Faith and Belief

64:11 No Kind of clamity can occur, except by the leave of God: and if anyone believes in God, (God) guides his heart (aright): for God knows all things.

Truly amazing is the affair of the believer. His affair only contains good. That realization only occurs for the believer. If he is blessed with good he thanks God and in that there is good. And if he is afflicted with difficulty he patiently endures and in that there is good.
Sahih Muslim #7425

So much for Satan, eh?

interesting review and description of the words, Faith and Belief.
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"The word "belief" does not mean what it once meant, indeed it means something quite different. We still regard it as interchangeable with the word "faith" and equate it with religious conviction which, in its turn, relates to "certainty", at least on the subjective level. In modern usage, however, it implies uncertainty."

[...]

"In origin the word "belief" relates to love and commitment to the beloved rather than to the notion of holding certain particular opinions, as we can see from the dictionary definition of the word "lief" (which has only recently fallen out of use): "dear", "precious", "desired". It derives from the Old English leof or liof with which there was a cognate and more or less parallel form, lufu, meaning "affection" and suggesting passionate longing. ... The word "belief" has come to mean "the holding of certain ideas", ...

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"He makes the important point that the Latin word which stands at the very centre of the Christian faith -Credo ("I believe") - indicates, not a hypothesis which some may accept and others reject, but the acknowledgement of a fact, it is virtually equivalent to the statement, "I see that ..." Credo indicates allegiance to a perceived truth."

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"In its original meaning, then, "belief" is an act rather than a subjective state of mind but, in relation to modern usage, it seems reasonable to ask whether the distinction the author makes between "belief" and "faith" is valid. The blight of subjectivism has affected all the terms employed in religious discourse. Faith, belief, thought have all been cut loose from the notion of ascertainable objective truth; they have been reduced to a matter of current intellectual fashions and personal feelings. "I believe in God" has come perilously close to meaning, I feel there must be a God but, of course, I don't know"."

"The Muslim however might say that faith is an acknowledgement of the truth, belief adherence to the truth, and thought validated only in so far as it reflects the truth."

"Believing", says the author, has come to mean that "an opinion is held about which the person who holds it.... leaves theoretically unresolved the question of its objective intellectual validity". Such a notion is, he points out, entirely foreign to the Muslim's perception of the Qur'an, and he adds that the idea that religious people are expected to "believe" this or that is "a modern aberration". The very notion of "belief" as it is now understood is, he says, entirely absent from the Qur'an, whereas words for knowing are 'frequent and emphatic". A mu'min is not a "believer", but someone who makes an act of faith, and faith "is something that people do more than something that people have". His definition of kufr is certainly to the point; it is not - he says - "unbelief" but, rather, "refusal", even "a spitting in Allah's face when He speaks out of His infinite authority and vast compassion... It is man's negative response to this spectacular divine initiative". When the Muslim makes the Shahada, he is not making an affirmation of belief. He is bearing witness, "corroborating an observable objective fact". The response of the "Yes-sayer" to the truth is not "belief" but "recognition".

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Excerpts taken from: Book Review: Faith And Belief
by Hasan Gai Eaton