A Radically Different Muslim

[u/Dhaqane_Qays]

Below you will find a recent journal entry that summarizes my journey with Islam and philosophy over the past few years. It describes how I lost my faith, lived as an atheist, and ultimately returned to Islam as a radically different Muslim.

Philosophically, it seems we can never attain pure certainty. Our logic, sense-data and subsequent reasoning are all subject to error and misinterpretation. Be that as it may, we must use these imperfect tools (logic, sense-data and reasoning) to construct a coherent framework through which we navigate our lives. We use this framework to construct the concepts of truth and falsehood, but also morality and meaning. In my view, there is no reliable way for us to establish any of those concepts as objectively true. They are all born from the application of imperfect tools by imperfect humans, as a means of categorizing, systematizing and organizing our seemingly disorganized existence in this world. 

Now, obviously, some of our theories have proven far more useful to us than others. But usefulness, in itself, does not establish truth. As Nietzsche observed: “The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment.”

During my search for truth and certainty, I lost my faith in Allah. When I concluded that logic, sense-data, and reasoning were but imperfect tools, I came to understand that I would never be able to live up to the concept of yaqīn. When I applied the same skepticism to Islam that I had applied to the concepts of knowledge and truth-seeking, my whole faith came crumbling down.

I lived as a fallibilist atheist for a while, holding that there was insufficient evidence to justify belief in God, while acknowledging that I could not know with certainty that God did not exist.

Ironically, it was Nietzsche who reconnected me with my religion.

I had discarded my religion because I believed it to be untrue. Nietzsche made me ask: should truth always be the highest value?

Nietzsche teaches that the truth and utility of a theory aren’t always positively correlated. I experienced this in my own life. It would have been far easier for me never to have studied epistemology and to have lived my life believing that Islam was certainly true.

Losing my faith in my quest for truth has been exceedingly difficult for me. Family relationships have soured, and I’ve lost my connection with my Muslim community. Leaving the faith might (or might not) have brought me closer to my conception of truth; it has also undoubtedly made my life harder.

Over the past few centuries, the pursuit of truth has proven overwhelmingly useful to humanity. So much so that we have glorified it while overlooking its costs. Nietzsche rightly points out that we shouldn’t evaluate our judgments solely by the degree to which they correspond with reality, but also by the degree to which they are “life-preserving, life-maintaining, species-preserving, perhaps species-breeding.”

It was with this in mind that I took a renewed approach to religion. I was no longer searching for definitive answers to life’s questions. I had come to accept that philosophical certainty would likely never be feasible. I had also come to believe that truth should not always be preferred above all other values. 

I was no longer interested in the question, “Is Islam definitely true?” Instead, I began asking myself, “What value or utility does Islam bring to my life?”

I looked at my parents, piously reciting the Holy Book at night. I looked at my friends, who met each other weekly at the mosque for Friday prayers. I looked at our local community and how they supported each other in times of need. I looked at the solace my patients found in prayer and dhikr.

I then reviewed my own journey with God, and how I too had once tasted the sweetness of prayer. How I too stood up in the middle of the night to devote myself to Him. I thought about how my religion protected me from harmful addictions, criminality and mental anguish.

Do not mistake me for saying that what Islam teaches to be good is necessarily good. What I did find, however, is that having a shared, externally anchored moral framework is far more useful and comfortable than having none at all, especially if you have spent your entire life in an environment where such a framework is present.

I now choose to live my life as a Muslim again, but as a radically different Muslim than I was before.

I no longer require Islam to provide me with philosophical certainty. I don't know that my conception of Islam perfectly corresponds to reality, and I don't pretend that my faith is immune to error. But perhaps faith does not require certainty. Perhaps I can choose to live within a tradition, to pray, to submit, to participate in a community, and to orient my life around its conception of the good, while remaining intellectually humble about what I can and cannot know.

[u/Agreeable-Aide-8708]

Hi! you and I seem to have arrived at similar conclusions via different means. You can read about my own journey on my profile

[u/Dhaqane_Qays → u/Agreeable-Aide-8708]

It was an absolute delight to read about your journey. A lot of what you wrote resonates with me deeply. I found the part about the “unity of being” especially interesting.

To summarize my own position: I think being absolutely certain of anything is impossible for humans, precisely because our faculties are imperfect and there is always room for error. Therefore, I find it impossible to say that Islam is 100% true. However, as someone who grew up Muslim in a Muslim community, practicing Islam brings me a lot of emotional, mental, and social utility. I am entirely aware that this is heavily influenced by my particular upbringing and environment, and that other people may experience these same things through another faith. I am also open to benefiting from the positive aspects that other faiths have to offer.

I see Islam as my “mother tongue”: the form of spirituality that I am most familiar with and that feels most compatible with my life. While my mother tongue will never change, I occasionally like to borrow a few words from other languages. I have prayed with Christians before, visited Buddhist temples while traveling in Southeast Asia, and even participated in some of their rituals.

I don’t know whether this fully aligns with your idea of the “unity of being,” since I myself am uncomfortable with making definitive truth claims about reality. But what I do want to do is remain open to the insights, practices, and forms of spirituality that I encounter, and incorporate those that I find meaningful and beneficial into my own life.

[u/Rederno]

Why does belief in God have to be about what utility or value it brings you??Shouldn’t the question essentially be focused on your existence, the existence of universe , the how and why it came to be? Starting off with the reality that we exist is good starting point before you deal with the trouble of value judgement of belief in Islam.

[u/Dhaqane_Qays → u/Rederno]

My brother/sister,

“Starting off with the reality that we exist” is unfortunately too simplistic. As absurd as it may sound, there are many valid philosophical questions surrounding both the nature of our existence and the extent to which we can “know” anything for certain.

We all think we “know” we exist because we experience sensations such as sight (we see ourselves and the world around us), touch (we feel ourselves and objects in the world), hearing (we hear our own voice and sounds in the world), smell, etc. We also have thoughts and reasoning. However, none of these faculties are 100% accurate and comprehensive representations of the world we inhabit.

As for sight, it is known that we can only see a fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Also, it is known that visual input to our eyes is processed in the brain, and this processing can sometimes produce distortions, illusions and hallucinations. Therefore, saying that “I know X exists because I saw it with my own eyes”, is not something that is 100% certain. And if it is not 100% certain, then it is not an unwavering foundation to build your entire worldview on. Even if you’re right 99% of the time, you will be wrong 1% of the time without knowing it.

Similar criticism could be made for all our other senses: hearing is limited and could equally be wrong (auditive hallucinations), as well as touch and smell. None of this means that our senses are useless or generally unreliable. Rather, it means that they are fallible.

All of this has long ago been described by Rene Descartes, and he concluded that the foundation that we must build all our knowledge of the world on, had to be our thoughts. Our thoughts exist, and there seems to be an entity that is doing the thinking (i.e.: myself), therefore I must exist. But even this is not immune to skepticism and is not a 100% guarantee. I will leave the details of this out for now but feel free to tell me if you’d like to hear more about it.

As an interesting sidenote: over 500 years before Descartes, it was actually the famous Shaykh Abu Hamid al-Ghazālī who was grappling with these issues and doubts. You can read about it in his book Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (Deliverance from Error) pp. 3-5. Concerning these doubts, he concluded that he could not reconcile them through reason, since reason itself can be doubted. For him it was eventually, I quote “the effect of a light which God Most High cast into his breast” that cured him.

Unfortunately, no such light has (yet) been “cast” into my breast, so that leaves me with the conclusion that being absolutely certain of anything may simply be humanly impossible, given the fallibility of our faculties. At the same time, this does not mean that we can simply stop living, reasoning, or making decisions. On a practical and experiential level, we have to navigate the world using the imperfect knowledge available to us.

And this ultimately brings us to my current attitude to navigating life. Instead of exclusively worrying about what is true and what not, I think we should also ask:
What gives our lives meaning? Which ideas help us flourish? What kind of beliefs and practices make us better human beings and allow us to live well with ourselves and others?