Ep.110 - Are We Hard-Wired to Believe in God? Jamie Turner on Fitra
Modernity brings with it the promise that ultimate truth can come through reason – a reason that often excludes believers as outside the realm of thinking. Liberalism places religion in a ‘non-reasoned’ bucket, which should be tolerated like all other irrational but ultimately comforting lifestyle choices. This is primarily why there is general animus against anyone who displays an over-exuberance towards belief systems. Such people are described as fundamentalists, unthinking and unable to make their own rational choices.
Our guest this week, Jamie Turner is no stranger to these arguments. He is currently pursuing his doctoral research at the University of Birmingham, looking at Ibn Taymiyyah and natural theology.
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Transcript
Are We Hard-Wired to Believe in God? Jamie Turner on Fitra
This transcript was computer generated. Please check the transcript against the programme for accuracy.
Modernity brings with it the promise that ultimate truth can come through reason a reason that often excludes believers as outside the realm of thinking liberalism places religion in a non-reasoned bucket which should be tolerated like all other irrational but ultimately comforting lifestyle choices this is primarily why there is general animus against anyone that displays an over exuberance towards belief systems such people are described as fundamentalists, unthinking and unable to make their own rational choices. My guest today is no stranger to these arguments Jamie Turner is currently pursuing his doctoral research at the University of Birmingham looking at Ibn Taymiyya and natural theology Jamie Turner, salam alaikum wa rahmatulah and jazzakAllah khayr for joining us.
Wa alaikum assalam wa barakatuh.
It's great to have you with us and I really appreciate your writings on this topic that we're going to cover today under Fitra and whether we're hardwired to believe in a God and what does it really mean to have Iman in Allah SWT and wherever reason plays a part in that journey. So, today I'd like to explore how we come to that belief in Allah SWT and that idea of Fitra and I suppose some of the common arguments we find out there against a belief in a god so let's start with the concept of Fitra, how does Islam Define human nature Jaime, we know that there is an inbuilt capacity that Allah SWT has given us to recognize him so explain this idea of Fitra to me.
So, yeah the idea of a Fitra in the Islamic tradition has different interpretations so different theologians have looked at Fitra differently the way that I look at Fitra is influenced by a medieval Theologian Ibn Taymiyya but the concept of Fitra is first and foremost called Quranic so in the 30th chapter in the 30th verse of the Quran portion of that verse reads which basically denotes the idea that God fashioned or created human beings upon a certain nature so in my mind this is not particularly controversial the idea that we as human beings have a basic nature that's common to us that we share or participate in makes sense because how otherwise would we identify one another as fellow human fellow human beings if we didn't have a common nature and so that that's one angle. Well I mean I'll approach it from that angle in a second yeah but there's a there's another element to this there's another verse in the Quran which Muslim theologians like Ibn Taymiyya sometimes connect to Fitra which is sometimes called the verse of the primordial covenant so there is this verse in the Quran in the seventh chapter in the 172nd verse and a portion of that verse basically sets up this scenario where God is addressing all of human beings prior to them being created in the world so we could think of that as them being in in the form of their soul or in their immaterial state yeah and God addresses human beings and says am I not your lord to which humans reply and they say yes we bear witness, yes wow. So, what's the relationship then between this idea that God created all of human beings upon us a nature and then this idea of a primordial covenant with God well the way that I see the relationship in following Ibn Taymiyya is that basically we can we can look at Fitra are from a cognitive point of view so we can we can think of Fitra as referring to our basic human nature with respect to our cognitive abilities our capacities such as reason, perception, memory, introspection maybe Intuition or a moral sense if we have one. If we think about all human beings generally speaking they have these capacities just given their very nature or as we say given their very and
an additional capacity as per this primordial covenant is this basic theistic disposition that we have so it's as if God has fashioned us upon a certain nature and the remnants of this primordial Covenant remain within our human nature so in addition to reason perception memory and so on we also have this basic theistic disposition which is inbuilt within Fitra so to speak and this again is interesting and not necessarily that controversial because recently in the cognitive science of religion thinkers have basically come to a consensus that that theistic belief or belief in God is somehow natural to human beings and there are various different ways of spelling this out but I'll just mention one way. So, some cognitive science really didn't say that human beings in their more primitive state during that evolutionary history basically developed certain cognitive abilities to think to reason to perceive and so on and one of those abilities is to detect agency, to detect whether there's an agent maybe a predator maybe another human being maybe their prey and they call this special ability an agency detection device so we have this sort of inbuilt capacity so if you imagine human beings again in their primitive state maybe if they were to hear rustling in the bushes or a thud in the night or maybe tracks on the ground or crop circles, human beings developed this ability to detect these as instances of an agent being involved and so formed agency-based beliefs I.E there's an animal that's been around or that's forthcoming or a human being and then these cognitive sciences of these cognitive scientists of religion also say that there's this second ability which is called a theory of mind which works in tandem with this agency detection device which lays on the kind of characteristics or attributes of this agent. So, how does this connect to belief in God well some thinkers say that where there are certain maybe patterns in nature or instances of fortune or misfortune or coincidences and human beings have not been able to reasonably attribute a physical natural agent in those instances human beings have naturally attributed that to a kind of metaphysical or supernatural source. So, I think that lends some credence to the idea of this primordial covenant and the idea that yeah there's a connection there.
So, if I've understood you right you've got these mental capacity you've got the ability to reason and to think you're cognitive abilities as you describe them but on top of that Allah SWT has hardwired within human beings this human nature is Fitra which brings them closer to a belief in a metaphysical being, a belief in a in a Creator in you know being outside of man and a universe. I wonder how much so for example I've sent a I don't know a picture the other day of aliens places in the world where you've had alien sightings and the majority of supernatural aliens items of either in Europe or North America so you don't get very many alien UFO sightings in Africa or in Europe in Central Asia right is that because these are societies that have moved away from a belief in God yet they've got this hard-wired Fitra which one which is urging them or which provokes them to to believe in something that is supernatural in inverted commas and so they're replacing one belief the correct belief we would say with an incorrect belief is that is Fitra within that have I got that analysis right?
Yeah, potentially so just to take a back step a minute what I was really trying to articulate a moment ago is that Fitra is just our basic human nature but part of that human nature is our human cognitive nature so the it refers to the various cognitive abilities that we have as I said reason memory perceptions on and in my view our say theistic disposition of faculty is just one of those many capacities that we have in virtue of our very nature yeah oh yeah it may be the case that as human beings develop and form certain concepts such as a concept of aliens or other similar agents that when they see patterns or instances of design or what looks like to be an instance of an agent being involved in the world the theory of mind which does the filling out which works to fill out the details as to what the nature of that agent is that could make reference to concepts that we formed more recently such as concept of aliens and so on and so yeah maybe you're right maybe it is the case that as the concept of God has shifted away maybe other concepts have been brought in and they're attributing instances of design or something to some of the creatures.
Yeah,so again just for clarification the relationship then between Fitra or at least this aspect of Fitra which is to have a propensity to come closer to a god or to believe in a god and the other cognitive abilities like you know the ability to reason and think and to see and to hear the relationship is that well what is a relationship do the does Fitra push you to think about the nature of this feeling you have towards a Creator and then the thinking process takes over or is the process far more intertwined.
Yeah, so there's a couple of ways of thinking about it's one way would be to think about our nature as having this disposition to form our beliefs in God yes and that disposition
is manifest through the use of reason and perception and the like so that there's not this separate faculty not reason perception memory intuition plus theistic faculty maybe the disposition is connected to our general cognitive abilities or one might think no actually we have a separate additional faculty I think the account that I was just mentioning a moment ago from cognitive science of religion yeah suggests that no it's not as if we have this one theistic faculty but that the disposition to believe in God comes out through different capacities working in tandem you know we as Muslims needn't necessarily agree with that but that's just one account.
So, how different is that to the more Tesla view which I understand I mean from with my when I was researching this program their view is that the Fitra and the mind are one in the same the Fitra is really what this Hadith that you mentioned in the Ayah the Ayah sorry that I mentioned they're really referencing the human mind the human mind has the ability to bring someone to a Creator and that's what the Fitra is I mean how different is your view to that what does it of you.
Yeah so I think I think it is different I mean I think in what I said you know if we go back to the to the first Ayah which I mentioned I mean it seems to me reading that Aya and then again as I said following Ibn Taymiyya yeah that God has fashioned human beings upon a particular nature and it's part of that nature that we have certain cognitive capacities and so I'm I wouldn't be equating Fitra with the mind but with this basic human nature which you know is endowed with certain cognitive abilities such as raising perception of memory and the like.
I understand so what's it so there's a Hadith related by Abu Hureira where with famous Hadith we always use it no child is born but that he's upon the Natural Instinct his parents make him a Jew or a Christian or so that Hadith seems to point out that we are all born upon Islam or Fitra and it's our parents who corrupt us who change us who make us into who take us away from the truth explain that Hadith in relation to this whole discussion about Fitra to me,
Yeah so that that Hadith is famous and it's always an important one when we're talking about Fitra of course so yeah I mean the Hadith is saying that every child is born upon Fitra and as you said it's the parents of the Jew the Christian the Zoroastrian that basically socialize this particular child into a certain religious tradition and so that suggests that although we have this basic nature and that nature might incline us toward Islam in some sense now we have to be careful here and be precise for instance I mean Ibn Taymiyya when he comments on this Hadith he says that by Islam if we were to say that a child's born upon Islam by Islam he just means la illaha ila Allah that there is to recognize that there is no god-worthy worship except the one true God yeah but so I mean what I would want to say about this this Hadith is that it suggests to me that there are certain limits or constraints on how we understand Fitra so consider again that I was saying that to be born upon Fitra suggests that we're born with some natural a set of natural cognitive capacities or abilities yeah now it seems to me that we are born with these capacities and they have a certain way that they're supposed to function and they incline is to form certain beliefs so for instance my perceptual faculties have been disposed to form beliefs in my immediate environment but when I look I will form a belief in a cup in a tablet and in in you being in front of me and so on it would be very odd if I was forming beliefs that this is all a an illusion or suppose I came to form the belief that none of this is real the external world you know it's not real or that I was created five minutes ago with an implanted memories of events that never happened and so on that just doesn't seem to be the way that we ought to think as per human beings so we have Fitra, we have these capacities and we're inclined to think in a certain way but I think we have certain responsibilities as cognitive agents and the environments that we're in and this comes back to that Fitra the Hadith the environment that we're in could impact our cognitive abilities so can just consider a simple example of a car right a car works well in certain environments right it doesn't work well in snow very often people experience that it doesn't work well underwater right but likewise our cognitive capacities don't work well in all environments consider that if we just blacked out this room I wouldn't be reliable in forming beliefs about true beliefs about things in the room or if I'm you know in a place where this high altitude and I have access to little oxygen or if I'm on the water inside these are not conducive to me forming true beliefs perceptual beliefs right so we need to be in the right kind of environment for our cognitive capacities to work well given their nature given the way that they've been set up as Fitra so if that works for perceptual factories maybe the same for our theistic capacity or disposition so maybe if we're in certain environments which are particularly say hostile to theistic belief or try to stifle it or social groups in which conspiracies are widespread maybe these epistemic environments will not be conducive for us to form true beliefs about God from a Muslim point of view a non-favorable or non-conducive epistemic environment for our theistic disposition might be a radically atheistic society but it also might be a society in which a tradition provides other than Islam and then there's another aspect to this which is what we do as cognitive agents so going back to the car example the car doesn't work well in certain environments but it also doesn't work well if we do not use the car properly if we can't drive well for instance it also seems to me that our cognitive capacities which we have given our nature given our Fitra will not be good at getting us true beliefs if we don't adopt certain characteristics like being truth seeking being open-minded being courageous enough to maybe challenge our beliefs or to consider the evidence or being firm enough in our belief to test it if people just give up their beliefs willy-nilly they haven't given it enough chance to see if it stands up to scrutiny so there are also practices that perhaps we need to adopt to enable our theistic disposition to come through I think in this context say a desire to seek God sincerely a kind of longing for God yearning for God.
Ibrahim a.s or right…
Exactly so the limits on Fitra in the sense if we're thinking of Fitra as referring to this fitrih theistic disposition yes the limits pertain to the environment and also what we do as agents.
If you're born, you're born upon Fitra but it's so you're born with this theistic capacity but it's your parents who really socialize you into a particular faith and that faith may be according to us according to Muslims and incorrect faith right. Okay, so what if someone I'm just trying to understand the limits of Fitra a little bit more so what if someone was born you know in a jungle somewhere right and you know so born in a state of nature doesn't really have people around him or her to socialize them into a particular faith is that person born of course according to the Hadith the person is born on Fitra so does that person have the ability just with those the capacities that Allah SWT gave them to come to a faith in God.
Good question it reminds me of this famous philosophical tale of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan written by Ibn Tufail.
Ibn Tufail is?
Ibn Tufail is an Andalusian philosopher and yeah he was around a similar time to Ibn Rushd okay and he so he's a medieval philosopher and he wrote this philosophical tale about a young boy who's basically born on a desert island and is raised amongst the animals in a state of nature and yet in pondering on creation and so on and in developing an ability to interact with animals developing language and then reasons on gets ultimately to a belief in a Creator yeah and that's a pretty optimistic view from Ibn Tufail yeah I'm not so sure that I'd be that optimistic I think that it's definitely true as per the Hadith Fitra is also the case as I said earlier that cognitive scientists of religion are saying that humans even in them or primitive state have developed this agency detection device right so there's no reason to think that this particular person in the state of nature wouldn't have that kind of device but at the same time that does seem to be this need for revelation this need for guidance from God if we are to form true beliefs about God if we're to form them reliably then we need a bit of help. It seems to me, and that's the point of God sending us prophets and sending us revelation so that we're getting these concepts from God and they're shaping the way that we think about him appropriately and reliably.
So, this is the role of revelation, is it to shape our belief in a Creator okay yes in the details it certainly is and we can't understand Allah and his attributes without the revelation but back to Fitra doesn't Fitra work separate to Revelation in a sense that Fitra gives us the recognition or pushes us our desires we desire to believe in a god through this invert and that's what urges us to seek revelation so is that if I got the logic right there that revelation comes to to satisfy that urge but which already exists within a human being another is the Fitra.
Yeah, I think that's right I mean Ibn Taymiyya for instance he basically says that that Revelation in the form of prophets and God's word comes to perfect Fitra so I think I mean the way that you put it that we have this urge yeah this basic disposition to recognize God and then Revelation comes to fulfill that to match that right and to help us to form beliefs about God appropriately and of course you know our relationship to God is not primarily cognitive it is you know partly cognitive but it's also existential and to do with you know worship as well so you know Revelation comes to you know push us towards the praise and gratitude of God as well as thinking about it.
Jamie, I want to go back to that Hadith that we are born in a state of Fitra and then our parents come along and they change us and make us okay right. So, of course today I think a lot of Muslims interpret that to mean that we're born Muslims in the deeni sense right we are Muslims and someone like yourself who becomes a Muslim at the age of 17 I think it is you know as a teenager you've returned back to your Fitra right so you have reverted to Islam right so you were a Muslim your parents or your environment you're from Leeds so you know your shopping center and your environment may do whoever you were right at the age of 17 your Fitra urge you to inquire more about your existence or gave you that you know that impression that you need to find out more and then you use your mind and your faculties and you came to the correct true conclusion which is Islam. So, is the term reversion the right term then to use for your journey?
Yeah, it's interesting I like this question I mean it often happens to me that I speak to people for the first time, taxi drivers and I tell them that you know I converted to Islam or something and they say no brother you didn't convert you reverted.
Yes, and people that are quite exercised about these two words.
They really are yeah, they're quite passionate about it yeah but I often feel that the way in which Muslims are using it is probably not quite right. So, there's a sense in which it is right to say that we reverted to Fitra for instance if we were an atheist or we belong to another religious tradition that is antithetical to Islam there's a sense in which we're reverting back to this original pristine nature Fitra which inclines us to believe in Allah SWT but that I mean I think as I mentioned earlier say Ibn Taymiyya when he comments on this Hadith basically says that Fitra refers to Islam in the sense of La illaha ila Allah, that there is no god except Allah that's a bit different from the Deen of Islam dean of Islam the religion itself so it's not as if children were born with beliefs in Islamic doctrines and were adhering to a school of law or recognizing certain religion rituals as obligatory upon them or something it seems to me that it's more appropriate to think of as actually converting Deen wise right that we left a particular way of life for another a new one so revert to Fitra maybe convert to Islam though I think and so I think generally speaking converts probably more correct.
Okay, that's I think that makes a lot of sense and that sits more comfortably with me actually in a way I understand Fitra and understand Islam as a Deen but I know that I note that there are some Scholars who argue that Fitra is a thicker concept it's a bigger idea than just maybe Ibn Taymiyya version of Fitra, Fitra inclines you're not just towards a Creator but also inclines you towards the Ahkam Sharia so for example if you see I don't know someone a Muslim praying and you're a non-Muslim your Fitra is provoked you you see that to be a correct manifestation of your human nature if you see I don't know the I don't know let's find the payment of Zakat you know of charity that inclines you towards Islam I mean is there anything within that understanding that you could you could accommodate as Ibn Taymiyya.
Yeah, well I mean Ibn Taymiyya’s idea of what concept of Fitra is thicker than what I've been saying I mean there is more to it one of the things that Ibn Taymiyya here is quite clear about is that as per our Fitra we have a capacity to form certain moral judgments so we have a moral sense of what's right and what's wrong or what's good and what's bad yeah so perhaps for instance there's a car example in giving in in charity say paying our aims that is recognized by as naturally as a praiseworthy and valuable worthwhile thing to do a good thing so maybe there is some relation there maybe at resonates with our moral sense or intuition which we have as per our so Fitra. So, perhaps yeah we could you know draw that relationship in those instances.
So, someone could be inclined towards I mean so you know I would like to ask you a little bit about your journey then like you became a Muslim at quite an early age I would say you know at 17 years old so you know how I'm sure everyone asks you if it's but in relation to Fitra how did you become almost like looking back did the idea of Fitra play a part in that Journey you had when you came to Islam.
I think it did I think it did, I mean I was raised in a typical British family not religious and say me and my brother for example raising the same home very different but I had this this yearning for philosophical questions, maybe, why am I here where am I going what's the point yeah I think yeah I mean clearly when I went to I mean when I went to primary school I learned about religion and learned about Christianity and other religions but I seem to have this natural inclination to just ponder and wonder even when I was about seven like what's the point of all this why do I exist yeah and as I said I wasn't really raised in a religious household but I had I had a copy of the Bible in my house you know even though it wasn't really to be there to be read but and I used to try and open it and have a look and I didn't understand what's going on about with gentiles and pharisees and this that and the other one I was very little so it's a bit confusing but I remember stumbling upon the one of the verses which basically says seek and you will find, knock and the doll will be open for you and I think I was quite taken aback by that that verse because I was thinking to myself I want I desire to know God I want to have this relationship with God so that's a Fitra and then reading this biblical verse it gave me some optimism maybe actually it's possible maybe if I do seek I will find yeah.
What is the role of the mind in this whole process in arriving at a belief in Allah SWT so we've talked about Fitra and we've said that we're inclined towards God does the mind have any part to play in that journey to become a Muslim and a believer.
Yeah, I mean I think like by them by the mind do you mean the reason the fact of reason because I think I think if the mind as just more generally encompassing like cognition more generally our ability to think okay reason I would see is like a more specific faculty right the ability to recognize logically self-evident truth that one had one is to or to form inferences right and so on so sometimes people think when we talk about believe in God by way of Fitra that reason necessarily takes a back seat.
A blind faith.
Or something like that.
An emotional experience spiritual experience brings you to God.
Yeah, but I wouldn't look at it like that yeah so I think so if we just consider again our other faculties so like memory and say I could be having a conversation with you and I'm trying to get you to remember something okay and I'd say would you remember when we met that time you know a few years ago and we're at that restaurant and there was that guy in the corner that funny looking man or whatever we were talking about and you're struggling to remember it but I'm trying to prompt you and maybe there's a particular detail that I mentioned then you ah yes I remember now yes that's memory perception if I want if we're out maybe we're in the forest and we're maybe we're bird watching bird spotting I don't know you're interested in that I'm not saying I am but suppose we were and I'm trying to help you see what I can see I would try and draw your attention towards something some feature in our external environment so I'm prompting your perceptual faculties to form certain beliefs right so I think that reason or rational reflection say pondering the natural world thinking about certain features of it how it seems to be well put together or designed how it seems to be contingent and other features that might act as a prompt for our fithree of yeah theistic disposition to come through so there is that relationship there. There is another aspect which is suppose we form a belief in God by way of Fitra naturally but we are we're faced with certain objections to our belief in God reason will come in there as well to repel such objections say that we have to respond to them reasonably if we want to be reasonable in continuing to believe in God so I think those are two ways to think about how reason is still an important part of the process even if you're believing by way of Fitra.
You know, you hear a lot at that and I know this is a debate within tradition of Islam as to how one arrives at a belief in a Creator and there is a school that argues about reason is really integral to that and as the school that argues it's not so important for that but from your perspective and maybe from Ibn Taymiyya’s perspective, does reason allow us because we we've said that Fitra is quite limited it brings you to it prompts you it urges you it pushes you but then you need to solidify that conclusion and so does reason play a very important role in coming to a belief in God like would you say that reason is the other half of that belief without reason there is a there is a weakness in the Iman maybe.
So, there are a couple of things there so the first thing about say I mean you said that that Fitra is limited to some extent I mean it is maybe I've laid a bit too much emphasis on its limits because I still think that the capacity of Fitra is quite a substantial I think so going back again to this idea that we have been endowed with certain cognitive capacities as per our Fitra, reason is one of those right and so we might think that reason enables us to form certain beliefs and that when we utilize reason properly we will or we ought to even form certain beliefs so I think as per our rational factors we ought to believe that one at one equals two there would be a mistake clearly with our rational faculties if we were forming that conclusion that it's three rather than two right so I would think that as per our nature when we're using reason properly we ought to believe in God so it's reason is connected to Fitra in that sense in that we have been created upon future with certain faculties and that endows that faculty with an inclination as to what sort of beliefs they opt to form so that's the first part of an answer to the first part of the question maybe the other aspect about the deficiency.
Yeah, really deficient you know, I was born a Muslim you know in the sense I was born within a Muslim family and so I grew up as a Muslim and I was socialized into the faith like is there a requirement for me to go through a process of reasoning my belief in order for me to have strong Iman in Allah SWT.
Yeah, so that is an interesting question and it is a question that's present in classical theological discussions yeah so you have you know different there's a spectrum and people are going one way or the other way or they're trying to find a center ground so you have this concept that comes from the Kalam tradition which is called or it's a principle not a concept which basically means the duty or obligation to use reason discursively right to reflect rationally and to form believe in God using reason right and that is an obligation upon a Muslim according to this tradition but what question that arises here is what constitutes another here like what would satisfy that obligation so some in the tradition thought that it needs to be like a philosophical proof and maybe even responses to objections to the proof and so on that's a pretty high bar yeah and hence I mean I'm not saying this as a majority opinion but this I think is a minority opinion and hence some theologians accused that minority of theologians of making mass tech fear essentially other theologians within the Kalam tradition thought that nada is still necessary because they wanted to condemn blindly following one's social environment and because if we look at in the Quran the polytheists in Mecca are condemned because they want to follow the religion of their forefathers right yeah so some thought that nada just means say reflecting upon nature and upon creation and thinking about it and then there are even still others in the tradition who reject that principle and think actually that belief by way of testimony if you're in the right testimonial tradition and you're following that testimonial line from the from where you are down to the Prophet then then that's okay and the sensing which is okay are not okay also differs so on one end the extreme they're saying well if you don't satisfy this principle you're not really a Muslim or maybe you're a Mumin but not a mean a true believer others are saying no you're still a believer but you're sinful or something like that okay there's still this duty so those are some of the discussions I mean I think that you know requiring a philosophical proof I think that's just wrong-headed and I think it's unnecessary so yeah I don't think that somebody's Iman would be deficient because they don't know philosophy or they don't have a good philosophical argument and I think this is where the idea Fitra comes back in So if we do have this basic theistic disposition and if this disposition is working well and reliably just as say my perceptual fact is on my memory when it's working well I can form true beliefs about God and so you know I think that might be all that's required.
And does it matter where you are and if you live in a in a generally in an Islamic Society you know you lived in here in in which is Islam probably for many right so it's a very strong conservative environment and everyone tends to be going into the mosque and the mosques are full of Islam is practice and there isn't very much going on which is against Islam yeah in in that community in Istanbul is it likely or could you argue that the person living there isn't really going to have to their faith isn't going to be tested yeah in a conceptual way yeah like maybe someone living in Leeds or in London where you know all around us there are there are conceptual intellectual arguments against the faith and so
we have to be a little bit more aware of those arguments and maybe engage with those arguments in order to keep within the parameters of faith I mean is there a is there an argument there about the context in which you live.
Yeah, no I think there is an argument in the sense that typically rationality being reasonable is thought of as being person relative so you know what might be rational for one person to believe might not be rational for another person to believe given their given the evidence and background knowledge they have so suppose somebody's a couple of detectives are trying to figure out who committed this particular crime and one detective has background knowledge pertaining to the facts the fingerprints on the murder weapon CCTV footage blah blah yeah it would be reasonable and rational for them on the basis of that evidence and background knowledge to form the belief that say it was it was John who did but the other detective who doesn't have that evidence and background knowledge well it probably wouldn't be reasonable for them to conclude one way or another so I think that Muslims in a majority Muslim societies and say people who are not exposed to philosophy and the like they will just not have the philosophical acumen or tools to even understand let alone address these objections and I think you know that this idea in moral philosophy the art implies can like you can you're only obligated to do something if you can actually if you can actually do it you're not going to be whole morally accountable responsible if something is beyond your control so you know a Muslim grandmother living in Basaksehir yes cannot be obligated to engage in philosophical reasoning because she can't, she doesn't know how to do that so yeah I think that that's a fair point.
Ask you about thinking because thinking can get us into trouble now at the risk of sounding like I'm a I don't know this is the thinking Muslim podcast you know I'll give you a quick anecdote you know a friend of mine who or a person I know who is a courier driver you know he's not a he's not someone who yeah he he's lived in a Islamic environment doesn't have any Iman problems you know he lives a good Muslim life you know he told me about a friend of his who was studying philosophy and by studying philosophy he had had a crisis of faith and now his Islam was pretty doubtful right and so he asked me to come in and speak to this friend of his and you know after trying to reason with this person it just became clear to me that he was obstinate he didn't want to change his ways and he had come to a view about the way he wanted to live his life and that had impacted the way he thought about Allah SWT in Islam yeah. Now, maybe the I drew the wrong conclusion from that and the conclusion was well you know this here we go there's a courier driver you know who alhamdulillah is successful you know he is someone that Allah SWT would you know has described as the one who is successful right you know he inshallah ta’ala he's someone who lives a good Islamic life and yet you've got this person who's gone to University and he's thinking but it's taken him off the path of Allah SWT and I suppose the comment I made afterwards was that maybe sometimes thinking can be bad for us have I is that comment wrong for me to me you know I mean it was it was the comment I made sooner as I left and I had I had to contemplate whether that was correct or not to say but yeah tell me what's going on there
The trouble with that statement is of course you have to think to form that judgment true right so you can't get you can't go around thinking you know but I think to use a word yeah I think that you know we have like say this philosophy student whatever when you when you study philosophy you're supposed to do logic and you're supposed to study how to reason and so on so yeah I mean look we have an ability and a capacity to reason but it is a skill and skills need fine tuning and you know just as other skills need fine-tuning you know somebody who tries to ride a bicycle the first time probably not going to succeed somebody who tries to drive a car the first time probably not going to succeed so we have an ability to reason that ability needs to be trained or fine-tuned in some sense now there's just there's one aspect of it which is training in the sense of developing an ability to reason logically so that's going to help for you to do philosophy but what about theology so theology is the study of God so what kind of training and background do we need to think about God properly maybe from our point of view we need to consider God's revelation, what God has told us about Himself in His own words if we are to think about Him properly so I think if somebody's not embedded within that framework say then they're liable to make mistakes and be unreliable in their theology in their thinking about God so yes if we don't have that embeddedness within the framework our ability on our own all by ourselves to get us to the truth might not always hit the mark.
But isn't it scary I mean you know you study philosophy, you're a philosopher and you know we know that large numbers of Muslims today are studying for social sciences and I'd go in into philosophy and these sorts of disciplines yet I do fear that without I don't know limits is probably the wrong word but some frameworks to think in they are going to be sucked into kufr there's not into disbelief I mean is that a is that a warranted fear you know as someone who studies the discipline.
Yeah, no, definitely I mean when you enter into a philosophical setting classroom discussion everything is up for grabs right your religion is not given some kind of special privilege as it would be when you're in a Islamic seminary or something so you know everything's up for grabs and the question of whether God exists or whether Islam is true is it grabs too so clearly that could lead people to make errors and come up with conclusions which do lead them away from God if they don't also have this embeddedness within the tradition so I think this is what I was getting at that if we want to get our theology straight it's not likely that we're going to do it just all on our own thinking and speculating and doing armchair philosophy but we need some guidance and hence God sent us the Quran and so if we don't have that embeddedness within that Quranic framework then yeah I think we will be led to astray in some sense.
Yeah, do you think that maybe in the summer holidays prior to going to University you know we should think about having courses you know led by some people like yourself where you establish some of the frameworks that a Muslim student needs to develop in order to approach these social sciences. I mean, do you think that's a good idea.
I think it's an excellent idea yeah I don't know whether I'd be the one to go ahead and run it but yeah it'd be a good idea.
Okay, so let's come back to the idea of Fitra and just try to you know I think I've handle I've got a really good appreciation of this concept today for you jazzakAllah khayr it's really really great. So, you touched on this but Fitra can it give us, can it lead us to conclude that lying is a bad, idea killing is bad can we naturally form these judgments about the actions that people undertake.
Yeah, so I do think that we have a basic moral sense or intuition as human beings I think if you look across human history and human civilization you do find that things like murder, rape, theft and so on have almost universally been condemned so a question that immediately rises is why? what is it about human beings such that they are universally wherever it may be on the globe forming these similar moral beliefs well one explanation is that we have a moral sense, a moral capacity to recognize the good and the bad so yeah lying you know I mean that's a controversial one because some people might think in certain contexts it's okay to lie others if you're a Kantian you know you would be likely to think otherwise but I think on certain fundamental points as I said murder rape theft and so on.
How far does that go? I mean you know fasting yeah have an incline inclination towards fasting or towards yeah?
Well I think fasting is not an inclination towards fasting I don't think that's a moral issue per se all right although from a shabi’ perspective I suppose but no I don't really know frankly.
Okay, when lots of Muslims want to do Dawa they want to speak to non-Muslims they want to convince they may have people they know at school and colleges and some people do this very effectively you know they've got friends and they bring them to Islam, how much should we be aware of the discussion about Fitra in our discussions with those non-Muslims because often we go armed with lots of rational arguments which are of course important and you've described their importance especially in the society in which we live but is there a should we be cognizant of this fitri idea when placing those rational arguments.
Yeah, I think I think in discussions with people who don't believe in God I think it you know one way to go about it is just to reel off a lot of rational philosophical arguments but it seems to me that very often it's not those arguments which are pushing them away from religious belief often they might have been exposed to you know they might have a bad experience with religious folk or with a particular religion there might be some underlying emotional spiritual reason so one way in which you might approach it as I say is rational argument maybe another way is to think about and I'm just putting this out there what are the existential or practical benefits of faith so somebody might say well I have various needs, I have this need for meaning, for cosmic purpose I have this desire to be loved to be protected or something like that and belief in God satisfies these desires therefore belief in God is reasonable on a practical level for a person so I think practical reasons are also relevant here the other thing I'd like to say is that when we think about God and the evidence for god one question we might ask is what would evidence for God look like what the sort of evidence we should expect from God and so this is how I look at it I think the evidence for God would basically satisfy two principles: one it would be widely accessible to people human beings of all backgrounds of all capacity of all capacities yeah it's not just for the philosophers you know if we from a Quranic perspective God created us to worship Him and hence know Him and that's human beings and jins as well across the board right yeah so that's the first thing there's this wide accessibility thing and then I would like to say though that the evidence although it might be widely accessible it might in some sense be resistible. So, consider that you know if God made evidence of Him so overwhelmingly compelling and obvious it would take away this notion of human beings yearning for God, desiring God, finding Him and developing this deep interpersonal relationship God would already be compelled upon them if his evidence was obvious and I think within this domain of resistibility that's where moral and spiritual virtues or vices might be relevant so that this longing desiring yearning seeking of God might become very relevant there and rather than the say philosophical acumen and so that will be relevant maybe to consider with somebody who doesn't believe.
I heard from a scholar and in fact I think this is shared by a number of Muslims today of a particular persuasion that when you live in a city when you live amongst you know in a place where there's bricks and mortar and there's concrete buildings you know outside here we've got the bank of England up the road and it's right it's pretty it's this material around us that we are distance from our Fitra but when you live in a countryside area you live in a in a forest you visit you know you see the wildlife and animals you are closer to your fitri self I mean is there a is that does that chime with your understanding of what Fitra is?
Well, I mean there's one thing here that I think it was some time ago that I caught sight of a video by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and he was talking about you know the majesty and glory gloriousness and magnificence of the stars at night which you get to experience if you're in the desert yeah but you don't experience that because of light pollution in the city and he basically said this is one of the reasons why atheism is prevalent yeah because we can't see the stars yeah the point that I think Hamza Yusuf was making is that when we're in and amongst the natural world. So, if we think if God exists and he wants to know us and he's set up maybe signs or pieces of evidence to bring us close to Him it seems to me that nature might just be the thing because we do seem to have these overwhelmingly like transcendent experiences sometimes in nature when we're in the country or we're up a mountain or we're looking at the splendor of the horizon and the starlet night sky so maybe in those environments we're closer to being in a position to have our theistic disposition to come out to be manifested yes so maybe that's one way of thinking about it.
I mean you don't have to have a comment on this but I used to know a guy a friend of mine who used to work in the city and he would walk out of his building his tall building every day and see the Mercedes and the cars parked outside you say this this makes me want to believe in God more and you know he I'm not sure how what the connection was but you know he seemed to have come to a view that you know that, the Mercedes which I suppose it does right you know it does ultimately but I presume you know a tree would
take you there quicker than a car.
Probably, yeah I think maybe this individual was thinking about like it is pretty amazing what human beings can do wow yes and maybe that is the sign there that is it really likely that by chance or by accident human beings have just you know popped up and I have this extraordinary intelligence and capacity and conscious agents are able to make such a thing like a Mercedes car right without that being a creator or something I said there I was thinking he's just become a capitalist, you've explained that to me okay so one last question for you Stephen Frye says that bone cancer in children is a key argument is an argument against a merciful Creator. I mean how would you respond to Stephen Fr.
Yeah I remember this viral clip yes so I think there are roughly like three ways we could we could approach this and I think though each of these ways we find within our tradition so one way and this is broadly seems to me in Ashari approach within the Kalam tradition is to just say that moral evaluative judgments made about God are just an anathema they just are irrelevant it doesn't make sense why because they want to say that there is no standard of goodness outside of God which He has to adhere to or by which we judge Him such that whenever God wills something that that is good given his nature whatever God wills that is good right so earthquake or a whatever the case may be so this is in in some sense a radical position but that would be one approach to just deny this whole idea of there being a standard of goodness outside of God's by which we judge Him others might not necessarily take that route and they might think well okay maybe there isn't a standard of goodness outside of God by which we judge Him because God is goodness himself God is the good so to speak but given our own understanding of what is good right we have for instance we know it's wrong to torture children just for the sake of it something like that yeah that's clearly evidently wrong so we can have some idea of what a good God would do and what He wouldn't do like He wouldn't command that kind of thing and so those in this camp would want to say well yeah we can offer evaluative judgments about God's actions in principle but when it comes to God's, God permitting evil and suffering in the world God has certain overriding reasons for allowing it there are certain wisdom in the presence of suffering so couple of examples and I want to note that it is difficult and when you look at particular instances it's much easier when you're talking about it in general right so it's very difficult to look at particularly instance and say well I know the reason is exactly this that and the other yeah but there are more general reasons which can encompass say the bone cancer and chilling on the example that you get so one of them is free will right so that there is a certain value in humans being endowed with freedom of choice and responsibility without that moral virtues that we can acquire as human beings and the good of that the good of becoming compassionate empathetic understanding patient loving is not possible if we don't have free will right
if we are compelled to act in a certain way you can't attribute any goodness or badness to that particular agent because they're just being compelled so free will is a great good and great thing and unfortunately clearly humans have then the capacity to do things that are not good right but if you eradicate that you eradicate the capacity to do good and all of the great and valuable things that come with that so that's one element and that's also related to this idea of soul building or Soul making or something like that but related to that and this now touches on the idea of natural evil that comes by way of earthquakes or tsunamis or these natural diseases is the idea that if God is to give human beings moral choice freedom and responsibility because that's a great good then God can only do so if He sets up the world according to certain natural laws or regularities so for instance if say we know that when we if we put a bullet in the gun and we fire it then the bullet will come out right and we know that because given the nature of guns and bullets that it follows that regular pattern yes but suppose there was no regularity and we had no idea whether it's going to shoot whether it's not going to shoot in a world like that it would be very difficult for humans to have moral responsibility over their actions and choices because they wouldn't be able to determine the outcome of their of their actions and so it might be the case that God has to if He wants to achieve this great good of humans having moral choice freedom responsibility to become to acquire these virtues it might be the case that God needs to set the world up according to natural laws and regularities and it might be that an offshoot of those natural laws and regularities is certain disasters as well and note that those disasters also give opportunities for humans to do great good if we take the example recently in Turkey it is terrible disastrous incident earthquake yeah the earthquake yeah and yet there is great good in human striving and all of the virtues that come about with humans responding to that now that good is not possible if there's no earthquake yeah emotionally of course this doesn't do and I'm not trying to I would never you know use this to satisfy somebody's on sufferings and so on yeah they need to be consoled but intellectually that's one way to look at it the third Way is the following and sometimes in in philosophy religion this is called skeptical theism so you know in the Quran there's a verse in the second chapter Surah Al-Baqara where Allah SWT, God tells the angels that he's going to create this Khalifa, this representative viceregent on the earth the human being and the angels respond by saying you know what will you create that one who will cause bloodshed and corruption on the land and God replied and says I know that which you don't know yes. So, skeptical theism is the idea that we should be skeptical about what we can reasonably say about God in certain instances so we know that God and Allah SWT is infinitely good and infinitely wise so given his nature we know He must have a morally sufficient reason for allowing the suffering maybe it is to do with free will maybe it is to do with soul building soul making and so on but even if God does have a reason why should we think that we know about it yes why should we think that we would have access to those reasons because God is you know Soren Kierkegaard the famous existentialist Danish said there is an infinite qualitative difference between humans and God so why think we as limited human beings would have access to God's reasons and so yeah we could rest content and I think this is where virtues like Tawakul in Allah, trusting God come that we know God is good we know He's fully white so he must have a reason why I think I'd know it.
Jamie Turner it's been fascinating and it's you've allowed this to understand that quite a complex subject in an easy way so I thank you very much for that.
My pleasure, thanks for having me on
JazzakAllah Khayr.
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