

Associating partners with Allah — the gravest wrong in Islam, and the one sin described as unforgivable if unrepented.

Tawbah

Sincere repentance: recognising the wrong, being sorry, stopping, and resolving not to return to it.

Greater jihad

The struggle against one's own lower self, described as the greater struggle.

Israf

Wastefulness or excess, which the Qur'an repeatedly condemns.

Shaytan (also Satan, Iblis)

Iblis, who tempts but cannot compel. He whispers; the choice remains the person's.

What Islam teaches

• shared — Wrongdoing is the person's own act, not an inherited condition. Every soul bears its own burden.
• shared — Shaytan tempts but cannot compel. He whispers, and the decision remains the human being's — which is why the person is accountable.
• shared — Sincere repentance is always available, and Allah is repeatedly named as the Forgiving and the Merciful.
• shared — Shirk — associating partners with Allah — is the gravest wrong, because it denies the tawhid on which everything else rests.

Why it teaches this

The account holds two things together that could easily come apart. Human beings are accountable, so wrongdoing is real and serious; and they are born in fitrah with mercy always available, so no one is beyond return. That is why the greater jihad is described as the greater one — the struggle is not against an external enemy or an inherited defect but against a self that is capable of better and knows it.

Sources of authority

• The Qur'an — Qur'an 3:185 (with 75:1–4) (translated)

  Every soul shall taste death ... and only then will you be paid your full recompense.

  Death is certain and judgement follows it. Akhirah — the afterlife — with Barzakh, the Day of Judgement, and Jannah or Jahannam.

  How to use it: Because reward and punishment come after death, this life is a test rather than an end in itself — which is why Muslim answers about suffering and about the purpose of life run through akhirah.

  What it does not settle: Resurrection in Islam is BODILY. Writing about reincarnation here is the confusion the 2021 report records.

• The Qur'an — Qur'an 42:40 (with 42:43) (translated)

  The recompense for an injury is an injury equal to it; but whoever forgives ... his reward is with Allah.

  Justice permits proportionate retaliation, and forgiveness is explicitly the higher path. Both are held in one verse.

  How to use it: It gives an Islamic answer that is neither purely retributive nor purely forgiving, which is why it is far better than citing 'an eye for an eye' alone.

  What it does not settle: Whether forgiveness should be the state's policy or the individual's choice is not settled by it.

• The Qur'an — the Opening — Qur'an 1 (Surah Al-Fatihah) (translated)

  Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

  The chapter recited in every unit of salah. It names God as Creator, as merciful and as judge, and asks for guidance.

  How to use it: Because it is said in every prayer, its content is what a Muslim rehearses several times a day — which is how belief and practice hold together in Islam.

  What it does not settle: Shared by all Muslims, so it distinguishes no tradition from another.

• Hadith — Sahih al-Bukhari, Book of Faith (translated)

  None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.

  Faith is measured by how one treats others. One of the most widely cited hadith on social ethics.

  How to use it: It makes belief and ethics inseparable — a Muslim cannot claim faith while wronging a neighbour — which is why hadith is a source of authority alongside the Qur'an rather than an illustration of it.

  What it does not settle: Hadith authority differs between traditions, and the Qur'anists reject hadith entirely — a group the Pearson mark schemes themselves mention.

Different interpretations

• The nafs in stages, a Sufi reading: the commanding self, the self-reproaching self, and the self at peace — a developmental account of moral progress.
• Sin as forgetfulness (ghaflah): the problem is heedlessness rather than defiance, which is why the Qur'an calls itself a reminder.
• Sin as breach of trust: wrongdoing is a failure of the amanah, which links this unit directly to 1.1.

Differences within Islam

Sunni and Shi'a agree on personal accountability, the absence of inherited sin, and the availability of tawbah. Sufi traditions develop the psychology of the nafs in more detail without disagreeing about the framework.

The traditions broadly agree here. Saying so is a stronger answer than inventing a division.

Application to the issue

It shapes the shape of a Muslim's day and year. Salah five times daily is a repeated return; Ramadan is a month of disciplining the nafs deliberately; and tawbah is available at any moment without an intermediary, because Islam has no priesthood and no confessional. A wrong done to another person, however, requires putting right with that person as well as seeking Allah's forgiveness.

Arguments supporting

• Wrongdoing can be overcome, because it is a struggle rather than a condition. — The greater jihad presupposes that the self can be disciplined; fitrah presupposes there is something good to return to. (islam)
  Answered by: The struggle is described as lifelong, which concedes that it is never finished.
• Personal accountability is fairer than inherited guilt. — Every soul bears its own burden — nobody is punished for what someone else did. (islam)
  Answered by: It leaves the persistence of wrongdoing across every generation less well explained than a doctrine of inherited tendency does.

Arguments challenging

• Hatred, injustice and war are permanent features of a world with humans in it. — Every generation has believed it could be the last to fight, and none has been. (non-religious)
  Answered by: Slavery and judicial torture were also permanent until they were not; the inference from 'so far' to 'always' is weak.
• Calling it sin obscures the causes. — Poverty, upbringing and circumstance produce much wrongdoing, and moral language distracts from changing them. (non-religious)
  Answered by: Islamic law and social teaching address structural causes extensively — zakat exists precisely because poverty is understood as a cause of harm.

Secular / non-religious perspective

Human beings are evolved animals with cooperative and selfish tendencies and no inherited moral defect. Wrongdoing is reduced by changing conditions — inequality, opportunity, institutions — rather than by inner struggle, and the historical evidence for that is better than for moral exhortation. Humanists also object that framing ordinary failings as offences against a deity adds guilt without adding responsibility.

Examinable throughout Paper 1. Nothing here earns a mark on Paper 2.

Evaluation

The hinge: Whether the problem is a condition to be repaired or a struggle to be conducted. Islam answers the second, and its whole practical programme — prayer, fasting, repentance — follows from that answer.

Defensible conclusions

• The Islamic account is more optimistic than the Christian one and pays for it: it explains individual failure well and the persistence of collective wrongdoing less well.
• Wrongdoing can be overcome in individuals and has never been overcome in populations, and a judgement that separates those two is stronger than a yes or a no.
• The secular structural account and the Islamic one converge in practice, since both hold that conditions and choices matter, and differ about whether anything transcendent is at stake.

Not defensible

• Attributing original sin to Islam.
• Saying Muslims believe Shaytan makes people sin — the teaching is explicitly that he whispers and cannot compel.

Exam use

• Identify · 3 marks — Three examples of selfishness or greed, or three Muslim beliefs about sin. Short.
• Outline · 4 marks — Two beliefs about sin, developed. Shirk and tawbah make two genuinely different points.
• Explain · 6 marks — Explain what Muslims believe about sin: the nafs, personal accountability, shirk as gravest, and tawbah — each with what a Muslim therefore does.
• Evaluate · 12 marks — 'Humans will always sin.' The Islamic answer accepts the struggle is lifelong and refuses the inevitability, which is a genuinely different position from either optimism or original sin.

Common mistakes

• Importing original sin.
• Treating Shaytan as compelling rather than tempting, which removes the accountability the whole account rests on.
• Forgetting that a wrong done to a person must be put right with that person, not only with Allah.

“Christians believe divorce is always wrong.” — That is the Catholic position. Orthodox Christianity permits divorce in limited circumstances, and most Protestant churches permit divorce and remarriage.

Write instead: Name the tradition. 'Catholic teaching holds marriage indissoluble, so the Church annuls rather than divorces' is accurate and scores; 'Christians believe' on a divided question is not. Do not over-correct. Many claims genuinely ARE shared — the Trinity, the resurrection, the authority of the Bible — and hedging those makes an answer weaker, not more careful. (Named in the 2025 examiner report for Paper 1.)

“Buddhists believe sin is disobeying God.” — Buddhism has no creator God to disobey. Unskilful action (akusala) harms the person who does it and others through kamma; it is a mistake rooted in greed, hatred and delusion, not an offence against a deity.

Write instead: Buddhists speak of unskilful action rooted in the three poisons — greed, hatred and delusion — and of akusala kamma, which brings unwelcome results. The specification's own Buddhist wording for 1.3 names avijja, kilesa and the three poisons. The specification titles 1.3 'Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin', which invites the error. A learner writing on Buddhism should use the tradition's own vocabulary and say why 'sin' does not fit.

Grade 9 insight

Shirk is described as the one sin not forgiven if a person dies unrepentant, and noticing WHY sharpens the whole unit. It is not that Allah is offended by rivals; it is that shirk denies the tawhid on which forgiveness itself depends — a person who does not believe in one merciful God has nowhere to turn for mercy. So the exception is structural rather than punitive, and a learner who explains that is doing theology rather than reciting a rule.

Carry on through Islam

• Previous unit: 1.2 · Human nature and the human condition
• Next unit: 1.4 · Free will, determinism and predestination
• Selfishness, greed, ignorance and sin in the other religions: Buddhism · Christianity · Hinduism · Judaism · Sikhism
• All of Islam · Incandio Religious Studies · The 4RS1 specification