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Transcript of The Rational: Episode 01- Religion And Rationality

All praise is due to Allah & may His peace & blessings be upon our
beloved Prophet Mohammed SAW.
Brother & sisters in Islam, brothers & sisters who may not be of the
Muslim faith, all brothers & sisters in humanity, we would like to begin by
greeting you with the Islamic universal greeting Assalamualaikum
warahmatullah wabarakatuh, may the peace & blessings of God be upon
you.
There has been a dichotomy between faith and reason; a common
misconception that is within the religious community where it is said that
if you believe you need not to look for any intellectual conviction in your
belief.
In fact some even say that challenge for the religious community is to
believe without making sense to it. Indeed that is not what the earlier
messengers taught, that is definitely not the teachings of Islam.
So in this series of episodes we will discuss the relationship between faith
and reason and we promise you that this is a program where you will be
intellectually challenged, stimulated, tickled and invited to think; and for
this we have invited an extremely well qualified scholar for this session of
the program.
A well known scholar as well as a student and a teacher of western
philosophy, originally from Sudan, he has taught in many different places
including Saudi Arabia, the University of Khartoum, the Islamic Institute
of Arabic and Islamic Sciences in Virginia, the author of many books and
articles, he has travelled all over the world.
Here like I said, it is an invitation where you are really about to enjoy an
intellectually stimulated program. It is such an honour and a privilege to
have with us Dr. Jafar Sheikh Idris.
Jaafar S. Idris: Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabaraktuh
Yassir Fazaga: Walaikum assalam. Dr Jafar, it is such an honor to have
you with us and I am very enthusiastic and extremely happy and looking
forward to having spent this time with you and I was wondering if we can

begin by commenting on this idea that the religious community needs not
to be intellectually convinced about their beliefs.
JSI: Infact it is not only the religious community, there is what you
described as a common misconception; it includes even non-religious
people. In fact some people say that they do not accept religion because
religion is not something rational and they describe themselves as being
rational and some of them think that it is only the soft headed people who
will accept religion. But in fact religion, a true religion must be rational.
Why should a religion be rational? Because reason is the only means by
which we decide whether a certain claim is right or wrong.
In our daily life, if someone makes a claim about anything relating say to
some of the sciences or social sciences or even in everyday life if someone
makes a claim we dont immediately accept his claim and we will not be
convinced if he says this is something that you HAVE to believe in or there
is a mystery in this, we dont accept this.
Usually we ask for evidence and if this is so then it should apply to
religion also. And in fact wise people dont accept the claim of someone
who calls himself a prophet just because he comes and tells them I am
braham, I am sent from God, I am Jesus, I am Moses; they must have
asked them for evidence to show that they are what they claim, so this is
the reason why (a true) religion must be rational.
YF: If thats the case, then it seems like the religious community has
compromised on this topic. Any particular reason as to why that
happened?
JSI: One reason is that some religions are really irrational. They make
claims that are contradictory to reason and they try to justify this by saying
that Oh there is a difference between reason and religion, science and
religion. They are two different realms. These are only ways of
rationalizing their irrational belief but unfortunately some people who
believe in rational religions like Islam, especially nowadays, have been
influenced by this kind of propaganda against religion.
YF: If I may be the devils advocate, if I can use this word! What is wrong
with saying Isnt it the essence of religion to show absolute opinions,
unconditional opinions, about God and whether it makes sense to me or
not, that really does not matter. What I need is to just submit.

JSI: Thats only after why did you become religious in the first place.
Suppose someone is an atheist. Why should he accept the religious claim
that there is a God? Or if he believes in God, why he should accept the
claim that Mohammed SAW is the Prophet of God? Even people at the
time of Prophet Mohammed said so and even at the time of any other
prophet. Why did they accept them? They must have asked them for
evidence. If you are a wise person you dont just accept the claim of
someone who tells you something. In fact people and I am not saying this
always happens but people can be very irrational and I think this is the
problem now with religion whether Islamic religion or any other religion
e.g. in Islamic religion there are many people now who follow some
sheikhs or so and they follow them blindly they dont use their reason. But
a wise person will not do something like this!
YF: Im thinking now of the other extreme then. If we say that our
acceptance of any specific belief must be based on reason then are we
saying that reason is the final judge? How far do we take this?
JSI: I think for a religion to be rational, it must fulfill certain conditions
and these are similar to what we demand of scientific theories. I think the
same should apply to religion.
First, it must not tell us something contradictory, it should not make a
statement and then contradict that statement. This is one condition in itself
for any theory or religion to be rational.
Secondly, when we talk about Quran, I will show that in fact the Quran
made this criterion for deciding whether a book is from god or not. If there
are contradictory statements in a book, then we say that it cant be from
God.
Thirdly, it should not make factual mistakes and you know now people
especially in US, who write about some religions, they enumerate the
places where their books made factual mistakes, they point out statements
that have been proven to be false by science and of course also it should
not condone or invite people to immoral acts. These are criterions which
people use in their everyday life. All people are born with a moral sense so
they dont accept the condoning of immoralities.
The fourth condition is that religion must be able to support its basic
claims. If someone comes and says hes a prophet, then he must give us

reason to support it because this is a basic claim and he must be able to


support his basic claims with evidence. This need not apply to secondary
claims i.e. claims that are based on this. If he gives you evidence that hes
a prophet and this is a book from God and then he says that God said so
and so, then thats evidence. You dont need a direct evidence for every
detail in religion

YF: But the basic claim you say, must be supported by evidence?

JSI: Yes and this applies by the way, to science also. If for example,
someone who has never studied any geometry asks you to give a direct
proof by Pythagoras theorem, you say no! You have to know first what is
an angle, what is a line etc, and then on that I can build my answer.
YF: So creating the ground is important?
JSI: Yes, these are the pre-requisites on which reason is based.
YF: I get the impression that you are saying that the first evidence must be
a rational evidence. It must be intellectually accepted in order to take it
any further from there?
JSI: Yes, but I want this intellectually accepted to be taken in a broad
sense, lets say there must be evidence and evidence can be pure reason
and it can be something material e.g. a miracle is an evidence.
YF: So in the form of a miracle which would be defined as a violation of
natural law, as something usually not done?
JSI: We dont like to say violation of natural law because Muslim scholars
dont like to call it violation thats why they call it , more towards
deviation or exception to natural law but sometimes even miracles can
be explained in another law that we dont know!
YF: You mean through that which is not available to us?
JSI: Yes, hence its not violation of sunnan of Allah because that is what
we now call natural laws, the way Allah makes things happen.

YF: Sheikh, were talking about this idea of revealed religion that it must
be a rational religion and many have argued that Quran is a book that
literally invites people to think. Any examples?
JSI: I would in fact like to say that this does not apply only to the Quran.
Any religion that is a true revelation from God must be rational and I have
reasons for saying this.
First it is God who endowed us with reason. He SWT knows how we
behave rationally so it is irrelevant that He would say something that is
incompatible with the reason which He endowed us.
Secondly it is God Who created the empirical world so He would not
create the world in one way, then tell it to us in another way. He would not
contradict Himself so any mistake, factual one in a book is a proof that at
least that statement (not the whole book) cannot be from God because God
does not contradict Himself.
These are the main reasons and this applies also to morality as it is God
Who endowed us with moral sense and religion is based on this. I usually
ask my students what is the first verse in the Quran. They say
Read in the name of your Lord. Now why should I read in His name?
Because He Created. Now this is a moral act. If someone has no
moral sense at all, he would say whats the big deal? Why should I read in
His name so religion is based on whatever God endowed people within
their nature. Thats why its called the religion of fitrah, the religion of
original good human nature. That includes reason and moral sense and
acceptance of empirical facts as well.
YF: Sheikh, I would like you back to the statement that you said when I
said that the Quran is a book that invites people to think. You commented
and said not only the Quran, but even the previously revealed religions
were along these lines.
JSI: Yes I did.
YF: That might come as a surprise to many Muslims and many brothers
and sisters who may not be of the Muslim faith.

JSI: I think my argument in itself is a rational argument. I repeat: If the


religion is from God who endowed us with reason, He would not reveal a
religion that contradicts with that reason!
In fact some of the arguments that we use as Muslims are the arguments
that the Quran says were expressed by earlier prophets and the Quran
praises people who have good valid arguments. This is considered to be
one of the biggest blessings. But then we cannot go into the details of
those religions for a simple reason that we dont have their texts in front of
us now. The only religion we can refer to now is the Islamic religion and
through it we can prove that those religions were rational as Islam tells us
about those religions so if we prove that Islam is a rational & authentic
religion, then this will be our primary source for previous religions and I
think some people, for many reasons might say, why the Islamic religion?
Firstly, you know some non-Muslim scholars of comparative religion
describe the Prophet SAW as being the only historical prophet meaning
that there is historical proof that this man who called himself Mohammed
SAW existed! There is no historical proof other than the Quran to show the
existence of other prophets, let alone their books! Nowadays their
scholars, even very religious Christians would not say that every word of
Bible is the word of God because they know the history of Bible and the
translations it underwent so Jesus for them is not a historical proof. There
is no evidence that there is any book other than the Quran that a prophet
claimed was revealed to him. That much is accepted even by nonMuslims. As I said, this Quran gives us information about earlier prophets
so we can depend on it while talking about them. The Prophet SAW said
that he was sent to humanity at large. In fact he has been described in the
Quran as being a mercy to the world. No prophet before him claimed to be
a universal prophet. So these are some of the reasons why we can use the
religion of Islam to prove that all revealed religions were rational.
YF: Like when they were revealed in their original form to their
messengers be it Torah to Moses & Gospel to Jesus?
JSI: Yes.
YF: Going back to the idea of not only the Quran, now that we stand
corrected, so not only Quran is a book that invites people to think but all
revealed religion would give an invitation to do that, since God has
endowed us with this faculty of reason and that in turn was given to us for

a reason. One thing that strikes me was the richness of the Quran in the
different words that it uses to invite people to think and Im looking into
one of the articles that youve written in Arabic where there was an
attempt to gather all these words and it is very vast and Im not sure
whether we do what the Quran says but at least the invitation is really out
there.
JSI: Yes, I remember some of the words. Let us enumerate them and
translate them into English. e.g. it says this book is for people who are
which has many meanings like those who understand, who dont
want to contradict themselves; it is for people who are , those who
reflect. It invites people to those who reflect & look for the truth. It
does not right way tell them to just accept. Allah SAW says
, Allah will see the desire for truth in your heart & then
He will guide you. There are many other verse which express the same
thing but what I have come to think about lately, is finding myself asking
why does the Quran use commercial language? There is commerce ,
profit , loss , saving, wage . Do you know why? People are
mostly rational when they come to business as in a person might not be
rational at all when it comes to religion etc but when it comes to business
he becomes very rational! So its like the Quran is saying be rational when
it comes to religion like you are when it comes to business.
YF: Now thats what I call a rational argument!
With this we would come to conclusion of this part of our episode. Were
glad that you joined us and inshaAllah until we see you next time, my
greeting as well as the greetings of Dr Idris who is our guest for this
program; we say Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Credit: Transcribed by Defiance Team. http://thedefiance.co/therational-one/

Transcript of The Rational 2: Quran And Rationality

Yassir Fazaga: Last time we spoke we were talking about not only the
Quran but even previous scriptures that were sent down by Allah stating
that they were not only rational but also inviting to this idea of us being
endowed with the faculty of intellect so as to put it to use. And the Quran
not only alludes to this but directly emphasizes to this idea in different
ways and forms and we are wondering if we can shed some light on this
Quranic approach.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: I think we emphasized the fact that Quran and all
the revealed religions address people as rational. The Quran, as if its
telling people, that nothing more is being asked of you other than abiding
by this rational criteria that you use in your daily life. We will use the same
criteria to invite you to the truth so we are not telling you something
mysterious or something that you dont understand. I can enumerate some
of these. I already said how people can get very rational when it comes to
business dealings. Now we can go into details of characteristics of rational
people.
First they like to understand, they dont just follow, and this
understanding is mentioned in the Quran.
They dont like contradictions.
They dont like their deeds to contradict their words.
The Quran says do you invite people to do good and you forget yourself,
dont you understand? When the Quran asks a rhetorical question, this
means that the matter is already understood. The Quran is not telling
people that their deeds should not contradict their words. The Quran is
saying that this is a bad thing, and you know that, so why are you still
doing it.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, people might think this to be more of a moral
argument than an intellectual one.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Some people especially in the west now
understand intellect in a narrow sense. For rational people, moral values
are part of their rationality. A rational person would not say I dont care if a

person lies or not. He would not say I dont care whether a person is
honest or not. I am not talking about people who are intellectuals or
holders of PhD degrees or people who are educated. I am just mentioning
how genuinely rational people behave.
Yassir Fazaga: So within that circle of rationality, are not only the
intellectual arguments, but based on that we get our moral understanding?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes morality is part of being rational. In addition
rational people use aesthetic values. No one prefers ugly to the beautiful.
This is also one of the criteria that the Quran uses. In fact Allah is
described as being beautiful. His names are beautiful. The Quran is in a
beautiful language and as the prophet saw said . Allah
is beautiful and he loves beauty. So the Quran uses this because ordinary
people use this. That applies to appearances and it also applies to things
like fragrances. No one prefers nasty things to things that smell nice.
Rational people also prefer what is more useful to what is less useful.
Some people think this has nothing to do with religion.
But as we said last time the Quran uses business terminology and of course
when people are more rational they prefer what is more profitable even in
worldly sense. When we come inshAllah to talk about morality, we will
see that the Quran uses the word i.e. it is useful for you to be moral.
So now let me emphasize first that I am talking about all revealed
religions, they take the human persona as a whole as this is how God
created us. There is no dichotomy between reason morality aesthetic
values. This is how the human person is made and how he believes. A
rational person also will make a sacrifice of something present for
something more useful in the future. This is what businessmen do for a
bigger gain in the future and the Quran uses the same word for the gain in
the hereafter. You might gain by telling a lies in this world, the Quran says
you might benefit by doing so in your business dealings in this world but
compare it with the benefit to come.
Also rational people think about the wisdom behind things. Why is this so?
Why do we do this? The Quran uses the same criteria.

Yassir Fazaga: I think this is what you spoke about earlier on i.e. the idea
of tadabbur: to ponder, the idea of going beyond the obvious to see what is
the reality behind whatever is going on.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes! We must emphasize again that all rational
people abide by rationality all the time especially if doing so serves their
interest. And this is what the Quran is asking people to be i.e. to apply this
rational criterion to distinguish between false and true religion.
Yassir Fazaga: So how do we describe a person who is supposedly
rational some times, however at other times they are not. What are they
called when they are not being rational?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: They should be called irrational then! One
cannot be called rational even he if behaves rationally partly, just like a
liar. I once said in a lecture, even the biggest liar tells the truth most of the
time. He doesnt lose anything by saying for example: this is a piece of
paper or there are matches or the light is on etc, when all this is right in
front of him!
But we still call him a liar. Again we call him or her irrational in spite of
the fact that on many occasions the person behaves rationally.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh I am wondering with all these phrases that are
mentioned in the Quran with regard to people who are rational and use
intellect, are there certain areas where intellect does not really help
anymore? Or using it does not remain a useful tool for us?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: I have read the Quran several times and the
hadith literature, looking for what people claim.
You find now that there are people who are very good Muslims but they
have a problem with reason or aql and they call the people who do not
abide the Sunnah of the prophet SAW or who interpret the Quran
in their own way, so I once wrote an article saying they are no aqlaniyeen,
as they are not rational people and when you call them aqlaniyeen, you are
praising them! There is nothing in the Quran or in hadith that states that
someone deviated because of using reason.

Yassir Fazaga: Thats a very impressive statement!


Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: The Quran equates the two in a verse i.e. being
rational with having faith. An irrational person cannot have faith and a
truly faithful person must be rational
. Those are the people who Allah guided and those are the ones
who are people of reason/intellect hence there is no contradiction at all
in this matter in the Quran or Sunnah. In fact faith must be based on
knowledge. Contrary to what people say now, I believe so but I am not
sure. But the Quran insists faith to be based on knowledge.
Yassir Fazaga: Knowledge that would lead to certainty?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes so that you dont believe in something of
which you have no knowledge. Like some people in Arabic say
I believe so but I am not sure. Thats a wrong statement if you
are rational you must base your faith or belief on knowledge.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, I think thats what was emphasized when we
spoke for the first time about this idea and I think you just reinforced it
again i.e. if you are a believer you must be a rational person and if you are
irrational you cannot be faithful.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes but when we say believer, I dont want the
listeners to understand that anyone who calls himself a Muslim is the most
rational person in the world.
Yassir Fazaga: We have our share of irrational Muslims!
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: It depends on the degree of faith you have, the
degree of knowledge of your religion you have. The more knowledgeable
you are about your religion, the more rational you are.
Being knowledgeable according to the Quranic conditions is that you
understand what you read, you think about it. So by following the Quranic
advice of reflecting, pondering and understanding, your ability to reason
increases.

So I dont want people to think that someone just by calling himself a


Muslim can be rational by default because I know some people who are
Muslims and I have no doubt about their honestly but most of the time
they are not rational and in fact they think this is the way it should be for a
Muslim.
Someone once told me that he puts Quran and Sunnah of Prophet SAW
before empirical facts. I said to him now you are creating a problem where
in fact there is no problem.
And then he gave me an example that I think mentioned in one of my
books too, the example of a man whom the Prophet SAW advised to take
honey and the honey made his condition worse. Now this man took this as
a proof that empirical fact is not important, I said suppose the man drank
honey 50 times and every time his condition becomes worse, he will come
to the Prophet PBUH and say what you told me is not the truth. And how
do we distinguish between falsehood and truth?
It is by seeing whether statement corresponds to the facts and if it does not
we as rational people say this is false. If someone calls a white piece of
paper black, we say this statement is false and hes not telling the truth so
there can be nothing like this in any truly revealed religion from God.
Yassir Fazaga: Interestingly Sheikh you are saying that the closer one is
in knowledge as far as it concerns the religion that was revealed by God
the more rational supposedly one becomes. People usually look to
becoming more spiritual, more undoing with reason, thinking you are
more devout, looking for tranquility etc.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Again. There is no dichotomy between these. I
know that people think if you are religious you are emotional, spiritual etc
and spirituality is different from being rational but all of this goes together.
And all these are qualities of the soul anyways, not qualities of the body.
Even the brain as a material thing is used by the soul.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, is there an area where intellect is not be used or
intellect does not come in as a handy tool to gain more information?

Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Intellect as something abstract in the mind,


does not help you to discover facts whether they are worldly or religious.
For instance, if you close your eyes and sleep you cannot talk about
astronomy and tell that the distance between the moon and the sun is such
and such.
Your intellect works with the data that comes through the senses and thats
why the Quran says that God brought you out of the wombs of your
mother you came out knowing nothing. Then he endowed you with
hearing, sight and mind, so without the senses the intellect cannot do
much.
Yassir Fazaga: So knowledge is like data that is later on processed by the
intellect through which we are able to comprehend.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: This applies to both worldly and religious
knowledge. I am not saying that a faithful person is rational in the sense
that he can close his eyes and lie in his bed and say that I think Allah must
be so and so. He has to have knowledge.
You remember the hadith ; someone who has very good
senses, he hears, he understands what hes heard and he conveys is to
someone else, and that someone else benefits more than the deliverer of
the message.
Thats the distinction between people; knowledge is not just about the
amount of knowledge. It is well known that there were many people who
knew more than the sunnah of the Prophet PBUH than Abu Hanifah. But
with the lesser knowledge of the sunnah he became a greater alim as
compared to those who had more knowledge of ahadith of the Prophet
SAW. Imam Ahmed used to say The
understanding of hadith is more important than committing the letters to
memory.
I think theres another point that I want to mention here. Because Islam
addresses people as rational beings, it has bridges with people. I think I
talked about it at a conference in India where they asked me to build a
bridge between Islam and one of the Asian religions and I said we dont

need to build bridges because the bridges are already there. If these are
rational folks, then we have a bridge already.
But then you can also add that there are special bridges which exist
between us and people who are not only rational but who also accept some
of the Islamic truths, e.g. a person who is rational and who also believes in
the existence of the Creator, a person who is rational who not only believes
in the existence of the Creator but also is of the view that the Creator
should be worshipped, who believes in Prophets like Jesus was a prophet,
Abraham was a prophet and so on. Hence we find many arguments in the
Quran which are based on this premise; a verse of the Quran

you cannot believe in Moses as a Prophet and then say God never
sent a book. The Quran tells us that if so and so is a Prophet then you
should not attribute immoral things to him because the Prophet cannot be
involved in any such matter.
Yassir Fazaga: The deeper we are getting into this, the more exciting it is
getting and it seems as the time is passing, I am getting deeper into this.
Hoping that well see you next time. On behalf of myself and Sheikh Jafar,
Id like to say thank you and Assalamu alaikum warahmatullah
wabarakatuh!
Credit: Transcribed by Defiance Team. http://thedefiance.co/therational-one

Transcript of Episode 03: Existence Of Creator and Human Nature


Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, Last time you mentioned an extremely important
point i.e. as a religious person or all revealed religions including Islam ,

rationality is innate in them and as a religious person you are expected as


somebody who is not jeopardizing or compromising their intellect in the
beliefs they have at any particular point in time.
I am reminded of a story where a philosopher sat with a group of farmers
and he wanted to provoke them so he said to a very simple man amongst
them how do you know, if somebody asks you, does God exist? What
would you tell them? And the farmer said I would invite them to my
garden and I would say come and find him there.
The philosopher was very offended by this answer and he said what if they
come to your farm or garden and tell you they did not find Him what
would you say then and the farmer said well I would tell them to look
closer! I am not sure if that was a good answer. It was definitely a
simplistic one but it seems that believers at this point are at defensive
where they would actually have to give a proof that God does exist, is this
something that Islam or previously revealed religions have addressed?
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: Of course and this will hopefully be our
discussion tonight i.e. what is the evidence for the existence of the Creator
and by the way if the farmer was intellectual to some extent, he would
have said what some thinkers have said i.e. if you dont know how to
express yourself that doesnt mean that you dont think.
These are two different things, we can say that the farmer had an argument
there, but it is not the kind of argument, given the way it was expressed,
that could convince the philosopher.
Yassir Fazaga: Does that mean that the argument or the issue here is that
the people of faith are not able to eloquently rely their beliefs?
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: I wouldnt say people of faith cant, as this
includes some Muslim philosophers and I hope I am one of them! (laughs)
So of course we argue e.g. now since I studied western philosophy, I can
argue with westerners because I can use their terminology, its a matter of
knowing the language only.

Yassir Fazaga: Isnt the question itself ironic that we would actually
have to prove that God exists and not them?
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: Yes inshaAllah and well show that this should
not be the case when we come to the Quranic arguments. We should not
fall into this trap because the natural thing is that there is a Creator. The
burden of proof is on the person who denies the existence of the Creator!
Yassir Fazaga: Ladies & gentlemen, I bet you are in for a treat and you
are invited to be part of this. Well in that case I think we would have to ask
what are the fundamentals upon which such a belief is based?
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: As we said earlier, there should be rational
arguments supporting the fundamentals of religion. In fact you can
broaden this and say anyone who invites us to believe in an ideology
whether it is marxism, democracy, dictatorship or whatever
Yassir Fazaga: Usually were not invited to dictatorship, its just imposed!
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: (smiles) No! Some people actually defend it! So
such a person must give us reasons for the fundamentals of his ideology
e.g. democracy is the rule of the people. Why should the people rule? One
can ask!
Theoreticians of democracy try to answer this question because if you
dont give me good reasons why democracy is better than dictatorship,
then why do you expect me to agree with you!
So were saying that the fundamentals of the religion must be rationally
supported. There must be evidence for the truth of fundamentals of
religion and we said in the last episode that secondary matters that are
based on this need not have direct proof for them but I forgot to mention
that sometimes you can have proof for some of the secondary things so
now you know that there is a new kind of science called scientific miracles
of the Quran.
These depend on some of what I call secondary issues like the
development of the embryo. Most Muslims believed in this because they
believe in Quran because this is what God has said. Now we have

evidence that this development of embryo described in the Quran could


not have been known by any human means at that time because the means
by which this was discovered are new and it is because of this that some
people in fact accepted Islam. I even know some of them, so even some of
the secondary things are backed by proof. And this is not necessary by the
way, but now you know even some of the secondary things can have direct
evidence.
Yassir Fazaga: And I think what I am understanding is that the original
claim itself needs not to be of a miraculous nature but it must have some
sort of rational reasoning?
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: Yes! Now before we come to the fundamentals
that include the existence of God, why God should be worshipped, the
truth and authenticity of the Prophet, the fact that the Quran is the word of
God, the fact that there is life after death and so on. For all these Quran
and Sunnah give us evidence.
So when a Prophet comes he doesnt start with proving the existence of
God because majority of human beings even today believe in the existence
of the Creator, so when a Prophet comes, he invites them to worship the
Creator in whose existence they already believe in.
They might attribute some things to the Creator, meaning their knowledge
of the Creator may not be perfect but people all over the word believe in
the core of this that there is a Creator. And even when they worship some
idols they know the difference between the idol they worship and the God
that is in Heaven. I know some people in Africa who are like this so the
fact that there is a Creator is absolute.
But someone might say I am one of the minority and I dont believe in the
existence of the Creator, now what would the religion say here. It would
not say that no we are not dealing with people like you!
Yassir Fazaga: So when a Prophet comes, the assumption is that people
already believe in God?

Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: Yes, but there is a minority who say no we dont
believe in God and so the Quran gives them evidence for the existence of
the Creator. What is the evidence?
I am relying quite a bit on answering some of these questions based on Ibn
Taimiyah Rahimuhullahs thought. I happened to write a book about what
I call philosophical theology according to Ibn Taimiyah, so inshaAllah we
will rely heavily on what he said as he was very much concerned with this
problem and had to argue a lot with the philosophers of his time so he had
very interesting things to say about this.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, just in case, to accommodate our viewers with
names we use and they might not be familiar with, just briefly who Ibn
Taimiyah would be?
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: I think it is just enough to say to the non muslims
that he was one of our greatest thinkers. He combined good knowledge of
religion i.e. the Quran and sayings of the Prophet with almost every branch
of knowledge that was available at his time. He said something that I
wouldnt have believed in, had he not been the truthful person that he was.
He said he argued with philosophers when he was 14 yrs old. Ibn Taimiyah
says that the real evidence of the existence of Creator is in fact human
nature. But this raises many questions.
Yassir Fazaga: what does he mean by that? Is he saying thats innate in
human nature?
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: There are many things that you would know by
nature e.g. the fundamentals of the principles of logic. No one needs to
teach you that a contradictory statement is a false statement. When you
believe in what you see suppose now I am seeing you and someone asks
me how do you know that Yasir exists? I would say well i am seeing him!
And he says thats not a proof, give me a proof!
Well its like a self evident truth like half is less than whole and so on, but
this raises many questions and he himself tries to answer some of the
questions.

The first question is what kind of knowledge is this. We know that a child
does not have this knowledge as he doesnt even speak. Theres a verse in
the Quran that makes it clear When you come out of the womb of your
mother, you come out knowing nothing and then he endowed you with
sight, hearing and mind but in the Quran itself theres another verse that
this religion is of human nature. A famous hadith of the prophet says every
child is born on fitrah which means original good human nature. The
nature that Allah put in the heart of every human being at the time of
creation. Every bad thing is a deviation from this human nature.
Let us now use the Arabic word fitrah further in our conversation. The
listeners should remember there is no equivalent to this world in English.
Even in Arabic people sometimes tend to misuse it, but in Qurans
terminology, it means original good human nature.
So it says that this Deen is the Deen of that nature so this means that the
whole religion has its roots in human nature and the Prophet says that all
newborns are born on fitrah and that its parents and devils deviate him/her
from it.
So how do you reconcile the two? He says this knowledge develops with
development of mind, you are born knowing nothing but as your mind
develops, you dont need to be taught this even though no one speaks to
you about God or anything. You become aware of the fact that you have a
Creator and that you must worship him.
In the book that I wrote about Ibn Taimiyah (it has not been published yet),
I mentioned there that this is like saying there is a seed of knowledge that
germinates to full fledged tree with the development of mind, so this was
his first question.
The second question: What if someone says that I dont feel this?
He tells him you must be mistaken because an overwhelmingly majority of
human beings have a consensus on this so you cannot be right and all
these people cannot be wrong and he mentions here something interesting.

He says when people agree and they have a consensus on something


positive, they say we know this is accepted but sometimes there might be a
consensus on something negative this might be because of lack of
knowledge but as far as affirming something, consensus of people has to
be accepted. Again he says why then do people deny existence of the
Creator. These people are of three kinds.
The first are just liars. They know in their heart of hearts that there is a
Creator but they dont want to acknowledge because mistakenly they think
they this might not be in their interest because of some worldly gains and
he gives the example of pharaoh. Because Quran says he denied it while
deep in their hearts he knew it.
The second group is interesting. These people are suffering from some
kind of sophistry, this can be a real disease and they are not pretending.
If a person suffers from this kind of mental disorder, he can deny real self
evident truths. And by the way the first philosophy book that I read was by
Bertrand Russell on the problems of philosophy and he was explaining the
position of empirics.
Some people said how do we know that there is an external world? Now I
see you and I say Yasir exists because I can see him, but what if I close my
eyes? I cannot see, so does Yasir still exist? What if I turn away? I
remember very well when I was reading this I began to turn around the
table to see if the table exists or not! And they can deny, as I said, even
logical or mathematical principles.
And I would add this, this is not what Ibn Taimiyah said; some people
think when they do this they are being rational in fact they are not!
Because when you ask why is this so, you are asking for an explanation
and usually when you ask, you think what the person is saying contradicts
the truth that you know but if there is no truth at all, then the question
doesnt arise and a person who doubts everything cannot ask any questions
! So this is my contribution to Ibn Taimiyah.

The third group is also very interesting. They say that there is a difference
between having something in your mind and being aware of it. Perhaps
this will remind you of some psycho analysis.
He likens the mind to the body. He says there might be something for
example on your back, it is on your body and the fact that you are not
aware of it doesnt mean it doesnt exist. The same applies to the mind, he
gives example of familiar things and he says sometimes you pass through
an experience and you discover something bad about yourself. You say
that I didnt think I had this nasty trait! He says the importance of evidence
for such people is to make them have a link between the two to bring
awareness.
Yassir Fazaga: Before we go on with these three kinds of people, I am
very sure that Ibn Taimiyah did not intend to insult the intelligence of
these people?
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: Except the first one!
Yassir Fazaga: True, I am sure in the category here your addition eluded
to it that some people do really think that they are being very rational in
the process, so denial is not necessary because they are denying for
worldly gain or something like that, because you are probably aware too
that these are people who have actually lived for this and read and written
about this.
Dr Jaafar Shiekh Idris: Remember he accused only the first kind. But
with the second kind he was actually sympathetic; he said this was a kind
of disease that can be cured. And being unaware too is something that can
be cured after you pass through an experience.
I know one of my relatives who was a communist. He went and studied
geology in Russia, and he came back a good Muslim from soviet union at
that time. They were going down a mine. And then a rock fell and closed
the path to go out. He said at that time he believed in God! So a person
may pass through an experience which reveals to him a truth that is
already innate in his nature.

Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, we would come to continue this point in the next
episode. We thank you all for being with us in this intersection between
faith and reason series with Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris. Hoping you would join
us next time as well!
Credit: Transcribed by Defiance Team. http://thedefiance.co/the-rationalone/

THE RATIONAL EPISODE 04 IBN TAYMIYYAH


ON EXISTENCE OF THE CREATOR

Yassir Fazaga: Last time we were talking about the possibility that
arguing for the existence of God rationally is easy even though it is ironic
that its the believers who have to argue for this and you mentioned that
that should not be the case and I believe wed be addressing this later on
and then you also spoke of some of the ideas of Ibn Taimiyah, a great
Islamic thinker and philosopher in this regard and you were talking about
various kinds of people who would potentially deny the existence of God.
And I believe we were given three options by Ibn Taimiyah. His first very
honest and blunt opinion about them that they were liars, second kind
were suffering from sophistry, and then the third kind of people who are
very interesting; People who are just not aware.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes and we were enumerating the questions that
he raised regarding the fact that this knowledge of the creator is innate.
The first question was about what kind of knowledge was there?
The second question was if thats the case why do people deny it?
The third question is that if this is something innate in human nature what
is the use of argument?
You dont try to convince someone of something he already believes in.
His reply is that this strengthens the faith. We can elaborate on this and
remind ourselves of the fact that faith is not something that you have once
and for all. It is something that a person can lose, it is something that can
be strengthened or weakened and he says its a fact that if you know
something, the more you have evidence for it, the stronger your faith in it
will be.
So he says that the argument and evidence strengthen the faith of those
who are already believers and I would add something else. It shows also
the irrationality of the opinions of the atheist. I would not only condemn
an atheist but I will tell him you are being irrational as there is evidence
for existence of the creator and you are denying it. All your arguments for
non existence of Creator are invalid arguments.

Ibn Taimiyah says somewhere else that this is something that is a duty on
Muslims to do. You must make the nonbeliever feel he is defeated. If you
dont do this you will not be giving your religion its due. Of course not
everyone can do that!
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, I think hes talking about intellectually defeated?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes, of course.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, its interesting that someone from back then in Ibn
Taiymiahs time is promoting and encouraging such a thing and it seems
like all believers, and I say that to all different faiths and groups today that
approach is very apologetic nowadays.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Thats because their knowledge of religion is
weak and so is their faith. So like we said last time the stronger your faith
is, the more knowledge you have, the more rational you become.
He says he benefitted greatly and I can testify to this from my own
experience, by knowing the position of the nonbelievers and the deviants.
He made a general rule that the more you know about the falsehood of
anything that contradicts your religion, the stronger your faith will be and I
can also say this from my experience. Sometimes I purposely read a book
on atheism. Of course I dont encourage everyone to do that specially if
they are young but I benefit greatly from it. InshaAllah we will give some
examples of these.
Now he says that the fundamental thing is what we have said and this is
the reason in fact why we believe. They dont believe because of the
arguments we are going to mention now because some people are not even
aware of them. They dont even understand them sometimes and
sometimes the argument can be put in a wrong form.
Some atheists in the west like Marx criticized argument for the existence
of God. They thought that they proved them to be false, therefore there is
no God. Now a very famous British philosopher said no to their line of
reasoning. He said that this cannot be followed. He is not a believer

himself but was speaking logically. He said the arguments can be false but
still God exists.
Because you can give a false argument for the existence of something that
exists but not for the argument or evidence that you mentioned. So we
want to emphasize this fact: We are not claiming that any person who does
not understand this kind of argument in the elaborate way which we
might resort to is not a believer. Belief is based primarily on that innate
nature.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, thats a good point you are making there; the
defeat of an argument does not mean its the defeat of the conclusion that
this argument stands for!
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes, because a person can make wrong
arguments and arrive at true conclusions. So the fact that his argument is
false does not mean that the conclusion is false. He says that some people
and I know this also from my study of western philosophy, people confine
evidence for existence of Creator and they teach them to students and he
says this is wrong, there are innumerable kinds of evidence for existence
of Creator and he says because this is something very important for people
so the God who created them helps them by giving them so many pieces of
evidence and he mentioned them.
First of all, human nature, and then the evidence of ayah, which I will
elaborate upon inshaAllah. You know this is mentioned in the Quran
several times. An ayah is a sign and an evidence.
Then there are cosmological arguments that are very well known to people
in the west.
Then there is what is called the argument from design, that the world is
made in such a way that it must be have been designed. Its not just made
of isolated created things. There is a proper design.
Then there are arguments from the words of the Creator. You read the
Quran, the original torah, the original gospel revealed to Jesus and by
reading the words of the Creator you come to believe in the Creator even if

you were not a believer before. He also says if you read the lives of the
Prophets, you see that someone might be an atheist but then he meets a
prophet, he becomes impressed by his life and becomes a Muslim.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, people who limited these arguments, I am thinking
that they did not say these are all the arguments that are out there. I think
they would be in reaction to the arguments that were raised by people who
denied the existence of God.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: They dont say or express it but the implicit
assumption is that these are the arguments. And if we prove them to be
false then were done.
Yassir Fazaga: As you said, we at times tend to be a bit meagre and
maybe at times a bit shallow and trivial when we are counter arguing these
points.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes some times. But remember some of these
atheists were great thinkers so you dont expect an ordinary Muslim to
have an argument against them; however that doesnt mean their argument
will shake his belief. But he doesnt have the knowledge or so to counter
the argument. This is a kind of jihad, it has becomes a dangerous word
these days! But anyways this is a peaceful jihaad so there should be no
problem.
Yassir Fazaga: Has lack of response from community of believers
promoted atheism?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: To be fair to religious theologians in the west, let
me say that in fact they do write books against atheists too. Whether the
atheists are convinced or not.
In fact one of the staunchest of atheists declared that he now has become a
believer Professor Antony Flew. He used to criticize the arguments of
existence of God. There will always be people like these. If they are
suffering from sophistry or others who are liars what can you do! We
should make them feel that they are wrong whether they admit it or not.

The second evidence is a very important one, which Quran and Sunnah
called ayah a sign. Ibn Taimyah says something very interesting he
says sign is not an argument! Its something that points to something else.
For instance I know you and I know your voice so if I hear your voice. I
say Yasir is around so your voice is an ayah, a sign for your existence. Its
not an argument.
He points that the advantage of ayah over the argument is that the ayah
points to God directly while the argument gives you a general conclusion
that there must be a Creator but the ayah makes a link between you and
your Creator.
But then he raises a question: someone might say but this is not an
evidence! This means I already know God and I know this is His creation
and to see something as a sign of something else, you must know both and
you must see the link between the two.
Yassir Fazaga: I am not sure whats more impressive, the fact that he
makes the argument or the questions that he makes for his arguments!
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Thats because hes a great intellectual and is not
afraid about raising questions about his own argument so he said theres
good reason for this. It strengthens your faith i.e. the more you see of
Gods signs and the more you know about him because there are many
verses in the Quran that invite us to think at the heavens and earth and so
on and he says this tells you about the attributes of the Creator so there is a
reason for this .
Yassir Fazaga: It sounds as if he says the ayah serves more of a purpose
to someone who already believes rather than the one who does not.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes what about someone who doesnt believe.
He says you help him to see the link between the two, if he thinks deeply
about the nature of the creation. Even if he doesnt believe in God he must
have an idea of God.
As some people say you cant deny something of which you have no idea.
You must have an idea of whats being denied. So even an atheist must

have an idea of what he is denying. Now if he has this idea and you tell
him about the nature of the creation to help him see the connection
between the creation and what he is denying, then he will accept because
many atheists say we dont see them as ayahs! We see them as crude facts
like this is a tree, this is the sea; these are clouds and so on. He says
arguments help the person see the link between the two and the best
argument is the one in the Quran which says:

Were they created out of nothing or were they creators of themselves?
This means the Quran is not assuming the non existence of the Creator like
some of the arguments do. It is assuming that there is a Creator and it tells
the person who denies this, then whats the alternate.
If there is no Creator how did you come to being? Whenever the Quran
asks a rhetorical question, this means that the answer is well known to a
rational person. Any rational person in response to the first part of the ayah
would say nothing comes from nothing!
In response to the second part of the ayah :are you the creators of
yourselves Again with a little bit of rationality one can say that a thing
doesnt create itself as to create one must be there, but then if its there its
already created. So to say that something created itself is a contradiction.
You are assuming a thing to exist and not exist at the same time! And any
rational person whether a layman or someone with a good bit of intellect
can see that this cannot be true.
This is the Quranic argument against atheists. This is one of the arguments
and a very famous one, many of our thinkers have elaborated on it.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh, there is no third alternative mentioned in the
verse?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: The third alternative is that you are created by a
creator! And that is left unsaid!
Yassir Fazaga: So thats the only option left!

Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: You said earlier that the Quran should not be on
the defensive. Now here the Quran is not on the defensive! It says there is
a Creator. If you deny the Creator, then show me; you either created
yourself which is impossible or were created from nothing which is again
impossible! And this leaves us with the third alternative which is not
mentioned as it is well known!
For some time, I thought this was like the cosmological argument that
starts by assuming that there no Creator and then goes on to prove the
existence of the Creator but then I discovered I was mistaken. In fact the
assumption is that there is a Creator unless proven otherwise. So the proof
of burden is on the one who denies the existence of a Creator.Ill tell you
something interesting and I will give you evidence for it inshaAllah. I
looked into the arguments of atheists, contemporary ones and I saw that
most of them actually had to resort to one of these two alternatives or both
of them sometimes.
Even some great scientists had to say, since they insisted on atheism, that
things come from nothing or they create themselves. There was a third
alternative for the atheists thats no longer there. They used to say that the
world is eternal, so it doesnt need to be created. The big bang theory
closed that alternative. Because according to big bang theory everything
had a beginning: time, space, matter etc.
So no one can say that the word is eternal and even before the big bang
theory it was wrong to say this because you cannot point to anything in
this world and say it is eternal. Greeks use to think that the heavenly
bodies are eternal as they never saw any change in the sun or moon so they
must be eternal and AlGhazali replied to it saying these are huge bodies
and very far away from us so if they diminish you will not see the amount
of diminishing but now we know that the sun is continuously diminishing,
same applies to the moon.So no one can now point to something and say
this is eternal since everything that you point to, can be changed and if it
can be changed, it cannot be eternal.
Yassir Fazaga: And with this we come to the end of this episode hoping
that you join in next time.

Cosmological Argument For Existence Of God


Transcript of The Rational, Episode 05
Yassir Fazaga: Last time we were talking about the Quranic Argument for
the existence of God and I believe you mentioned the verse in surah toor

Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Were they created out of nothing or did they
create themselves
Yassir Fazaga: And you said generally speaking in your study or
observations most atheists have fallen into of these categories that Quran
has actually given.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes and I am talking about contemporary ones
and some of them are scientists.
Yassir Fazaga: It sounds a bit ludicrous to me that somebody can actually
argue that we came out of nothing.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes I will show you some of their works
Yassir Fazaga: That they have actually promoted such an idea?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes!
Yassir Fazaga: Interestingly you also said that in Greek philosophy earlier
they even said that there was an argument that world is eternal and needs
not a creator.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes they thought that the heavenly bodies,
because they know that the trees are not eternal, water is not eternal but
they thought that the heavenly bodies were eternal especially the sun and
their argument was that we havent seen any change, the sun as always
been like this so it must be eternal. Then I gave al Ghazallis objection to
that he said that how do you know? Sun is a huge body and it is far away
so if it diminishes by a small amount every day you would not be able to
realize this. But we now know that what al Ghazali said is true.

Yassir Fazaga: I am wondering this why the people believe to worship the
heavenly bodies.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes of course. Especially the people of Prophet
Ibraheem AS used to worship the heavenly bodies.
Yassir Fazaga: Mainly because they felt they were eternal.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Could be
Yassir Fazaga: Interesting. Shaykh we would love to hear some of these
arguments.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: We enumerated some of these pieces of evidence
that Ibn Taimiah mentioned, now we come to the most famous argument
for existence of God, and I mean famous among the philosophers and it
was also popular in Muslim, Christian and Jewish theologians. The
argument took many forms, took many ways and some of the formulations
were wrong, so people thought because the formulation is wrong the
argument is false. And I will try now to give what I think is correct form of
the argument. The argument goes like this
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh just to remind our viewers, Ibn Taimiah argues
that it is innate nature to believe, then he spoke about ayahs or the signs,
and now the cosmological argument.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: He says that there is a difference between the
cosmological and the ayahs as I said last time. The ayah points to God
directly cosmological argument comes to the conclusion that there must be
a creator or an eternal cause. So he said that it is good as far as it goes but
it does not go far enough. And I will comment on that inshaAllah.
The argument is like this: It says that there are temporal things. Temporal
things are those that have beginnings. A temporal thing must have an
external cause. It cannot create itself. The external cause cannot be itself
temporal. Because we would ask the same question about it i.e. the cause
itself. But some people said, why not? They say that we can say that for
example if we say that temporal thing 1 (T1) is caused by temporal thing 2
(T2) which is caused by temporal thing 3 (T 3) and so on to infinity. They

said what is wrong with this? The series need not end anywhere. So they
said that cosmological argument does not prove that there must be an
eternal creator.
Now ibn taimiah and many of the Muslim theologians said that this is
wrong. Because if you say that T1 is caused by T2 then T1 would not exist
until T1 has already existed. But T2 would not exist until T3 exists and so
on. So they said that there is in fact no series, there is nothing. But the fact
is that there is something. So this cannot be the case. Because if every
temporal thing was caused by another temporal thing there would have
been no temporal things at all.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh if I have understood you correctly, a temporal
thing must be caused.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: It must be caused by something external to it. If
that something external is it temporal then
Yassir Fazaga: it would require that something has caused it
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: In a book that wrote in Arabic, I likened this to a
poor person who is found to be in possession of a million dollars. We say
that you are a poor person. Where did you get this money from? He says
that I got this from person 2 and but that person2 is also poor. And person
2 got it from person 3 who is also poor and so on. So that would not solve
the problem where the million dollars came from. Unless someone says
that I robbed a bank (laughs). So same is the case with temporal things.
Now some of them did not get the argument correctly, they said that as if
the conclusion that ultimate cause must be eternal as if we are arbitrarily
saying that there must be a creator.
Yassir Fazaga: Simply because the circle does not make sense.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: No! They dont say this. It they said it does not
make sense that would be a good argument. Now ibn taimiah said we are
saying that existence of temporal things is itself a proof that there is an
eternal thing. Because these temporal things would not have existed at all
if there was no eternal thing. So I am not just saying that there is a God

and he is eternal. We are proving his eternity by the existence of temporal


things. So our evidence for existence of eternal cause is existence of
temporal things.
This by the way is called infinity regress. He says that series like this can
go to infinity if everyone was caused by the eternal. He is outside this
chain. He created this, before it he created this, and before it he created
this and so on. There is no logical problem.
A very famous physicist said I have an alternative. It does not need to go
this way in a chain to infinity why not make it like a loop and say that E1
caused E 2, E 2 caused E 3, E 3 caused E 4, E4 caused E 1 which caused E
2, which caused E 3 so it becomes circle and there is no problem. Now in
my book I said this cannot be the case because let us go backwards now, E
1 would not have existed had it not been for E 4, E4 would not have
existed had it not been for E 3, E 3 would not have existed had it not been
for E 2, E2 would not have existed had it not been for E1 so nothing
exists!
Yassir Fazaga: Sure
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Now if you say E 1 caused E2, E2 caused E3,
E3 caused E 4, E4 caused E1 and that was already caused! So E4 caused
E1 when E4 itself it result of E1, E2, E3. And this is a very famous
physicist and he wrote a book called God and the new physics and in fact
it was his book that made me think writing a book on physics and the
existence of creator in Arabic, because I realize there is very little physics
in it, and I am not a physicist I realized that he relies heavily on the ideas
and the arguments of western philosophers and I am in fact familiar with
them.
So I said to myself why not write a book and give the ideas of the Muslim
philosophers and theologians and thats what I did. Many people in the
west are not aware this, they dont know, and it is our mistake in fact.
Yassir Fazaga: Our mistake, meaning the

Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: They dont think there are Muslim intellectuals
like Ibn taimiah because they dont know about him, they know about their
own philosophers and they think these are the greatest minds and so on, so
I think it is our mistake that people in the West dont know much about
them.
Yassir Fazaga: Dr Jaafar you were talking earlier about Muslims, and our
fault in that we have not exposed great thinkers like Ibn taimiah and Imam
al Ghazali to western philosophy either in refuting our countering these
arguments. I wonder what could be done.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: What could be done? People like you should
write about it, you are living in the west, you study the works of their
works, some of the Orientalists did this but they did not write popular
books and some of them were not themselves philosophers so they did not
popularize the ideas of Muslim philosophers, because there are many ideas
that people would wonder some of the ideas that they attribute to some of
the western philosophers were expressed by Muslim philosophers long
time before them.
And of the things that I realized, something I found very strange, that the
ideas of contemporary philosophers on some of the Greek philosophers
say that criticism of Greek philosophy is very much like criticism of Sunni
theologians. The non sunni theologians follow the Greeks and defended
some of their views, contemporary western philosophers discovered that
some of these ideas were foolish, they criticized them, so the nearest
Islamic ideas about philosophy to western philosophy are the ideas of
sunnis not the mutazilites or the other groups.
Some of them wonder, when I studied in London School of Economic and
Social Sciences, there was a very famous philosopher, Pauper, he had an
idea of which he was very proud, he used to say, it is wrong to say some
the Greeks said knowledge starts with definitions, before you talk you
must define your words, and he used to say this cannot be so because if I
define my words I have to define them in other words and then if you ask
me to define each of the say I used 5 words- there would be 25 words,
and then I would have to explain each of the 25 words and so on.

So I went to him, I did not want to embarrass him in front of people, so I


told him that we had a very famous Muslim theologian who said the same
thing a long time ago. And ibn taimiah said, knowledge does not start with
definitions because to define you have to know, that was his argument to
define you have to know so knowledge is before definitions.
And I did not want to embarrass him, but he embarrassed me, he said I
dont know anything about ibn taimiah thisyour fault! Why dont you
write about your people?
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh have the ideas of Ibn taimiah and Ghazali and
their likes been lost?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: They are not lost, they are their ideas are in
books, in fact, many Muslims dont know about them because we are not
very much concerned about them, in the Muslim world we are concerned
about practical things, we have been colonized, we want to free ourselves
from communism, dictatorships etc so there has not been much time for
pure intellectual matters, but if a western philosopher reads Ibn taimiah or
so, he would find himself at home.
And I have again, an experience like this, one professor of philosophy
visited us in University of Khartoum, I gave one of my students something
near distinction but slightly less, he said why dont you invite him and
discuss this matter with him and give him these two or three marks, and
please make it in English, the course was in Arabic. And I invited him, this
man is now Minister of Interior in Sudan, Dr Zubair Basheer.
Yassir Fazaga: Did you give him the marks?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes we started talking about Al Ghazali, Pauper,
Ibn taimiah, Kant, and so. And the student was very impressive, and when
we finished and he went outside, he (professor from abroad) said: Of
course! You should give him an A!
Another colleague in department of philosophy was British and he said the
most valuable thing that he learnt by being in Sudan and that department is
that the human mind is the same. As we in the west sometimes think, as

some of those in the west used to think that even logic is something
western. A famous orientalist like Montgomery Watt said something about
Arabs that for them contradictions dont mean anything. In fact if there are
contradictions this is taken as a sign of richness and so on. Of course this
is totally wrong. So to some extent it is our mistake.
We are talking about cosmological arguments and I said that I presented
what I thought was the correct formulation of the argument. But there are
wrong formulations and some of them are very famous. For example
someone says everything has a cause, and then the atheist says: ok
everything has a cause then God has a cause because God is substance.
And he is right if you say everything has a cause, God is something
then He must have a cause so that destroys your argument.
The correct thing to say is every event has a cause or every temporal
thing has a cause not everything has a cause. Because an eternal thing
does not have a cause. If something is eternal then this means that it
depends for existence on itself. And that is what is called in Quranic
terminology: Qayoom. Qayoom they say is the one who is self sufficient.
He does not need something from outside to depend on.
Yassir Fazaga: And this is one of the attributes of God that mentioned in
the Quran.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes. Now ibn taimiah said about the
cosmological arguments that it does not go far enough. The only thing it
proves is that there must be an eternal cause.
Yassir Fazaga: It points out generally speaking but it does not specify.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes and in fact what he said was the same thing
what was said by some of the western philosophers who criticized the
cosmological argument. Some of them said: Yes ok the conclusion that
there should be an eternal cause why should that have to be God?
Now in my book I said that we can go from that conclusion of
cosmological argument to the other attributes of creator. So a cosmological
argument would be a first step.

So this means that I am not in total agreement with ibn taimiah because
ibn taimiah said it does not go far enough perhaps he meant what I have
just said that it proves that there is an eternal thing and then we make that
the first step to talk about other attributes of God and If we prove that
those attributes cannot be acquired except by what they call God of
religion then we have proved the existence of the creator.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh this is getting better and better but time keeps us
faster and faster by as this argument is getting there, so InshaAllah with
this we come to the end of this episode of our program hoping that you
would join us again next time as we would be talking about attributes of
God as presented in the Quran and with this we say Assalamualaikum wa
rahmatullah wa barakatuhu
Credit: Transcribed by Defiance Team. http://thedefiance.co/therational-one/

Transcript of Episode 06 Eternal must be God and Attributes of God


Yassir Fazaga: Dr Jaafar its good to be with you again.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: JazakAllah Khair.
Yassir Fazaga: Ya iyyakum, Shaykh last time we were talking about
different arguments which were presented by Ibn Taimiah and generally
speaking we said they were three of them that he pointed to: the innate
nature of humanity that we are inclined to believe in existence of God,
then he spoke about ayahs, and then what we finished with last time i.e.
the cosmological argument.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: These are not peculiar to Ibn Taimiah they are
very well known arguments; we were talking only about his observations
on these arguments. Even the argument of ayahs was known. Muslim
theologians have pointed that out well before Ibn Taimiah talked about
them including the cosmological argument. And we mentioned, he said
that cosmological argument is good as far as it goes. But it does not go far
enough.
Yassir Fazaga: And by that if I remember correctly, it points to a creator
or to what
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: To an eternal cause.
Yassir Fazaga: Not necessarily God?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Not necessarily God.
Yassir Fazaga: Okay.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: And this objection was also made by some of the
philosophers. They said you havent proved the existence of God. You
have jumped from existence of eternal cause to the god of religion. Now
I said that from the fact that we have proved that the cause must be eternal
we can go on to other attributes. Now I would try to prove this.
Yassir Fazaga: To speak about some of the attributes of God?

Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes that can be deduced from the fact that this
eternal thing that caused temporal things must be God. Why?
First, its a logical method and it was expressed by many Muslim thinkers,
if something is eternal it must be everlasting.
Yassir Fazaga: Well thats what eternal means.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Eternal means that it has no beginning,
everlasting has no end.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh just to make sure, eternal is something that has no
beginning but it might have an end?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: No they say it cant be so. If it has no beginning
it cannot have an end. Why? Their argument is that if it has no beginning
this means that it did not depend on something other than itself for its
existence. And a thing goes out of its existence only if it depends on its
existence on something outside itself.
Yassir Fazaga: Yes that makes sense.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: For example (lights a cigarette lighter for
demonstration), this flame would be there so long as there is oxygen, so
long as I am pressing on it, so long as
Yassir Fazaga: The alarm does not go off inside this studio (laughs)
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: (laughs) So long as there is no wind, so long as
fuel is there, if it lacks any of these conditions of its existence it goes it
would come to an end. So if something has no beginning it cannot have an
end. But something can have beginning and not have an end. There is no
problem in this if it depends for its existence on something that is ever
lasting like paradise. It has a beginning, its created by God, but it has not
end. So now we have three attributes.
Power, because it created it must have power. It is Eternal, it is
Everlasting. Now how does it create?

Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh these are all attributes that have been rationally
deduced from accepting the cosmological arguments that there is a
creating force out there.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes and as I said Muslim theologians, including
Ibn Taimiah, says that it is wrong, as some people think that all the
attributes of God are learned from revelation. They say this is not true
because at least you know that He is the creator. This is one of the
attributes, and that many of the attributes can be known by reason.
Yassir Fazaga: Many of the attributes of God.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Many of the attributes of God can be deduced by
reason. And here we have some examples of these. Now they make a
distinction between a cause that is natural, like if I use this cigarette lighter
to burn something you would say the fire burnt the paper. This is natural
causation. And there is a willful agent. Like I am now using this lighter, I
am a willful agent; I am not like the fire that burns. I do this with my will.
Now they say that a natural cause depends for its causation on something
else as it cant cause just by itself. So God cannot be a natural cause. He
must be willful agent. But if he is willful then He must have knowledge.
Because if you decide to do something then you must have an idea of what
you are going to do. We find in the Quran:

Doesnt one who creates know his creation?
Now if He is willful then He is knowing and if He is knowing then He
must be living. So these are some of the basic attributes of the creator. If
you have now proved that He is living, that He is willful, that He has
knowledge, that He is powerful, that He is eternal, that He is everlasting.
Then this is in fact God of the religion. A person who is convinced that
all these attributes can be deduced from the fact that cause is eternal can
easily see I think, unless he is very prejudice, that all these attributes are
the attributes or at least some of the attributes of creator that religion is
talking about.

Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh I think we are coming back to the same conclusion
that we have started with, where you see that rational deduction is coming
exactly where revealed religions have been teaching throughout the time.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes and again we talked too much about Ibn
Taimiah as I said I wrote a book about him. But recently I read something
very interesting. In a pamphlet he says that there is something like
equivalence between reason and religion. Both imply the other. He said
that if you are really rational then your reason would lead you to the
conclusion that there must be a creator that there must be prophets and so
on. And on the other hand if you are truly religious you know about your
religion and this would lead you to give reasons its due. And he gives
some verses of the Quran:

The Quran says that this for someone who has qalb which here means
mind and reason- or someone who listens. He says these are two entities
not one and Quran uses or it did not say he must have both. If he gives
reason its due he will accept this truth. If he listens and understands what
God says then he would come to the same conclusion and so on. He says
that far from there being a conflict between revelation and reason, fact of
the matter is they actually imply each other.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh I have a confession to make. And probably I
should not be saying this in front of all the viewers out there, that so many
times I came across this verse in Surah Qaaf but never paid attention
to the proposition or. Its implying that if you had that mind or the
faculties of learning and in this specific case to listen attentively, they
would lead you to such a thing.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: And this verse can also be explained by another
verse, it says that people who go to hell fire would say:

Had we been amongst those who listen or reason, we would not have been
in hell fire. So this means that they lack both of them. Really rational

person would believe in the creator and all that follows from it and a really
faithful person would believe in reason and give its due.
Yassir Fazaga: And there is no need to either jeopardize or compromise
any one of them for the sake of other.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: I want to concentrate now on negatives. Like
He cannot have a child. This is something very important in Islam. The
famous verses:





That He begets not nor is He begotten.
Yassir Fazaga: So Shaykh you are saying that rationally speaking we can
deduce attributes of God and rationally speaking we can negate some of
the attributes that are not befitting to God.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes because some of the Arabs used to say, as
you read in the Quran that angles are daughters of God. So it is not only
some Christians who say that God has a son, the Arabs said that all the
angels are His daughters, which means that there are millions of daughters
out there not just one child. And it seems that there was also a Jewish sect
in the times of Prophet SAW who used to say that Ezra is the son of God.
Now the Quran says that this cannot be the case and Muslim theologians
elaborated on that. For example the Quran says:


There is nothing like Him. There is nothing eternal and everlasting like
Him so how can He have a child. If the child is like the father, it must be
eternal. If it is eternal it cannot be begotten.
Yassir Fazaga: Because it would have a beginning since its a child.

Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes it must have beginning and if it has a


beginning it cannot be divine. So you have to choose between either of the
two.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh I am being devils advocate here, if you remember
what was said earlier about a thing may have a beginning but it can be
everlasting by another willful agent, so just hypothetically speaking if that
is what we mean that God has a child even be it in case of some Christian
denomination or the case of the earlier Arabs saying that well this is the
case from now on.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes but that would not be divine because
otherwise everything in paradise would be divine.
Yassir Fazaga: Because now they are becoming everlasting.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: So the fact that something is everlasting does not
make it divine. It must be both eternal and everlasting. And since
everything other than God must be temporal nothing can be divine other
than God. The Quran also says that God is Self Sufficient Ghani. So He
does not to have a child. There is a verse in the Quran which has been
misunderstood even by some early scholars but some of them corrected
that wrong understanding and it is now sometimes used by some people
who criticize the Quran for saying God cannot have a child. There is a
verse in the Quran which says:


Had He wanted to have a child He would have chosen from His creation.
But the verse itself shows that this is not a child in the sense of child that is
being born because He says that He would have chosen from His creation
and that is why some of the interpreters of the Quran said that Allah means
adoption here. But even that does not suit Him. He would not even do
what is logically possible. The first one is logically impossible. And it is
logically impossible also because Quran says how can He have a child
when He does not have a wife.

Some of the Christian scholars who criticized this kind of argument tell me
that you are taking the word son literally. I say this is what son means but
I am not insisting to accept only one possible meaning of the word, just
give me your meaning of the word son. Even when you say something is
metaphorical you say it means something. For example if you say
someone is a lion and then you say that I dont mean that he is lion in the
sense that he is a beast. Then I can say what do you mean? Then you can
say that I mean he is brave.
So if you say Jesus is the son of God, I say that God cannot have a son.
And you say, No! You are taking it literally. So I ask you, what do you
mean? I am not insisting. I dont like you to say God has a son. If you
give meaning of the word son that is acceptable I would say that difference
between us is only difference of using the word in the correct sense and
that is not a problem. But no one has come with a new meaning of the
word son.
Recently I read what someone wrote to us that according to some new
manuscripts the word son was a wrong translation and the correct
translation is that he is one of a kind. I said, ok this is better than saying
that he is a son, but then why one of a kind? This means that no one else
is like Jesus in any way? This itself is one of the attributes of the creator.
Yassir Fazaga: In the sense that he was born with no mother.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: But he has some other attributes of human
beings. He used to eat, he used to drink and he died and so on. And also
the other problem, especially for the Christians as some of them say he is
eternal and I was surprised to read this in one of the commentaries of
Bible. The objection would be if he is eternal he must be everlasting so he
cannot die, you cannot say he is eternal and then say he died. So this is
contradiction.
Yassir Fazaga: And that is not befitting to the majesty of a creator. Shaykh
we would come back to the idea of attributes of God, but I remember
reading once in one of the articles that you wrote about this subject that
emphasis is not only to believe in the existence of God, it invites you to

get to know God and have a personal relationship with Him that should
impact your life positively.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes that is why I said in an earlier episode that
this is not how prophets started their message to the people. They dont
start by telling that there is a God and that He exists, rather they invite
them to worship none but God. And they teach them how to and why to
worship that God. So the important thing is not just to believe in the
existence because someone can believe, and some in fact do believe in the
existence of the creator, but then in their everyday life they behave just
live non-believers. Most of the people to whom prophets were sent were
believers in the existence of the creator like the Arabs.
Yassir Fazaga: But they did not act accordingly.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: No they did not act accordingly, so the emphasis
is on worshiping the creator, knowing him as you said, because the more
you know Him, the better your relationship would be with Him, you would
be in a better position to worship Him. Also the Quran uses another
argument especially when it comes to Prophets, it says that Allah will not
choose someone to convey His message who would then go and tell
people that I am God.
Yassir Fazaga: Like I said the other day, the more exciting this is getting,
the faster the time is passing by. IA we will be seeing you next time.
Credit: Transcribed by Defiance Team. http://thedefiance.co/the-rationalone/

Transcript of Episode 07. Two options for Atheists and the Argument
from Design
Yassir Fazaga: Dr Jaafar, it is good to be with you. In the last episode, we
were talking about the rational argument for the existence of God and you
spoke about Ibn Taimiyas views as well as others and you chose to speak
how Ibn Taimiya elaborated and gave us a summary of a few points. You
mentioned it was the innate nature of humanity to believe in the existence
of God, you spoke about the ayahs and then you mentioned the
cosmological argument and interestingly you said that the Quran does not
argue much for the existence of God but mostly its ayahs are leading to the
need to worship Allah SWT. You also said that contemporary physics
actually falls into the two options that Allah gave in Quran.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: I didnt say physicist; I said atheist physicist or
even atheist philosophers. They realize that if you say there is no Creator
then you have no choice except to say that either things came out of
nothing or that they created themselves. And I found that some of them
actually do say this.
Yassir Fazaga: I believe we have a quote from Davies on this.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes Davies in his book God & New Physics has
talked about it.
Yassir Fazaga: He actually proposes what the Quran said, I believe you
quoted it last time in Surah Toor

Were they created out of nothing or are they creators of themselves
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes and he opts for the first one that yes we were
created out of nothing!
Yassir Fazaga: As ludicrous as that might sound!
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes and he is a great physicist!
Yassir Fazaga: And he is arguing for this!

Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes because some people if insist for some
reason that there is no creator they find themselves falling into this trap of
saying something which is completely irrational.
Yassir Fazaga: Let me read from his book and I am reading a small quote
here. He says:
No scientific problem is more fundamental or more daunting than the
puzzle of how the universe came into being. Could this have happened
without any supernatural input? Quantum mechanics seems to provide a
loophole in the age old assumption that you cannot get something for
nothing. Physicists are now talking about the self creating universe and a
cosmoses erupted into existence spontaneously.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: You see does this make any sense? A cosmos
erupting. What does it mean? Hes just using words like erupt!
Yassir Fazaga: And he does actually say that its a self created universe.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Something erupts into existence out of nothing?!
He could have given some other theory rather than something erupting.
Yassir Fazaga: Where would it erupt from?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: If you insist on the claim that there is no Creator,
some thinkers have a psychological explanation for the physicists denying
the existence of a Creator. They say that they dont want anyone to
interfere with their discipline. They want themselves to be the people who
explain everything. Because if you say this was created by God that would
mean its God who runs the universe. It is Him to whom people will turn.
They dont seem to like this. They want to be the ones responsible for
universe.
Yassir Fazaga: And in the philosophy and physics world out there, is this
theory gaining any ground?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Of course this is not a scientific theory to begin
with. I am glad you brought this up. To be honest, Davies himself says in
the introduction of his book I am not speaking as a scientist because there

is no place for this in physics or biology etc, he is using his knowledge as


a physicist to defend a certain position that has nothing to do with physics.
Yassir Fazaga: And I think what you are arguing is that even rationally
speaking, it really doesnt have much credibility. This is where Allah has
said and he says, Yes! We were created out of nothing.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: He is saying both actually; as he also mentions
self created universe in addition to something erupting out of nothing.
Yassir Fazaga: After that we spoke of some of the attributes that a Creator
must have and you said this earlier as well that the messengers did not
come to elaborate on people to believe in the existence of God. But rather
their aim was to correct peoples misunderstandings of what they thought
of their Creator.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: And to guide them to worship their Creator.
Thats the most important thing. In the Quran, it is repeated that every
prophet who is sent to his people, the first thing he would tell them that he
is been sent to invite them to worship none but the Creator. Thats the
basic message but then people ask questions and prophets have to answer
them.
Someone says I dont believe in the Creator, someone else might say yes I
do believe in the Creator but why should He send a person like you? Why
doesnt He send an angel? Someone says why only one prophet for us,
why couldnt God send more and so on. And they have to answer these
questions.
Almost all these questions were asked by Arabs to whom the Prophet SAW
was sent and I sometimes say that the wisdom behind sending this Quran
to an Arab Prophet was the fact that even the nonbelievers were quite
intelligent and they asked all questions that could be asked! They left
nothing for the atheists that would come after them. And all their questions
were answered.

Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh just to clarify for our viewers so that they do not
misunderstand about what you said, he was only sent to the Arabs but his
message was universal.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes just that the first people whom he was with
were Arabs.
Yassir Fazaga: Did these prophets provide any rational argument as to
why they were chosen to be sent?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes and well come to that later on. We now want
to concentrate on the fundamentals to which the prophets were sent. So we
started with faith in God, we gave relevant arguments and I suggest that
now we talk about what is called the argument from design.
There was a cosmological argument and an argument from design and
both are mentioned in the Quran. The difference between the two is that
the cosmological argument talks about individual objects. And it tells you
that if you look into the nature of these individual objects you can see that
they must be created, so its talking about creation.
The argument from design does not talk about individual objects but in
fact talks about the relationship between them. And it directs your
attention to a very obvious fact that creation is not a heap of scattered
independent objects. And none of them would form a system that serves a
certain purpose.
This applies specially to human beings. You have eyes, nose, ears all of
them work in harmony to serve a certain purpose and the universe as a
whole is like this. You live on earth which is made in such a way that when
rain falls, there is a possibility for plants to grow, there is air, oxygen, light
from the sun, and you are created in pairs so that the species will be
preserved, not only human beings but even animals.
This shows that this could not have happened just by chance. This must
have been designed by a Creator and this is mentioned in the Quran in so
many places. The evidence of Ayahs can also include this, because an Ayah

can either be an individual object or it can refer to relationship between


different objects of creation.
Yassir Fazaga: We would like to take examples on how Quran uses this
argument to come to such kinds of conclusion.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Remember what we said before, it is talking
about the relationship between different objects of creation.
We have in Chapter 78, Verse 6-16 where Allah says
Have we not created the earth as a cradle, I havent been able to find a
word that befits the translation of but note that Allah does not say that
We made earth of steel or some other metal.
He SWT further continues and the mountains as stakes, some of the
Muslim scientists are now talking about why are the mountains being
described as being i.e. stakes but we dont want to go into details of
that right now. And we have created you in pairs. And have appointed
your sleep for repose and have appointed the night as a cloak and have
appointed the day for livelihood, and built above you seven strong
heavens, and have appointed a dazzling lamp (the sun) and have sent down
from the rainy clouds abundant water, thereby to produce grain and plant
and gardens of thick foliage. This is only one example. There are many
other verses too and perhaps you remember some of them too.
Yassir Fazaga: I remember for example in Surah Taha when Moses AS
was speaking to the Pharaoh and he said tell me about your God and Mosa
AS seems to allude to this:

Who has given each creation its shape or mould and also gave it
guidance
And then he goes on to say:


Who has made earth for you like a bed (spread out); and has opened roads
(ways and paths etc.) for you therein

Shaykh, what I understand here is that the word is not for design. Its
not happening haphazardly, and was meant to be that way.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes. Now these are obvious facts that everyone
can see i.e. the relationship between different kinds of creation. But some
scientists now tell us something very interesting. They talk about the big
bang theory.
Yassir Fazaga: Sorry to interrupt you shaykh, before you go further, if you
can explain the big bang theory so that we follow you in a better way.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: The big bang theory says that all this creation
that we see was not there. Apparently it came from nothing but then this is
not rationally acceptable. So they say there was something like a primary
atom and that exploded and from that explosion everything was formed.
Yassir Fazaga: Without giving an explanation where that atom came
from?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: Yes of course science cannot answer that and that
opened the door to lots of religious questions and interestingly, it was the
physicist who started talking about the existence of the Creator whether in
favour or against like Davis for instance. Before the big bang it was
thought that matter is eternal and hence does not require an explanation for
its creation. And it was thought by some that the question of the existence
of God has been ruled out as matter is eternal.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh I remember when we were at school we were
made to memorize this quote i.e. matter is neither
created nor destroyed.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: In fact this has never been true, even before the
big bang. By the way this is an example of something that is in science but
is not scientific as this is like an assumption without any scientific proof.
And interestingly this was a Greek belief.
This shows how culture influences peoples concepts even when they
come from scientific background. And some philosophers said that there is
no need for this. And he says there is no contradiction between saying that

matter is conserved and that it can be created and destroyed and he gave an
example of something like a glass having a hole at its bottom saying if I
pour water in it from the top, the same amount of water drips down from
the hole below but the level of the water will be the same in spite of the
fact that its being created and destroyed at the same time by being
poured from up and draining out from down and even Newton who is
described as being the greatest physicist of his time was not a believer but
he did not say that atoms came out of nothing. He said I believe that the
Lord created the atoms in such a way that when they come together they
form molecules and molecules of various atoms form various matters so he
was not an atheist.
Some people use scientific facts to support their atheistic views. Now the
anthropic principle says that the world was created from the beginning in
such a way that it supports creation of people like us. Here I can quote a
something from a very renowned physicist who is called Newton of
modern times- Hawkings who wrote the famous book Brief History of
Time. He says that this means that the initial state of the universe must
have been very carefully chosen indeed.
If the hot big bang model is true, right back to the beginning of time, it
would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in
just this way except as the act of a God. He is not a believer but this is
what he says. He adds that if there was a very minute change in the rate of
expansion after the big bang, the universe would not have been the way it
is now, so some believers add this to the argument of design.
Yassir Fazaga: Sheikh among these four or five arguments which one
does the Quran elaborates most on?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: I think it is the argument from design. Some
Muslim intellectuals like Ibn Rushd, the philosopher and lawyer, were of
the belief that the argument from design talks about the attributes of God.
It is not an argument for the existence of God. But some other theologians
including Ibn Taimiya say that it talks of both, because if it says that the
universe is designed in a way that it could not have come by chance. There

must be a Creator. So it serves both purposes- it tells you about Gods


existence and His attributes at the same time.
Yassir Fazaga: If I remember correctly you once said in Arabic and it was
quite poetic that you would know God either through or
i.e. the world that is observed or the revelation that is heard.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh Idris: This is why we also said that one of the evidence
for the existence of the Creator are His words. It is creation and revelation
meaning creation and revelation both point to the Creator.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh, as always it is such a great pleasure to be with
you. This keeps getting interesting as time is passing by. Hoping that you
will join us next time. Till we meet again, Assalamu alaikum
warahmatullah wabarakatuh.
Credit: Transcribed by Defiance Team. http://thedefiance.co/the-rationalone/

Episode 08, Revelation And The Creator

Yassir Fazaga: Dr Jafaar, thank you for being with us. So far it has been a
real joy and I believe we said in the beginning this is going to be
intellectually stimulating, challenging and tickling and every time we
speak I do feel tickled and I am sure our viewers are as tickled as I am.
Last time we spoke about different arguments and we were talking about
the statement of design and we ended up going back to the statement of
Ibn Rushd. The argument for design speaks more of the attributes of the
creator and we said there were two sources about knowing the Creator: the
creation and revelation. And the Quran I believe speaks about both of
them. Then there were verses about creation that you quoted from surah
78, verse 6-16 and now we have got what the revelation says about the
Creator.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: There are many important arguments related to
revelation but I think the most important argument is that this book which
is revealed to the Prophet SAW and again I say that this applies to all
previous books but unfortunately we dont have all those books now.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh, you mean in their original form when they were
sent?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: Yes. The book itself is a proof that it could not have
been except from the Creator. There are many arguments for this but I will
resort to choosing one of them which is clearly very rational. It says:

Had this book been from someone other than God, they would have found
many discrepancies therein
So the Quran now is saying there are no contradictions in this book and
therefore it must be form God because if it was written by a human being,
he would surely have contradicted himself.
I thought about this and have come up with some elaborations.

When does the probability of contradicting oneself increase?


Firstly, it increases by the amount of time one spends in talking for
instance if you speak for 5 min you can manage to be careful. If you speak
for an hour there are more chances that you will be contradicting yourself.
If you say something today and tomorrow and continue like we have been
doing for a week or so and you are expressing your views then the
probability of you contradicting yourself increases.
The Quran was revealed in a period of twenty three years and it was
revealed in instalments a few verses today, some more after a week and
further some more after a few weeks. Yet there is no contradiction.
Imagine someone who say, writes a column in a newspaper every week
and then after two years if he looks back into what he wrote I think he will
laugh at himself. He might say in January 1970 I said this but in February
1972 I seem to be saying something totally in contrast to what I said
earlier. Thats because human being is not perfect and has a tendency to
forget, and also his knowledge increases or decreases thats why he is
liable to contradict himself.

Secondly, this is also related to the amount of what one says. For example
if you write a 5 page long article, you are less likely to contradict yourself
than you might be if you write a book of 500 pages.

Thirdly, it also increases with the amount of subjects that you deal with.
A physicist is less likely to falter than a philosopher who talks about
physics, religion, economics etc. The latter might say something related to
economics that contradicts something in politics.

Now Quran speaks about the creator and His attribute, it speaks about
history, about the future, it also speaks about social, political, economic

organization. It also speaks about moral behavior, psychology and in spite


of this, there are no contradictions.
Now Quran speaks about the creator and His attribute, it speaks about
history, about the future, it also speaks about social, political, economic
organization. It also speaks about moral behaviour, psychology and in
spite of this there are no contradictions.
At first I used to think about contradiction as mere contradiction between
statements. But now more importantly I think, dont know how to express
it but say someone like Marx talks about economics and politics, his aim
was to make people free. He thought that Capitalism was the cause of
enslaving people but his political system became the worst dictatorship so
what he said in economics went against his saying in politics.
Some people now say the same applies to democracy and capitalism.
Democracy says everybody has the right to be president of the US or
people are equal as far as it is concerned but capitalism gives this
opportunity by linking it to wealth. If you yourself are not wealthy or not
supported by people financially then you stand no chance. Even if you are
the most competent person for the post.
Yassir Fazaga: One does not confirm or affirm the other, right?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: Yes it contradicts in the sense that it makes the claim of
democracy null & void and this was one of the good criticisms of the
Marxist theory. They say that the western democracy is only formal and
not real because it says everyone has the right to enter the parliament. This
is in the constitution but I cannot be a member of the parliament if I am
not supported by a political party or if I am not rich. Thats why
interestingly some people in the west who have Marxist leanings say that
even election contradicts the purpose of democracy because you are saying
some people are more competent than others but democracy says no
everyone supposedly is equal. So what do we do? They say we do what the
Greeks did. Make it by lot. Hence who will enter the parliament is chosen
by lot. They say this is more democratic than elections.

In Islam there is no such contradiction and I will give you some examples.
Islam is based on belief in the Creator so everything is designed to
strengthen and preserve that beliefeverything! You worship for this
purpose so as not to become weak, social life is organized in such a way
too and that is why it is very difficult for people like you who live in non
Islamic societies to do all that is required of him e.g if you live in a
country like Saudi Arabia you can pray 5 times in a mosque as there are
thousands of mosques.
In Egypt and Sudan the opportunity is relatively less but still you meet
Muslims and learn from them but of course some scholars said it is better
to go to non Islamic lands if u have to propagate faith because dawah
cannot be done while you are staying at home so even if this is done at the
expense of that good opportunity, its probably worth it.
Also there is no contradiction between orders and prohibitions. In fact the
Quran justifies orders and prohibitions in terms of that specific purpose.
e.g belief makes people brothers and sisters.
Yassir Fazaga: As the verse goes
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: Yes indeed so anything that militates this is forbidden.
Thats why alcoholic drinks are forbidden, so are drugs, it is clearly stated
in the Quran



So as a result of drinking people become enemies and they hate each other
secondary to alcohol intoxication.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh you said there is this harmony between principles
proclaimed and the prohibitions and obligations that go along with it.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: Yes
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh we talked earlier about the rational argument for
credibility of revelation and you chose a verse from the Quran Had this
book been from someone other than God, they would have found many

discrepancies therein. This is about the Quran and as you said earlier any
other previous scripture that was in its original form.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: Yes because God does not contradict Himself.
Yassir Fazaga: As that is neither befitting His majesty, nor His character
and you were giving us an example here about how in other forms the
principles proclaimed do not necessarily go in parallel unlike the teachings
of the Quran and then u gave an example of brotherhood and what is
prohibited so as to keep a harmony between people and you were about to
give us some more examples.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: Yes more examples again of brotherhood for example
if people are brothers, then there rule is a brother, so he cannot be a
dictator. Dictatorship is someone heard me criticising democracy and
every time you criticise democracy people think that you are defending
dictatorship because they think these are the only two alternatives. I say
no, if I say I am against the majority of the people legislating for me of
course I would say I am against the one individual legislating for me and
some philosophers and Muslim theologian say if you follow someone
consistently if you obey them then you are taking him as a god even if you
dont call him god.
Yassir Fazaga: Because absolute obedience is only befitting to God.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: Yes. This is what a dictator demands. He would not be
your brother; he would be your master or your god. Also say the example
of zakaat and interest or usury. Zakaat takes from the wealthy and gives to
the poor. But usury is from the poor to the rich. God could not have
allowed usury. So God could not have allowed usury because this
contradicts the principle of zakah. On the one hand you say the rich should
give to the poor while on the other you say no poor should give the rich.
Yassir Fazaga: Its interesting you say this, and if I may share with you
and our viewers out there, one time I was doing a paper on interest in the
United States and we have what we call pay day cash loans and these are
places that you can go to receive a loan from them and once you have your
pay check they would take their money back but you would have to pay

them of course interest. And I was surprised to see the amount of interest
they charge.
On a credit card for example they charge about 17.99 annual percentage
rate. When I went there they pay day cash loans people were charging
466.88 percent. And I remember the number vividly and said why do
people come to you and they said well majority of them are poor people
who cannot afford a credit card because they have bad credit so they come
us. The poorer they are getting the more interest is being charged from
them.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: The question of poverty cannot be solved at all. And
that is why one learned person directed me to, I think a saying, I am not
sure its a hadith or a statement from one of the companions of the Prophet
SAW perhaps Omar ra, he said when you give dont distribute your zakaah
across many people in small denominations like ten dollars and so on.
Give a big amount to someone, make him rich and then you solve his
problem. Next time he wont need any more charity.
So Zakaah is supposed to solve the problem of poverty not just to help the
poor or worse make the poor poorer. In fact one American writer, I forgot
the name of his book, he said and he is not a Muslim, if there was a tax
somewhere around 3%, some figure very near to zakaat on the capital of
the rich people in the United States there would have been no poverty in
the world. 3% annual on someone like Bill Gates. So if you take zakaah
from that person annually it solves the problems of poverty.
Yassir Fazaga: To be honest, Bill Gates has been very charitable lately.
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: What he is spending is much less than zakah (smiles).
In Islam the family is the basic unit of society and therefore everything is
designed in such a way to preserve that unit. No sex outside marriage. And
that also is the reason why people are allowed to marry more than one
wives. Because if you feel you need to marry another wife and you are
failing this might lead you to have sex outside marriage. Then there is the
hijab and prohibition of free mingling of men and women because this
increases the probability of sex outside marriage. And then there is severe

punishment for committing adultery or fornication. Many people now


think that this punishment is very severe.
Of course if you allow women to dress like what they are dressing now
and to mingle with men and you see many people committing fornication
or adultery of course you would be against whipping them or stoning them
because you would be stoning one quarter of half the society and no one
would accept this. So you have to take the religion as a whole. If you take
part of the religion then it becomes inconsistent, if you replace on part
with another then it becomes inconsistent.
That is why it is wrong to say or claim that religion can change with the
change in time or change in place because it is very consistent. If it is
consistent as it is then if you make any changes in it, it would make it
inconsistent.
Yassir Fazaga: Shaykh does this apply to all things in the Quran. You
gave example of brotherhood, is this consistency all over the place?
Dr Jaafar Sheikh: Yes it is all over the place. The main relationship with
Muslims who worship god, I dont want people to think that Muslims are
only the people who follow Prophet Muhammad SAW. People who
followed Jesus AS were Muslims, people who followed Moses AS were
Muslims. But it is the rule in the Quran that if you follow on Prophet, you
should believe in all Prophets. There is no reason for you to pick and
choose.
And also if you were follower of one Prophet and then another Prophet
comes after him then you must follow that prophet. So it is wrong
argument that some people use that you say I am following my Prophet
Jesus or Moses why should I follow Muhammad (SAW)? We say that this
is a contradiction.
Because if Muhammad SAW is a prophet and he says that God sent him as
His final prophet then you should follow him. And if you study your
religion carefully you will find in that religion itself the reason why you
should follow the prophet that comes after the prophet in whom you
believe in. So when we say that all these earlier messages were like the

Quran in being consistent in making people happy in this life and the
hereafter and so on.
The only main difference is that this religion is more comprehensive than
others and that in some of the details it is not like earlier religions as this
religion is for all humanity not for a particular group of people at a
particular time. So all people at particular time and places are invited to
the fundamentals of the religion: that your worship none but God that you
do this you do that, but when it comes to details there are differences.
Yassir Fazaga: The main message remains the same but legislations to
serve that may change from one time or place. Shaykh Jaafar its been a
joy being with you here in this episode and we look forward to seeing and
hearing more of you in coming episodes. We this we come to the
conclusion of this part of the program hoping that you enjoyed it as much
as I did. Hoping that you would join us next time, until that
assalamualaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu.

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