The Islamic religion is divided into three constituent parts: Iman, Faith, which contains everything that one must believe; Islam, the Law, which contains everything that one must do; Ihsan,* operative virtue, which confers upon believing and doing the qualities that make them perfect, or in other words, which intensify or deepen both faith and works. Ihsan, in short, is the sincerity of the intelligence and the will: it is our total adhesion to the Truth and our total conformity to the Law, which means that we must, on the one hand, know the Truth entirely, not in part only, and on the other hand conform to it with our deepest being and not only with a partial and superficial will. Thus Ihsan converges upon esoterism – which is the science of the essential and the total – and is even identified with it; for to be sincere is to draw from the Truth the maximal consequences both from the point of view of the intelligence and from that of the will; in other words, it is to think and to will with the heart, and thus with our whole being, with all that we are. Ihsan is right-believing and right-acting, and at the same time it is their quintessence: the quintessence of right-believing is metaphysical truth, the Haqiqah, and that of right-acting is the practice of invocation, the Dhikr. Ihsan comprises so to speak two modes, depending on its application: the speculative and the operative, namely intellectual discernment and unitive concentration; in Sufi language this is expressed exactly by the terms Haqiqah^ and Dhikr, or by Tawhid, “Unification,” and Ittihad, “Union.” (* Literally Ihsan means: “embellishment,” “beautiful activity,” “right-acting,” “charitable activity”; and let us recall the relationship that exists in Arabic between the notions of beauty and virtue. ^ It is to be noted that in the word haqiqah, as in its quasi-synonym haqq, the meanings “truth” and “reality” coincide.) [GTUFS: SufismVQ, The Quintessential Esoterism of Islam]

Ihsan comprises many ramifications, but it is quintessential esoterism that obviously constitutes it most directly. [GTUFS: SufismVQ, The Quintessential Esoterism of Islam]

Ihsan (exoterically / esoterically): Ihsan, given that it is necessarily also an exoteric notion, may be interpreted at different levels and in different ways. Exoterically it is the faith of the fidiests and the zeal of the ritualists; in which case it is intensity and not profundity and is thus something relatively quantitative or horizontal compared with wisdom. Esoterically, one can distinguish in Ihsan two accentuations, that of gnosis^?, which implies doctrinal intellectuality and that of love, which demands the totality of the volitive and emotive soul; the first mode operating with intellectual means – without for all that neglecting the supports that may be necessitated by human weakness – and the second, with moral^? and sentimental means. It is in the nature of things that this love may exclude every element of intellection, and that it may readily if not always do so – precisely to the extent that it constitutes a way – whereas gnosis on the contrary always comprises an element of love, doubtless not violent love, but one akin to Beauty and Peace. [GTUFS: SufismVQ, The Quintessential Esoterism of Islam]

Ihsan (hadith): “Spiritual virtue (ihsan = right doing) is that thou shouldst worship God as if thou sawest Him, for, if thou seest Him not, He nevertheless seeth thee.” [GTUFS: SufismVQ, The Quintessential Esoterism of Islam]

Ihsan (subjective / objective): Ihsan comprises the subjective meaning of “sincerity” – to act as if we were seeing God, He who sees us – and the objective meaning of “action productive of good”. [GTUFS: DivineHuman, To Refuse or To Accept Revelation]