The Primordial Religion
The ḥanīf orientation toward God, rooted in the fiṭrah of Quran 30:30, is presented as the primordial religion, with rituals such as the contact prayer following as its expression. Abraham reasons his way to monotheism, Muhammad is commanded to follow his path, and Sunni reliance on hadith is likened to idolaters following their fathers. MacIntyre's lost science analogy frames the argument.
Reason, observation, moral intuition, conscience, the sense of justice, the willingness to question what one has inherited, and the ability to distinguish the Creator from created things are therefore not specialist tools. They do not belong exclusively to people who possess a scripture or stand within a particular religious institution. In principle, they are available to human beings everywhere. That is precisely what fiṭrah means: humanity was not created religiously empty, waiting for an external system to manufacture an orientation toward God. It was created upon a disposition already capable of recognizing and responding to Him.
This also helps clarify the function of revelation and of the messenger who brings it. Abraham himself, after establishing the House, prays that God raise a messenger among his descendants:
2:129 “Our Lord, and raise among them a messenger from among them who will recite to them Your revelations, teach them the scripture and wisdom, and purify them. You are the Almighty, Most Wise.”
The sequence matters. Abraham does not pray for a messenger to replace the human capacity to reason, nor to become the new center of religious devotion. He prays for one who will recite God’s revelations, teach, and purify. The messenger’s role is therefore corrective and clarifying: to call people back to God, to sharpen what has become confused, and to restore an orientation that human beings are already capable of having but are also capable of distorting. Therefore, the messenger points beyond himself. God remains the object of the orientation.