The Sceptical Muslim: some preliminaries

In Islam: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation, I introduced the concept of the ‘Sceptical Muslim’ as a person who (1) identifies as a Muslim but (2) doubts the existence of God and/or the Prophethood of Muhammad (Aijaz (Reference Aijaz2018), 117). The main idea behind condition (2) is that the Sceptical Muslim doubts propositions that are religiously significant in the Islamic tradition. Among these propositions, the two that rank highest for Muslims are surely ‘There is no god but God’ and ‘Muhammad is the messenger of God’. Indeed, the conjunction of these two propositions is enshrined in the Islamic testimony of faith known as the Shahada: ‘I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God’. According to Islamic orthodoxy, one enters the fold of Islam by sincerely reciting the Shahada. Although the propositions contained in the Shahada are the most religiously significant ones for Muslims, they are certainly not the only ones that carry such significance. Most Muslims also maintain the religious significance of the propositions ‘The Qur'an is the inerrant Word of God’ and ‘Muhammad was sinless’, to cite some other examples. In formulating my conception of the Sceptical Muslim, I selected two paradigmatic examples of religiously significant propositions in Islam. This conception can easily accommodate alternative religiously significant propositions as substitutes in condition (2) since the basic idea of the Sceptical Muslim will remain intact. In what follows, I will continue to use the propositions ‘God exists’ and ‘Muhammad is God's Prophet’ in discussing the Sceptical Muslim, understanding, of course, that there are other religiously significant propositions such a Muslim may doubt. To turn now to another point about (1) and (2), I take these to be necessary conditions to be a Sceptical Muslim; deciding on what the sufficient conditions are is not essential, given my aims in this article. Still, the following discussion will explore what some of these conditions may be.

Let me now clarify the reference to doubt as it appears in condition (2) of the Sceptical Muslim profile. By ‘doubt’, I mean a kind of propositional attitude. More specifically, I take doubting a proposition p to entail that one neither believes that p nor disbelieves that p. The fact that doubt in this sense does not entail disbelief is important to note, given the ambiguity in ordinary English expressions of the form ‘S doubts that p’. This locution could mean (a) S believes that not-p (e.g. when the statement ‘Buzz doubts conspiracy theories about the moon landings’ is taken to mean that ‘Buzz believes that conspiracy theories about the moon landings are false’); alternatively, the locution could mean (b) S is in doubt about whether p (e.g. one way to take the statement ‘Spencer doubts whether Plato's account of Socrates’ life is historically accurate’ is to take it to mean something like ‘Spencer doesn't think that Plato's account of Socrates’ life is historically accurate, but he doesn't think that it is historically inaccurate either’). It is this second way of understanding what it means to doubt that p which I am using to characterize the Sceptical Muslim.Footnote ¹

I understand ‘belief’ to be another sort of propositional attitude that is distinct from doubt. One way to understand the difference between these two propositional attitudes is to observe how doubting that p lacks the phenomenology characteristic of believing that p, such as ‘a disposition to feel it true that p’ (Cohen (Reference Cohen1989), 368). Since the locus of doubts in my conception of the Sceptical Muslim is a religious one, let us call the doubts that such a person has ‘religious doubts’. In having religious doubts about the existence of God and/or the Prophethood of Muhammad, then, the Sceptical Muslim does not believe (i.e. lacks the belief) that these propositions are true.Footnote ² The causes that can bring about these religious doubts vary. In a helpful and illuminating survey of American Muslims struggling with religious doubts, the Yaqeen Institute of Islamic Research documents three broad causes for these doubts: (1) moral and social concerns, (2) philosophical and scientific concerns, and (3) personal trauma (Chouhoud (Reference Chouhoud2016)). As an example of philosophical concern, the survey mentions how, for some Muslims, the perceived absence of ‘proof’ for God's existence gave rise to religious doubt that extended to all other aspects of their religious commitment:

In a subsequent complementary survey of American Muslims dealing with religious doubts, the Yaqeen Institute lists some ways in which these Muslims responded to them (Chouhoud, (Reference Chouhoud2018)). Most of the Muslims surveyed sought guidance from Islamic sources (e.g. praying, reading the Qur'an, etc.). A notable number of them did, however, say that they were likely to explore their doubt by consulting non-Islamic sources and also that they did not feel irrevocably bound to their Islamic commitment (ibid.).

Here, one may wonder how it is possible for a Muslim who is in doubt about religiously significant propositions in Islam to sustain some sort of religious commitment. After all, if the Sceptical Muslim as a result of his or her doubts does not believe that God exists, for instance, what else could motivate such a person to maintain a degree of commitment to God in an Islamic context? In his essay ‘The Will to Believe’, William James offers a useful framework in which we can explore this question. Discussing the relationship between belief and action, alongside the idea of ‘live’ and ‘dead’ hypotheses, he says this:

In applying what James says in this passage to the concept of the Sceptical Muslim, here is what we can say. For such a Muslim, Islam is to some degree a ‘live hypothesis’; it still appears to him or her as a ‘real possibility’, as James puts it. It is not, however, maximally live, which, as James explains, would mean a willingness to act irrevocably that is predicated on belief. In having some willingness to act, however, the Sceptical Muslim will have a believing tendency towards the truth of the relevant religious propositions. By ‘believing tendency’, I take James to mean an inclination towards a doxastic state. This inclination may manifest itself in the form of non-doxastic propositional attitudes such as acceptance or hope (see Alston (Reference Alston, Jordan and Howard-Snyder1996) and Pojman (Reference Pojman, Gale and Pruss2003) for an exploration of these as viable attitudes in the context of religious faith).

Why might the Sceptical Muslim be favourably inclined towards those religiously significant propositions in Islam that he or she doubts? James offers an explanation in what he calls our ‘willing nature’:

A Sceptical Muslim may have a favourable ‘willing nature’ towards Islam because of his or her religious upbringing, the experience of living in a Muslim country, etc. This willing nature may result in some form of religious commitment despite the presence of religious doubts. Consider, as an example of how this may happen, a Sceptical Muslim who provides this account:

Although devised, this sort of account is one that we can easily find today among people who identify as Muslims, especially in the modern secular climate present in Anglo-American culture.

Is the stance of the Sceptical Muslim a reasonable and acceptable one from an Islamic perspective? Many Muslims answer ‘no’. In an attempt to justify this answer, they appeal to a fairly common view on religious doubt, faith, and commitment that one finds within the Muslim community. In the next section, I will present and examine this view, both with an aim to defend the stance of the Sceptical Muslim as well as to investigate some matters on the nature of faith and commitment in Islam.

A traditional Islamic perspective on religious doubt, faith, and Islamic commitment

For many Muslims, the primary reason the stance of the Sceptical Muslim is problematic from an Islamic perspective is that it is seen as incongruous, if not downright incompatible, with faith and commitment. To better understand and articulate this objection, let us consider, as a starting point for discussion, this fatwa (legal opinion on Islamic law) by the committee of Muslim scholars who work for Islamweb.net, a popular Islamic website:

There are several things here that need to be unpacked and clarified to understand what exactly the fatwa amounts to.

Let's start with the analysis of religious doubt offered by the fatwa committee (henceforth referred to as the FC). In the initial reference to religious doubt in the fatwa, the FC doesn't explain whether it is referring to a temporary episode of doubt or doubt that persists over a long period (and will perhaps remain unresolved). Suppose that Ali, a devoted believing Muslim and a freshman at university, takes an Introduction to Philosophy class and reads about the Problem of Evil for the first time. Perhaps he reads J. L. Mackie's classic presentation of the problem in which Mackie tries to show that theistic belief is ‘positively irrational’ (Mackie (Reference Mackie1955), 200). Let's imagine that in considering Mackie's argument Ali can't find any fault with it. All of Mackie's points seem correct and the reasoning behind them seems airtight. Ali also agrees with Mackie's discussion of various ‘fallacious solutions’ to The Problem of Evil and is convinced that none of the usual theistic replies succeed (ibid., 202–212). So impactful is Mackie's argument on Ali that he starts doubting God's existence. Suppose further that because of this, Ali's religious commitment is affected at a practical level. After praying to God for guidance in light of his doubts, and perhaps feeling that his prayers went unanswered, he starts missing some of the mandatory Islamic prayers, doesn't read the Qur'an as much as he used to, etc. Let's finish the thought experiment in this way. Ali's doubts about God's existence continue for a few weeks until his philosophy instructor – in the interests of maintaining balance in class discussions about God's existence – later introduces students to the enterprise of theodicy. The instructor recommends John Hick's book on the subject in which Hick defends his Irenaean ‘soul-making’ theodicy (Hick (Reference Hick2010)). Ali borrows Hick's book from his university library, reads it carefully, re-reads it for a thorough critical examination, and finally comes to think that Hick's theodicy constitutes an adequate response to Mackie. Being satisfied that Mackie's argument does not show theistic belief to be ‘positively irrational’ or any such thing, Ali finds his belief that God exists, a belief that had been displaced by religious doubt for a few weeks, has returned. Now, is it the case that Ali was not a Muslim during the period in which he doubted God's existence? In considering this question at a more general level, the FC offers two possibilities on which to base an answer to it: being ‘content’ with religious doubts or else making an effort to repel these doubts (‘whispers of the devil’). The latter possibility, the FC maintains, does not take a person outside the fold of Islam; on the contrary, it ‘proves his correct belief’. Let me address this second possibility first, before turning to the first one.

As I noted earlier, doubting that p entails that one does not believe that p (or disbelieve that p), so Ali's religious doubt about God's existence entails that he doesn't believe that God exists (or that God does not exist). What, then, might the FC have in mind in suggesting that one can be in a state where he correctly believes, say, that God exists while also having doubts about God's existence? Perhaps the idea here is that believing that p is compatible with hyperbolic (e.g. Cartesian) doubts about p. Thus, even if I believe (and believe with confidence) that there is an external world, for example, it is still possible for me to doubt its reality from the perspective of what Bernard Williams calls ‘the project of Pure Enquiry’ (Williams (Reference Williams2005), 46). To this possibility, one can add some religious colouring, as the FC does. It might be the case that such hyperbolic doubts are also, at least in a religious context, ‘whispers of the devil’; they are, that is, attempts by Satan (or perhaps one of his minions) to misguide the believer in some way. For the purposes of my discussion, there is no need to evaluate the FC's judgments about the causes (Satanic or otherwise) or appropriateness of hyperbolic doubts about religious matters. The kind of religious doubt that I am considering is what Daniel Howard-Snyder and Daniel J. McKaughan call ‘belief-canceling doubt’; this is doubt that is sufficient to cancel belief (Howard-Snyder and McKaughan (Reference Howard-Snyder, McKaughan, Arcadi and Turner2021), 71, 74). It is this kind of doubt that is operative in my example of Ali, who doubts God's existence and (temporarily) lacks the belief that God exists after consideration of The Problem of Evil.Footnote ³

What about the first possibility, according to which being ‘content’ with religious doubts takes one out of the fold of Islam, as the FC holds? Since the FC doesn't offer any explanation of what it means by being ‘content’, let's consider one way of understanding this claim. In the Pensées, Pascal discusses the topic of the immortality of the soul, noting that our perspective on it will have great consequences for all our actions. We have, he says, a duty to enlighten ourselves about this topic. Reflecting on the different sorts of people who do not believe that the soul is immortal, Pascal identifies two kinds of doubters. He sympathizes with those sorts of doubters ‘who sincerely bewail their doubt, who regard it as the greatest of misfortunes, and who, sparing no effort to escape it, make of this inquiry their principal and most serious occupations’ (Pascal (1958), 194). By contrast, there is another sort of doubter:

Let's call the first kind of religious doubter that Pascal sympathizes with the conscientious religious doubter and the second kind that aggravates him the heedless religious doubter. If Ali is this second kind of religious doubter, perhaps a case can be made for no longer considering him Muslim. I say ‘perhaps’ because it is not clear that Ali's heedlessness in doubt would disqualify him as a Muslim, especially if his practical religious commitment (generally) conformed to Islamic norms. For, one might argue, there are also heedless religious believers. Suppose that we have another Muslim – Omar – who believes that all the religiously significant propositions in Islam (e.g. ‘God exists’, ‘Muhammad is God's Prophet’, etc.) are true. In his practical religious commitment, however, Omar is a disengaged and lackadaisical fellow, frequently distracted by earthly affairs. He often thinks about his office work while he is performing the daily obligatory prayers, fantasizes obsessively during Ramadan about the various culinary pleasures awaiting him after the breaking of his fasts, gives charity only if he can make a public show of it in front of others, etc. In behaving this way, Omar is arguably a heedless religious believer. Should he be regarded as having left the fold of Islam, given his behaviour? This is a controversial issue in Islamic theology and Muslim theologians have different opinions about such a matter. Be that as it may, here is the key point. If an Islamic assessment of Omar as a heedless religious believer can still regard him as a Muslim, why can't a similar assessment of Ali as a heedless religious doubter (supposing his doubt is indeed heedless) also regard him as a Muslim? No doubt, both Ali and Omar would still be culpable for their heedlessness. But why regard the heedlessness of one as sufficient to constitute apostasy but not the heedlessness of the other?

For the sake of argument, I am willing to concede that a case can be made for thinking heedless religious doubters are not Muslims (perhaps this case can also be constructed in such a way that allows heedless religious believers still to be regarded as Muslims). In my example of Ali who struggled with religious doubt, however, I portrayed him as a conscientious religious doubter. Thus, correct or not, whatever criticisms the FC may have about heedless religious doubters are simply irrelevant to considerations about whether conscientious religious doubters like Ali should still be counted as Muslims. To consider conscientious religious doubt a bit further, might not Ali's doubts be similar to Abraham's, a prophet who is venerated in the Qur'an? In the sixth surah (chapter) of the Islamic Scripture, there is an interesting account of Abraham's intellectual journey towards monotheism that seems to include periods of religious doubt:

This passage has invited a lot of discussion in Qur'anic exegesis. For now, I want to focus on Abraham's religious doubts about who or what exactly God is. Following his rejection of idol worship, Abraham beholds the heavens and wonders whether any of the celestial bodies might be God. On several occasions, he identifies God with a celestial body, presumably also believing that God is, say, the moon and therefore not believing that God (i.e. God as He truly is) exists. Eventually, Abraham concludes that God must be the One who created everything (‘the heavens and the earth’), so God cannot be a planet, the moon, the sun, or any other celestial body. In reading this passage, one has the impression that Abraham had religious doubts of the conscientious kind that eventually reached a resolution in monotheism. Now to the interesting question: was Abraham a Muslim during his period of religious doubt? I am not aware of any Muslim thinker who has charged Abraham with heedless religious doubt or apostasy, even of the transient sort. Perhaps this is because the Qur'an explicitly recognizes Abraham as a Muslim, noting that ‘he was one inclining toward truth, a Muslim [submitting to Allah]. And he was not of the polytheists’ (3:67). It seems that what we have in this story of Abraham is an example of a conscientious religious doubter who was nevertheless a Muslim. What is particularly worth considering is what it was that allowed Abraham to retain his status as a Muslim despite having religious doubt. Some Muslims have answered that it is Abraham's unbroken status as a hanif, a term that the Qur'an uses in 3:67 in describing him. Although there isn't an exact definition of this term that is agreed upon in the Muslim community, many Islamic interpretations take it to mean ‘one who is inclined towards truth’ (Engineer (Reference Engineer2008)).Footnote ⁵

In response to my use of Abraham, the FC might argue as follows. Conscientious religious doubt of the kind demonstrated by Abraham is tolerable because it was temporary. There was a brief period in Abraham's life when he had religious doubts, but these doubts were resolved, and Abraham died believing that God exists. Had Abraham's religious doubts been unresolved, the argument may continue, things would have been different. But how would they have been different in a way that is relevant to considering whether Abraham is a Muslim? Surely, the traits in virtue of which Abraham is still a Muslim during temporary conscientious doubt (e.g. being reflective, sincerely seeking the truth, etc.) can continue to exist in cases where such doubt is prolonged and even unresolved? The FC may grant this point and shift gears, insisting that it takes us away from the real concern about religious doubts: belief. In a Pascalian spirit, it might argue that adopting the propositional attitude of belief towards religiously significant propositions in Islam is very important. One reason for this that the FC cites is that ‘belief’ is necessary for salvation. This appears to be its position in claiming that having religious doubt means that a person is not a ‘believer’. The FC cites, for instance, a hadith (a report of a saying or action attributed to the Prophet Muhammad) in which the Prophet Muhammad states that a person who meets God without harbouring any doubts about the Shahada will enter Paradise.Footnote ⁶

What is it, then, about ‘belief’ that makes it inextricably connected to being a Muslim, as the FC maintains? In a brief but critical line in the fatwa, the FC states that ‘A person who doubts is not a believer, as being firm upon belief is a condition for the validity of belief.’ Unfortunately, there are several important concepts and distinctions (all of which are recognized in the Islamic tradition) that are muddled in this remark. These need to be separated and clarified before we try to understand what exactly the FC is stating. There is, first, the distinction between the Muslim and the mumin that one finds in both the Qur'an and the hadith. A Muslim is one who outwardly conforms to Islamic practice through rituals like prayer, fasting, etc. A mumin, on the other hand, is the person who possesses iman (faith). We see this distinction in Qur'an 49:14:

In this passage, God instructs the Prophet to inform the Bedouin that, despite their claim to have attained iman, they have merely submitted to Islam in a practical sense (aslamna). The distinction between the Muslim and the mumin also appears in the famous ‘Hadith of Gabriel’, where Islam and iman are referred to separately (Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Hadith 1). In this hadith, the Prophet Muhammad explains that Islam involves practically committing oneself to the ‘five pillars’ of the religion, which include things like prayer, fasting, etc. But iman, he says, is to have faith in God's existence, His Revelation, His prophets, etc. And what exactly is iman? I'll answer that shortly. For now, notice how the Muslim-mumin distinction lends itself to a refutation of the FC's claim that a person who doubts is not a ‘believer’ if by ‘believer’ one simply means ‘Muslim’. A person may identify as a Muslim based on some form of practical commitment to Islam (e.g. praying to God), despite not being a mumin (i.e. not having faith). Even if it turns out that having religious doubts is incompatible with having iman, it seems that it is not incompatible with being a Muslim. To be Muslim, all one needs to do is have an outwardly conforming commitment to Islam, which is possible despite having religious doubts.

Is religious doubt incompatible with having iman? To answer this question, we need to know what iman is. The word is derived from the verb amana, which roughly means ‘to be secure in’ or ‘to put trust in’ something. In a religious (Islamic) context, iman is an act that involves trusting in God – His Word, Commandments, etc. (see Izutsu (Reference Izutsu1965) for an extended analysis of iman). Throughout Islamic history, discussions of iman often identified its key feature as tasdiq or assent to the message of Islam. More specifically, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith explains, tasdiq ‘is the inner appropriation and outward implementation of truth. It is the process of making or finding true in human life, in one's own personal spirit and overt behaviour, what God – or Reality – intends for man’ (Smith (Reference Smith1981), 151). Does tasdiq require an explicit understanding, recognition of, and assent to God's existence or Muhammad's Prophethood? Perhaps not. For instance, one might, by adopting a Platonic understanding of Islam (which has prestigious precedent in medieval thinkers like Ibn Sina), think that responding to any good in the world is to respond to God Himself. After all, as the Qur'an tells us, all good comes from God (4:79). One might also apply a Platonic interpretation to Qur'anic verses describing how ‘God only wants to remove from you all that might be loathsome . . . and to purify you to utmost purity’ and how He ‘bestows His blessings upon you, with His angels [echoing Him], so that He might take you out of the depths of darkness into the light’ (Q. 33:33, 43). Reading these verses in a Platonic sense allows one to appreciate the strong resonance they have with the allegory of the cave (Republic 514a–520a). Perhaps the conscientious religious doubter who is sincerely seeking knowledge, motivated by his or her doubts, is on a journey towards ‘Divine Light’, much like Plato's prisoner in the cave who ascends to its exit (interestingly, the Platonic allegory involves a reference to the effect of education on the mind). While discussing Plato's famous allegory, it would be remiss of me not to mention the Prophet Muhammad's journey towards a deeper understanding of religious truth that began in a cave at Mount Hira. A striking feature of the traditional Islamic account that describes this is how, following his first encounter with the angel Gabriel, Muhammad himself had religious doubts about the nature of the experience (Lings (Reference Lings2006), 44–45).

In considering iman, it seems that the philosophical distinction between belief-that and belief-in may apply. Believing that God exists, for instance, simply means that one has a doxastic attitude towards the proposition ‘God exists’. To believe in God, however, is to trust in God, to respond appropriately to Him, etc. A simple example will make the use of this distinction clear in an Islamic context. In Qur'an 2:34, we read about Satan's rejection of God: ‘And behold, We [God] said to the angels: “Bow down to Adam” and they bowed down. Not so Iblis (Satan): he refused and was haughty: He was of those who reject Faith.’ In this Qur'anic verse, God explains that Satan – who clearly believed that God exists (since he knew that God was speaking to him) – did not believe in God. Because of his haughtiness, Satan refused to submit to God's Will and is therefore described by God as one who rejects faith (i.e. he did not have iman).

With the Muslim-mumin and belief-that/in distinctions in hand, let us return to the argument of the FC that ‘A person who doubts is not a believer, as being firm upon belief is a condition for the validity of belief.’ To conclude that a person who doubts is not a ‘believer’, the FC appeals to a single premise that states ‘being firm upon belief’ is a condition for the belief's ‘validity’ (by ‘validity’, I take the FC to mean ‘genuineness’ or something like that). Let's analyse this in some detail. In considering whether a ‘belief’ is genuine, one might be referring to a belief-that or a belief-in. Reference to a ‘condition’ for ‘belief’ can be construed as a reference to either a necessary or sufficient condition. Finally, one can understand ‘being firm upon belief’ as related to either belief-that or belief-in. In the case of belief-that, I will construe ‘being firm upon belief’ to mean psychological certainty, ‘when the subject who has [the belief] is supremely convinced of its truth’ (Reed (Reference Reed and Zalta2022)). In the case of belief-in, I will interpret being ‘firm upon belief’ to mean firm practical commitment, leaving it open what exactly this entails at the level of practice. Given all this, here are some ways in which we can understand the FC's claim (I will use the proposition ‘God exists’ in formulating these claims; one can also formulate them concerning the proposition ‘Muhammad is God's Prophet’):

1. (A) S believes-that God exists if S is psychologically certain (i.e. believes with certainty) that God exists.

2. (B) S believes-that God exists only if S is psychologically certain (i.e. believes with certainty) that God exists.

3. (C) S believes-in God's existence if S is psychologically certain (i.e. believes with certainty) that God exists.

4. (D) S believes-in God's existence only if S is psychologically certain (i.e. believes with certainty) that God exists.

5. (E) S believes-in God's existence if S is firmly practically committed to acting on God's existence.

6. (F) S believes-in God's existence only if S is firmly practically committed to acting on God's existence.

I'll start with (A) and (B) on the list, both of which refer to belief-that. There is no trouble with (A), clearly. If a person believes with psychological certainty that God exists, he or she believes that God exists. What about (B)? With many of our ordinary beliefs-that, such as believing that there is a plane in the sky, believing that I visited a particular restaurant several times in the past, believing that Elvis Presley is dead, etc., it seems strange to say that these beliefs do not count as beliefs unless held with psychological certainty. Surely, many people can and do believe that, for instance, Elvis Presley is dead without being supremely convinced that this is true. For example, some might think that despite their significant confidence in believing Elvis is no longer with us, there is a remote possibility he faked his death to avoid the Mafia and go into hiding. In reply to this point, it might be argued that some beliefs-that are nevertheless held with psychological certainty and that, without the accompanying certainty, there is a real question about whether these beliefs would exist at all. Examples might be my belief that 1 + 1 = 2 or my belief that the whole apple is larger than any particular slice that I remove from it. These examples involve belief in analytic propositions, however, and it isn't clear that ‘God exists’ is an instance of such propositions.Footnote ⁷ But even if it was, notice a serious implication of taking (B) to be true. Wouldn't it follow that a large number of Muslims, perhaps even the majority, do not really believe that God exists as this belief is unaccompanied with psychological certainty for them? This might be reason enough for the FC to reject (B).

Let's now consider the formulations involving beliefs-in. Is (C) correct? No. According to (C), believing with certainty that God exists is enough to believe in God. But this is false, as shown by the example of Satan. For although Satan believes with certainty that God exists, he does not believe in God. As noted earlier, the Qur'an explicitly states that Satan is a rejector of faith. It is interesting to note that, although Satan believes with certainty that God exists, this belief alone fails to override his rejection of faith because of the negative traits he exercises towards God and God's Truth. These traits include, to name a few, being haughty (Q. 2:34), an enemy of humanity (Q. 2:168), a tempter and deceiver (Q. 7:20–22), a betrayer (Q. 14:22), and a dedicated misleader (Q. 38:82). Believing with certainty that God exists is clearly not a sufficient condition for believing in God. Is it nevertheless necessary, as (D) states? As I noted in my remarks regarding (B), there are many Muslims who do not believe with certainty that God exists. This includes Muslims who are fairly confident in their beliefs-that about God, but their confidence does not result in psychological certainty. If (D) is correct, then it follows that these Muslims do not really believe in God. Appealing to (D) in an attempt to argue for the incompatibility between religious doubt and faith would mean that, in addition to Muslims who have religious doubts about God's existence, Muslims who believe that God exists without psychological certainty also do not believe in God. Again, for this reason alone, the FC may want to refrain from using (D) in formulating an objection to religious doubt.

Turning now to the other two senses of beliefs-in, let's look at (E). This seems false in light of the Muslim-mumin distinction. A person who is firmly committed to Islamic practice as a Muslim is not necessarily a mumin, one who believes in God (i.e. has iman). What this shows is that the mere adherence to Islamic practice is insufficient to distinguish between the Muslim who has faith in God and the Muslim who has religious doubts about God's existence. Still, might not firm practical commitment to acting on God's existence nevertheless be necessary for iman, as (F) states? Here, there are some complications. What precisely does a ‘firm practical commitment’ to acting on God's existence consist of? Does it perhaps involve consistently engaging in all the required rituals of Islam, such as prayer, fasting, etc.? If so, (F) will imply that many Muslims, who do regard themselves as believing in God and as being firmly committed to acting on God's existence, do not really believe in God if they are not consistently engaged in all the required rituals of Islam. As with (B) and (D), the worry with (F) is that it may be too restrictive, excluding from the domain of iman not just Muslims with religious doubts who may not have a firm practical commitment to acting on God's existence but many other Muslims as well. But why think that a Muslim who has religious doubts about the existence of God can't in some sense have iman involving firm practical commitment to acting on God's existence? A Muslim who doubts that God exists may nonetheless be moved to such a commitment because Islam remains a ‘live hypothesis’ for him or her, as I noted earlier. Such a Muslim may have a favourable ‘willing nature’ towards Islam that motivates and animates a pragmatic commitment to the faith of the sort described by Richard Swinburne:

To be clear, I am not saying that all or even most Muslims with religious doubt will firmly commit to religious practice in this manner. But, as long as it is possible, (F) won't pose an in-principle problem for Muslims who have religious doubts.Footnote ⁸

So, there are several different ways of understanding and criticizing the FC's position that ‘A person who doubts is not a believer, as being firm upon belief is a condition for the validity of belief.’ I will now offer an elaboration of this position using the distinctions that appear in (A)–(F) above, drawing mainly from (B), (D), and (F). I suspect that the FC has something like the following view in mind in objecting to religious doubt in an Islamic context:

This sort of view is, in Islamic literature, at the heart of most if not all objections to religious doubts. Claiming that one has religious doubts about God's existence or Muhammad's Prophethood is either due to culpable denial or a result of some sort of sinfulness that smothers the recognition in one's mind of the impeccable epistemic credentials of these tenets of Islam. Regarding God's existence, for instance, Ayatullah Abdul Husayn Dastaghaib says this:

And, on the topic of knowing whether Muhammad is truly God's Prophet, Shaykh ‘Abdul Rahman ‘Abdul Khaliq offers these remarks:

Many similar pronouncements on knowledge of God and Muhammad's Prophethood can easily be found in Islamic writings.Footnote ⁹ The central idea behind these pronouncements is that iman involves a positive response to epistemic certainty regarding fundamental Islamic doctrine. In the opinion of one of the ‘founding fathers’ of Sunni Orthodoxy, Abu Al-Hasan Al-Ash'ari, ‘authentic religious assent is fundamentally a cognitive judgement which [is] founded in knowledge and must be held with indefectible certitude’ (Frank (Reference Frank1989), 37). I will call this view, which says that the cognitive component of Islamic faith comes from universal epistemic certainty regarding God's existence and (for those who are appropriately informed about him) Muhammad's Prophethood, the Epistemic Certainty of Islam (ECI) Thesis.

Now, if the ECI Thesis is true, then there does seem to be something problematic in stating that one (Muslim or not) has religious doubts about Islam. Since everyone knows (and therefore believes) that God exists, why claim that one has doubts about this? Wouldn't that be like saying one has doubts about the reality of sunshine? If one did say this and wanted to be taken seriously, we would think that such a person is jesting, being vexatious, or is perhaps, unfortunately, suffering from some sort of cognitive impairment. Given that we all have certain knowledge of God's existence and Muhammad's Prophethood, as the ECI Thesis states, the right thing to do is to believe in Islam (i.e. have iman) and to do so with firm practical commitment. Failing to do this can happen only if one is culpably refusing to appropriate knowledge of Islamic truth in one's life. The Qur'an has a term for this, kufr, an antonym for iman that Wilfred Cantwell Smith explains as follows:

The person guilty of kufr, the kafir (usually translated as ‘infidel’) is ‘that cantankerous ingrate who rejects’ God's Truth (ibid., 126). By contrast, the mu'min is ‘that blessed one who, by divine grace, recognizes the situation as it is and commits himself to acting accordingly’ (ibid.). Iman, as incorporated into the ECI Thesis, goes hand in hand with epistemic certainty, as does kufr. Someone who claims to have religious doubts about God's existence and/or Muhammad's Prophethood is culpable. There is no such thing as conscientious religious doubt, or, at the very least, claims about conscientious religious doubt are deeply suspect. Finally, by an extension of the preceding point, one who wavers in practical commitment to Islam claiming that he or she has religious doubts is blameworthy for this as well.

Is the ECI Thesis true? Muslims who affirm it typically try to defend the thesis by proffering, in the context of Islamic apologetics, what they hold to be good arguments for the existence of God and the Prophethood of Muhammad. Occasionally, a non-evidential epistemic basis is cited as well: our innate disposition (fitrah) towards Islam that was engineered by God Himself. As a result of this disposition, it is sometimes claimed that arguments for God's existence and Muhammad's Prophethood, while welcome, are not required for Islamic belief to constitute knowledge (e.g. Tzortzis (Reference Tzortzis2019), 84–95). Be that as it may, Muslim apologists who attempt to defend the ECI Thesis do so by and large by resorting to arguments. I cannot evaluate here the usual arguments given to defend the ECI Thesis, so will refer the reader elsewhere to where I have done so (Aijaz (Reference Aijaz2014)). For now, let me offer a few observations regarding Islamic apologetics and the ECI Thesis.

Despite their occasional proclamations that the arguments usually found in Islamic apologetics ought to convince any sincere rational person, Muslim apologists frequently admit that the methodological framework these arguments arise in is fides quaerens intellectum; that is, apologetic arguments stem from an antecedent commitment to the truth of Islam. Thus, Hatem al-Haj, in his discussion of the principles and guidelines of Islamic apologetics, understands the enterprise to be ‘a rational explication of the faith [that] can often facilitate the path to certainty and conviction for many’ (Al-Haj (Reference Al-Haj2020); emphasis mine). In these remarks, al-Haj also gestures towards another important function of apologetic arguments. These arguments are utilized by individuals interested in defending the religion, often with the goals of making it rationally appealing to non-Muslims and strengthening the faith commitment of Muslims (indeed, as the reader may be aware, the word ‘apologetics’ is derived from the Greek word apologia, which roughly means ‘defence’). Given these features of Islamic apologetics, there is a real question about whether its norms of inquiry and justification are appropriate for or even relevant to those who have religious doubts about Islam. The religious doubter, as I have understood him or her throughout my discussion thus far, is someone interested in pursuing, much like the philosopher of religion, a ‘second-order activity focused on the fundamental issues of a given religion’ (Stewart (Reference Stewart1980), 6). A ‘second-order’ investigation into the epistemic credentials of Islamic doctrine will be open to evidence that supports or goes against the truth and reasonableness of, say, God's existence and/or Muhammad's Prophethood. This, however, is not the case with Islamic apologetics, which has an asymmetrical emphasis on support only. Perhaps the best contemporary illustration of this limiting feature of Islamic apologetics can be found in the so-called ‘scientific miracles’ argument, according to which we can be certain that the Qur'an is a genuine revelation from God because it contains many passages that are confirmed by the findings of modern science. In reading some of the apologetic works where this argument is found, one initially gets the impression that the apologist using it is allowing the contents of the Qur'an to be verified by modern science (e.g. Ibrahim (Reference Ibrahim1997)). But this doesn't seem to be the case, as is made clear when the same apologist will change his or her tune upon being confronted with Qur'anic passages that appear inconsistent with modern scientific findings. When this happens, the usual response is that the contents of the Qur'an are not subject to evaluation using modern scientific criteria. Commenting on this tendency of apologists to vacillate when using this particular argument, Shabbir Akhtar makes an astute observation and raises an important question:

Let's think about this problem as it relates to claims about the truth of the ECI Thesis within the parameters of Islamic apologetics. I propose reflecting on it using the following analogy. Suppose that Fatima is charged with a serious crime and the matter has now reached court. Suppose further that, instead of following norms and procedures that are currently part of our criminal justice system, the prosecuting side (who have made no secret of the fact that they are absolutely convinced Fatima did it) is given free rein to decide what they would like the norms and procedures to be before presenting their case at trial. Moreover, they are given the right to change these norms and procedures at any time and under any circumstances once the trial is underway (e.g. if they are presented with evidence that seems to go against their position). No such privileges are granted to the defence, who must abide by the norms and procedures decided upon by the prosecution. In this scenario, how seriously would the prosecution's case for thinking that Fatima is absolutely guilty be taken by the defence, jury members, or anyone else who had doubts about it? Of course, this is a laughable example, but the problem that it illustrates is a real one. In the dialectical context involving someone who seriously questions the truth of the ECI Thesis, such as one who has religious doubts about God's existence and/or Muhammad's Prophethood, the norms of inquiry and justification for considering its truth cannot legitimately be determined by consulting the preferences of Muslim apologists only.

For those who are not already convinced that the ECI Thesis is true, what dialectical context would be proper in which to engage with arguments relevant to a consideration of its truth, if not the one provided by Islamic apologetics? I submit that a suitable context is provided by philosophy of religion, which has norms for inquiry and justification that are significantly better (although not perfect, of course) than those of apologetics. To point out one significant difference, philosophers of religion admit as relevant and appropriate evidence that confirms or disconfirms the truth of religious claims. This suggests that they are not endorsing an approach that is biased in favour of religion, at least not as biased as the apologists' method of permitting only positive evidence to count in a consideration of religious truth. In the main, philosophers of religion who endorse ‘evidentialism’, according to which (roughly) religious belief is rational to hold only if there is sufficient evidence for it, operate within what John Bishop calls our ‘rational empiricist evidential practice’ (Bishop (Reference Bishop2007), 67). Discussing some of the norms that this practice involves, Bishop mentions one that is salient for the present discussion. Under this practice, he says,

As far as I am aware, no contemporary Muslim philosopher of religion has tried to defend the ECI Thesis from a genuine ‘second-order’ perspective of Islam that operates within our rational empiricist evidential practice. Such attempts have been made, however, by some contemporary Christian philosophers of religion, who assert that epistemic certainty or something very close to it is defensible in relation to Christian belief. Richard Swinburne, for example, has argued that the public evidence makes it extremely likely (approximately 97% probable) that God became incarnate in Jesus who rose from the dead (Swinburne (Reference Swinburne2003), 214). As many modern philosophers of religion are aware, Swinburne's arguments are highly controversial. One issue with them concerns whether the various probability assignments that are critical for his arguments to succeed are truly objective or are merely ‘describing Swinburne's own subjective probabilities or degrees of belief’ (Otte (Reference Otte2003)). Similar concerns have been raised about arguments offered by other Christian philosophers who have attempted to defend epistemic certainty or high probability concerning Christian belief. Using the Christian religion as an analogue for Islam, which is appropriate if only in virtue of the shared commitment to theism and the historical circumstances surrounding prophetic activity and revelation, one can say that the prospects for defending the ECI Thesis via our rational empiricist evidential practice do not look good.Footnote ¹⁰

Considering all this, I don't think that one can justifiably use the ECI Thesis as a basis for formulating objections to religious doubts in an Islamic context. No doubt, there are other sorts of objections that one might deploy in an effort to show why religious doubts are incongruous or incompatible with Islamic faith and commitment. But whatever these objections may be, they do not appear in the fatwa from the FC that I have examined in my discussion. As far as this fatwa is concerned, as I trust I have shown, it does not contain anything that constitutes a viable objection to religious doubts, and, ipso facto, the stance of the Sceptical Muslim.