1 Author’s acknowledgments: The following scholars and intellectuals provided valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this essay: Dr. Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Dr. Ovamir Anjum, Dr. Yasien Mohamed, Dr. Tahir Wyatt, Dr. Zara Khan, Dr. Tallal Zeni, Dr. Shoaib Ahmed Malik, Dr. Yasir Qadhi, Dr. Hatem al-Haj, Sh. Mohamed Elshinawy, Dr. Shabbir Akhtar, Dr. Zohair Abdul-Rahman, Sh. Muntasir Zaman, Jamie Turner, Hamza Tzortzis, and Dr. Edward Moad.
2 The Hellenic period typically refers to 507–323 BCE and the Hellenistic period refers to 323–31 BCE.
3 Peter Watson,
The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God, 2nd ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). The phrase appears only in the title, but trends in belief are discussed on pp. 17–29. For the particularly brutal fashion in which the attempted erasure of God from human consciousness has occurred during the “Bolshevik crusade for scientific atheism,” refer to pp. 200–219.
4 Amongst Christian philosophers, most notably Alvin Plantinga, the idea that proof is not necessary is often termed
reformed epistemology. Kelly James Clark, “Reformed Epistemology,” in
The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, ed. George Kurian (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012),
https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470670606.wbecc1149. See also Alvin Plantinga,
Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
5 Kalām is defined as the discourse using philosophical proofs to establish and defend religious doctrine; see ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī,
al-Mawāqif fī ʿilm al-kalām (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, n.d.), 7. There have been ample academic discussions over how this discourse came to acquire the appellation of “
kalām” (which literally means “speech”). See, for example, Harry Wolfson,
The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 63 and Alexander Treiger, “Origins of Kalam,” in
The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, ed. Sabine Schmidtke (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2016), 33.
6 Rodrigo Adem describes this as “[
kalām’s] most central thesis: that religion, and in particular belief in God and the prophets, must be established on the basis of purely rational proofs in order to be valid.” Rodrigo Adem, “The Intellectual Genealogy of Ibn Taymīya” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2015), 62.
7 Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī,
al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1988), 33. al-Ghazālī acknowledges that some people may have found certainty through
kalām but explains what was true regarding his situation and the situation of many others.
8 He explains that he sought to obtain certitude by going back to the foundations of knowledge—sensorial perception and rationality—only to find that he was able to cast doubt on these as well, resulting in him experiencing two months in which his mental state was that of a radical skeptic though he did not verbalize it or affirm it creedally (
wa dāma qarīban min shahrayn ana fīhimā ʿalá madhab al-safsaṭah bi-ḥukm al-ḥāl lā bi-ḥukm al-nuṭq wa-al-maqāl). Al-Ghazālī,
al-Munqidh, 29. An analysis of his doctrine of
kashf (spiritual unveiling) is beyond the scope of this article.
9 In fact, due to the extensive and intricate nature of the rational arguments Ibn Taymīyyah uses in his critiques of
kalām, some have labeled his discourse a
kalām of its own, although this ignores the epistemological differences between him and his interlocutors.
10 See, for instance, Adem, “Intellectual Genealogy,” 541 and Jon Hoover,
Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 20. See also Nicholas Heer, “The Priority of Reason in the Interpretation of Scripture: Ibn Taymīyyah and the Mutakallimūn,” in
Literary Heritage of Classical Islam: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of James A. Bellamy, ed. Mustansir Mir (in collab. with J. E. Fossum) (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993).
11 The most extensive studies undertaken so far of Ibn Taymīyyah’s epistemological framework include Carl Sharif El-Tobgui,
Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation: A Study of Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 253–76 and, particularly on his conceptualization of the
fiṭrah, Yasir Kazi [Qadhi], “Reconciling Reason and Revelation in the Writings of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328): An Analytical Study of Ibn Taymiyya’s
Darʾ al-taʿāruḍ ” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2013), 232–92. In addition, the significance of Ibn Taymīyyah’s ideas within epistemological debates on belief in God has been discussed in Jamie B. Turner, “An Islamic Account of Reformed Epistemology,”
Philosophy East and West, December 13, 2019,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pew.0.0193 and, previously, in Wael Hallaq, “Ibn Taymiyya on the Existence of God,”
Acta Orientalia 52 (1991): 66. However, the present essay offers a detailed examination of Ibn Taymīyyah’s epistemic approach to atheism with reference to his writings on radical skepticism, which has not been hitherto undertaken.
12 For a review of the range of perspectives and writings on the
fiṭrah by Muslim scholars throughout history, see Yasien Mohamed,
Fitrah: The Islamic Concept of Human Nature (London: Ta-Ha Publishers, 1996), 35–69.
13 This is the title with which the work was originally published; however, the editor of its most recent edition, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥasan Qāʾid, suggests that Ibn Taymīyyah’s smaller work on Greek logic did not survive and that this unnamed work is a separate one that has been referred to as
al-Intiṣār li-ahl al-athar (Supporting the people of narration). See Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Intiṣār li-ahl al-athar, al-maṭbūʿ bi-ism naqḍ al-manṭiq, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥasan Qaʾid (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 1435/2014), 24 (editor’s introduction). For simplicity and clarity, this work will be referred to in this essay by its conventional title
Naqḍ al-manṭiq; all citations are in reference to the edition cited here.
14 The longstanding scripturalist trend in theology has been referred to variously as
atharī (an adjective referring to
āthār, or narrated statements from early Muslim scholars),
Ḥanbalī (an ascription to the theology championed by Imam Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal),
aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth (companions of hadith or hadith folk), and
salafī (an ascription to the
salaf al-ṣāliḥ, or pious predecessors in the early Muslim community). In
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, Ibn Taymīyyah affirms ascribing to the methodology of the
salaf (213) and explains that the relative scarcity of theological dispute amongst the Ḥanbalīs was due to the abundance of clear statements from Imam Aḥmad on creedal matters (235). For further discussion on these labels, see Adem, “Intellectual Genealogy.” See also Christopher Melchert, “The Piety of the Hadith Folk,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 34, no. 3 (2002): 425–39 and H. Lauzière, “The Construction of Salafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism from the Perspective of Conceptual History,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 3 (2010): 369–89.
15 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 41–43. This “stalemate” is termed
takāfuʾ al-adillah, meaning equipollence or the equal weight of evidence on both sides. Referred to as
isostheneia in Greek, it was an important concept used by the ancient skeptics.
16 Clive Borst writes, “Doctrines and threats of solipsism are much older than the introduction of the term ‘solipsism’ to mark them. The term derives from the Latin
solus ipse. This means literally ‘self alone,’ and less literally either ‘I alone exist’ or else ‘I alone am conscious,’ yielding, in the first case, a more idealist form of solipsism querying the existence of an independent material world and, in the second case, a more materialist form allowing for the (possible) existence of a material world but again not countenancing the existence of other minds or centers of consciousness.” Clive Borst, “Solipsism,” in
A Companion to Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 747.
17 For a more detailed discussion of its implications, see Gary Ebbs, “Skepticism, Objectivity, and Brains in Vats,” in
Debating Self-Knowledge, Anthony Brueckner and Gary Ebbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 28–54.
18 Nick Bostrom, “Do We Live in a Computer Simulation?”
New Scientist 192, no. 2579 (November 19, 2006), 38–39.
19 Mike Wall, “ ‘We’re Probably Living in a Simulation,’ Elon Musk Says,” Space.com, September 7, 2018,
https://www.space.com/41749-elon-musk-living-in-simulation-rogan-podcast.html.
20 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-al-naql, 10 vols., 2nd ed., ed. Muḥammad Rashād Sālim (Riyadh: Jāmiʿat al-Imām Muḥammad b. Saʿūd al-Islāmiyyah, 1411/1991), 5:254.
21 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 5:255–56.
23 Richard Garner, “Morality: The Final Delusion?,”
Philosophy Now 82 (2011): 18–20. If one believes in moral error theory, what is one to do about moral discourse? While moral fictionalism espouses pretending moral values exist, Garner himself advocates moral abolitionism, arguing that we should attempt to eliminate the discourse of morality altogether.
24 Indeed, Hartry Field argues that a “default entitlement” to such axioms is the only philosophical justification that can be proffered. He writes, “Many of our beliefs and inferential rules in mathematics, logic, and methodology can be argued for from more basic beliefs and rules, without any circularity. But this is not so for the most basic beliefs and rules: we must be, in a sense, entitled to them by default.” Hartry Field, “Recent Debates about the A Priori,” in
Oxford Studies in Epistemology, ed. Tamar Szabo Gendler and John Hawthorne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1:81.
25 Skepticism towards causality has been a major focus of scholarly discussion surrounding the views of David Hume, who pointed out the lack of rational justification for causal inference in spite of its necessity for the sound operation of our minds. As James Hill explains, “Our belief systems are saturated with causal inference and we would be prisoners of our own minds if we doubted all causal relations.” James Hill, “Hume’s Theory of Causation: Is There More Than One?”
Teorie Vědy / Theory of Science 33, no. 2 (2011): 233–49. See also Graciela De Pierris, “Hume’s Pyrrhonian Skepticism and the Belief in Causal Laws,”
Journal of the History of Philosophy 39, no. 3 (2001): 351–83.
26 Ludwig Wittgenstein,
On Certainty, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. D. Paul and G.E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), §115. See also Duncan Pritchard, “Faith and Reason,”
Philosophy 81 (2017): 101–18. Pritchard writes:
What is particularly interesting in this context is that there is quite a lot of evidence that Wittgenstein’s remarks on hinge commitments were heavily influenced by the work of John Henry Newman, and in particular his defence of the rationality of religious belief in An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. In this work, Newman opposes a Lockean conception of our basis for religious belief. Locke famously argued in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that “reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.” Accordingly, he maintained that religious beliefs should be put before the tribunal of reason just like any other (10).
27 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:133. In addition to explicit denial of God’s existence, he discusses the broader notion of supposing one does not need God (
al-istighnāʾ ʿan al-Ṣāniʿ).
28 Some moral abolitionists believe that people should be actively dissuaded from believing in moral values. Joel Marks writes, “Finally I reached a point where I felt that, far from needing to hide my amorality from the world, I should share it with the world. It would be a gift. At the very least, it was important—perhaps the most important thing in the world! I also saw the humor in my situation: it was not lost on me that I was becoming an unbelieving proselytizer.” Joel Marks,
Ethics Without Morals: In Defence of Amorality (New York: Routledge, 2013), 14. Other moral abolitionists believe that one should not only abolish asserting moral judgments but also abolish asserting the truth of moral error theory and the desirability of moral abolitionism; “the main reason for the strong [non-assertive moral abolitionist] approach is to obtain something like Pyrrhonian impassivity with respect to morality, a therapeutic release from belief in and concern with as much normativity as possible.” Jason Dockstader, “Nonassertive Moral Abolitionism,”
Metaphilosophy 50, no. 4 (2019): 481–502.
29 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ Taʻāruḍ, 5:130–1. Note that while he repudiates the view that all that exists must be perceptible to us in this world, he affirms instead the view that all that exists is
in principle perceptible, even if it be only in the afterlife (
al-mawjūd huwa mā yumkin al-iḥsās bihi wa law fī al-ākhirah). See also, Ibn Taymīyyah,
Bayān talbīs al-jahmīyah (Medina: Maktabah Malik Fahd al-Wataniyyah, 2005), 2:341.
30 In this vein, Leo Groarke writes, “Sceptical arguments are put forward as an attack on realist truth, countering the notion that we can transcend our subjective outlook by arguing that our beliefs are necessarily relative to human nature and perception, the culture that we live in, philosophical commitments, and so on. This reasoning culminates in the decision to suspend judgment on the truth of any claim, but here as elsewhere the concern is truth in the realist sense.” Leo Groarke,
Greek Scepticism: Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 20.
31 Don Garrett, “ ‘A Small Tincture of Pyrrhonism’: Skepticism and Naturalism in Hume’s Science of Man,” in
Pyrrhonian Skepticism, ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 68–98.
32 For a helpful overview, see Whitley Kaufman, “New Atheism and Its Critics,”
Philosophy Compass 14, no. 1 (2018).
33 For instance, Richard Dawkins writes, “God’s existence or non‐existence is a scientific fact about the universe, discoverable in principle if not in practice.” Richard Dawkins,
The God Delusion (New York: Mariner Books, 2008), 72–73. Victor Stenger writes, “By this moment in time science has advanced sufficiently to make a definitive statement on the existence or nonexistence of a God.” Victor Stenger,
God: The Failed Hypothesis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), 11.
34 Shoaib Ahmed Malik, “Defining Atheism and the Burden of Proof,”
Philosophy 93, no. 2 (2018): 279–301.
35 This is likely the most common subconscious motivation. Shoaib Malik also comments on other more deliberate motivations: “Moreover, as I have already demonstrated, lack of belief in God and the denial of God’s existence are two separate positions (the first being a neutral standpoint). Why is it, then, that some atheists are so insistent on incorporating the epistemological ‘lack of belief’ under the term ‘atheism’? It seems there is an advantageous gain in widening the net of atheism as a more inclusive position because it could help gain social and political currency” (Malik, “Defining Atheism,” 299). He notes that the census numbers for “atheism” effectively double based on definitions.
36 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Bayān talbīs al-jahmīyah, 2:341.
37 Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Introduction to Pyrrhonian Skepticism,” in
Pyrrhonian Skepticism, ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 4.
38 “Descartes himself was not a Cartesian skeptic. He was an antiskeptic. Nevertheless, there is good reason to speak of ‘Cartesian skepticism,’ since Descartes clarified and struggled against the stance we have called ‘Cartesian skepticism.’ ” Steven Luper, “Cartesian Skepticism,” in
The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, ed. Duncan Pritchard and Sven Bernecker (New York: Routledge, 2011), 416.
39 While Descartes regarded the subjective inner experience as indubitable, Immanuel Kant believed that this inner experience necessarily depended on the existence of an outer experience. Barry Stroud, “Kant's ‘Transcendental Deduction’” in
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: A Critical Guide, ed. James R. O'Shea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 114–15.
40 Jessica Wilson, “The Regress Argument against Cartesian Skepticism,”
Analysis 72, no. 4 (2012): 668–73,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/analys/ans117.
41 Wilson, “Regress Argument,” 672.
42 D. E. Machuca, “Ancient Skepticism: Overview,”
Philosophy Compass 6, no. 4 (2011): 234–45.
43 Groarke,
Greek Scepticism, 31–32. For an overview of the subject of skepticism, see Allan Hazlett,
A Critical Introduction to Skepticism (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).
44 Bett writes, “Diogenes (9.62) reports Antigonus as saying that Pyrrho’s lack of trust in his senses led him to ignore precipices, oncoming wagons and dangerous dogs, and that his friends had to follow him around to protect him from these various everyday hazards.” Richard Bett, “Pyrrho,” in
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2018, ed. Edward N. Zalta,
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/pyrrho/.
45 M. F. Burnyeat,
Can the Sceptic Live His Scepticism? Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 205–35.
46 Numenius writes, “Arcesilaus persisted in refuting everything, just like a Pyrrhonian except for the name.” Cited in Christopher Craig Dupuis, “The Influence of Pyrrho of Elis and the Pyrrhonian Praxis of Aporetic Language” (master’s thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2014), 69.
47 This is called the “dogmatic interpretation” of the Academic skeptics. “The fundamental issue regarding Arcesilaus’ skepticism is whether it should be understood as a philosophical position or as a strictly dialectical practice with no doctrinal content.” Harald Thorsrud, “Arcesilaus: Socratic Skepticism in Plato’s Academy,”
Lexicon Philosophicum: Hellenistic Theories of Knowledge, special issue (2018): 195–220.
48 See Casey Perin, “Making Sense of Arcesilaus,” in
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 45, ed. Brad Inwood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 326.
49 Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, eds.,
Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 938.
50 Groarke,
Greek Scepticism, 29.
51 In this regard, he was an influence on Arcesilaus (d. 241 BCE), under whose direction the academy of Plato became overtly skeptical in its approach. Known as the “Academic skeptics” or “skeptics of Plato’s academy,” Arcesilaus and his followers directed their efforts towards simply refuting all claims made by any of their opponents. According to Cicero (d. 43 BCE):
Arcesilaus, the pupil of Polemo, was the first to derive this principal point from various of Plato’s books and from Socratic discourses—that there is nothing that the senses or the mind can grasp. . . . He is said to have belittled every criterion of mind and sense, and begun the practice—though it was absolutely Socratic—not of indicating his own opinion, but of speaking against what anyone stated as his [i.e., the speaker’s] opinion.
De Oratore 3.67, as cited in A. A. Long, “Plato and Hellenistic Philosophy,” in A Companion to Plato, ed. H. H. Benson (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 425.
52 Socrates, as seen throughout Plato’s dialogues, challenges any knowledge that is not grounded in a clear definition by asking questions of the form “What is X?”
53 Groarke,
Greek Scepticism, 74n26.
54 Robert Sharples,
Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy (London and New York: Psychology Press, 1996), 11–12.
55 Georges Tamer, “The Curse of Philosophy: Ibn Taymiyya as a Philosopher in Contemporary Islamic Thought,” in
Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law: Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, ed. Birgit Krawietz and Georges Tamer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 336.
56 al-Taftāzānī,
Sharḥ al-maqāṣid (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah, 1971), 1:121.
57 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 1:164.
58 Patricia O’Grady writes, “A very simple definition of sophists, and one that is devoid of Plato’s dogmatism and malevolence, is this: sophists were freelance, mostly non-Athenian independent teachers who traveled throughout Ancient Greece from city to city making their living out of the new demand for education.” She also writes, “Antagonism towards the Sophists developed when their skills were put to winning, rather than to discovering truth. . . . The once complimentary term came to be applied in a derogatory way, a usage which it retains to a considerable extent to this day.” Patricia F. O’Grady,
The Sophists: An Introduction (Bristol: Classical Press, 2008), 12, 15.
59 W. K. C. Guthrie,
A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3, part 1,
The Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 33–34.
60 Robin Waterfield,
The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and Sophists, Oxford World’s Classics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 211.
61 Baldwin R. Hergenhahn,
An Introduction to the History of Psychology, 6th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2008), 42.
62 Hergenhahn,
Introduction to the History of Psychology.
63 On the influence of the Sophists on Pyrrhonian skepticism, see Groarke,
Greek Scepticism, 49–52.
64 Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī,
Kitāb al-tawḥīd, ed. Bekir Topaloğlu and Muhammed Aruçi (Beirut: Dār Ṣadr, 2010), 222–25. See also Ulrich Rudolph,
Al-Māturīdī and the Development of Sunnī Theology in Samarqand, trans. Rodrigo Adem (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 151.
65 ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī,
al-Farq bayn al-firaq (Cairo: Maktabat Ibn Sīnā), 280.
66 Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwaynī,
al-Burhān fī uṣūl al-fiqh (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 2011), 20.
67 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:38 (“
aʿẓam safsaṭah min ghayrihī min anwāʿ al-safsaṭah”). See also his discussion in
Darʾ, 3:133, cited earlier.
68 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 6:15.
69 Although there are some similar observations to this point made some six centuries after Ibn Taymīyyah by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ibn Taymīyyah provides the epistemic alternative through the
fiṭrah and revelation. On the other hand, “Given the elusive nature of Wittgenstein’s remarks on skepticism, there is still little to no consensus on how they should be interpreted or, more generally, whether Wittgenstein’s remarks alone can represent a valid response to radical skepticism.” Nicola Claudio Salvatore, “Wittgenstein: Epistemology” in
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
https://www.iep.utm.edu/witt-epi/.
70 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:403. In this regard, he also labels Pharaoh and his followers as radical skeptics (Ibn Taymīyyah,
Bayān talbīs al-jahmīyah, 2:341).
71 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:404.
72 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 10:241.
73 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:39–40.
74 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 6:11.
75 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:90.
76 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:37–38.
77 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn (Lahore: Idārat Turjumān al-Sunnah, 1976), 1:8.
78 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:59. He also mentions the fact that dialogue using evidence is futile with the follower of
safsaṭah or
qarmaṭah because such a person denies manifest realities in the natural and scriptural realms respectively. See
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 159.
79 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:323.
80 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:288.
81 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 1:30–31. See also
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 332.
82 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:363–64 and 1:416–17.
83 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:363–64.
84 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:426.
85 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 6:67. Ibn Taymīyyah also states, “and this love of God intensifies according to one’s knowledge of Him and the soundness of one’s
fiṭrah. And it diminishes with diminished knowledge and the pollution of one’s
fiṭrah with corruptive vain desires” (
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:73).
86 For instance, in
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, Ibn Taymīyyah mentions that “souls are innately compelled to love justice and its supporters, and to despise injustice and its supporters, and this love located in the
fiṭrah is what is meant by it (justice) being good, and this detestation is what is meant by it (injustice) being evil” (
al-Radd, 1:429). See also the commentary on this provided by Ovamir Anjum,
Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 224.
87 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:316.
88 Ibn Taymīyyah, for instance, mentions that the knowledge of counting is primordial intuitive sensorial knowledge (
min awāʾil al-ʿulūm al-badīhīyah al-ḥissīyah); Ibn Taymīyyah,
Bayān talbīs al-jahmīyah, 4:126–27. For the connection between sensory perception and
fiṭrah see also El-Tobgui,
Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation, 264.
89 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 45.
90 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 202.
91 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Majmūʿ al-fatāwá (Mansoura: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 2001), 2:50.
92 See, for instance, Wael Hallaq, “Ibn Taymiyya on the Existence of God,” 66 and Kazi, “Reconciling Reason and Revelation,” 312.
93 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 6:105.
94 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:422.
95 El-Tobgui,
Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation, 275–6.
96 A useful analogy, offered by Wittgenstein, is that of a student who constantly interrupts the teacher by questioning the existence of things, questioning the truth of every event in history, and questioning the meaning of words so that the teacher is unable to make any progress in teaching anything. This is akin to someone looking for an object in a room and continually opening the same drawer. “He has not learned to look for things. And in the same way, this pupil has not learned how to ask questions.” Wittgenstein,
On Certainty, § 310–16.
97 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:253.
98 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:126.
99 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:129. See also Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī,
Kitāb Nihāyat al-iqdām fī ʿilm al-kalām (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqāfah al-Dīniyyah, 2009), 119.
100 al-Shahrastāni,
Nihāyat al-iqdām, 121.
101 The text only mentions “Abū Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Baṣrī”; however, the editor, Muḥammad Rashād Sālim, surmises that the figure in question could be Abū Muḥammad b. ʿAbdik al-Baṣrī (d. 347 AH), as no other biographical entry can be found for a similar name. See
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:494, n. 1.
102 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ,
8:507.
103 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ,
8:516, referring to Qur’an verses 6:76–80.
104 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ,
8:525.
105 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah,
Miftāḥ dār al-saʿādah (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 2010), 2:796.
106 For a more detailed discussion of Ibn Taymīyyah’s critique of the extramental existence of the universal, see Wael Hallaq,
Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), xxii–xxiv.
107 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:344–45.
108 On the evolution of philosophical proofs in response to doubts, see for instance Hannah C. Erlwein,
Arguments for God’s Existence in Classical Islamic Thought: A Reappraisal of the Discourse (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019). One aspect that evolved, for instance, is the relationship between proving the createdness of accidents and the createdness of the world as a whole, which has been examined in Ayman Shihadeh, “Mereology in
Kalām: A New Reading of the Proof from Accidents for Creation,”
Oriens 48 (2020), 5–39.
109 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:286–88.
110 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:211–12 and
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 337.
111 See also Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 282 where he mentions that the majority of human knowledge is the result of analogical reasoning.
112 Douglas R. Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,
Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 135. They also write: “What we mean by this thesis is that each concept in our mind owes its existence to a long succession of analogies made unconsciously over many years, initially giving birth to the concept and continuing to enrich it over the course of our lifetime” (3).
113 For more information on Ibn Taymīyyah’s theory of signs, see Turner, “Islamic Account of Reformed Epistemology,” 18–23.
114 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:351.
115 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:531.
116 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:533–34.
117 See for instance Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ 8:518, quoting Abū Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Baṣrī.
118 “This is why many of the leaders in worship and
taṣawwuf instructed adherence to a practice of
dhikr (remembrance of God), and they made that a gateway for arriving at truth, and this is good if they accompany it with
tadabbur (contemplation) of the Qur’an and Sunnah and following that (i.e., avoiding innovations).” Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 60.
119 In general, he characterizes it as “wasting time, abundant delirium, and fatiguing of minds.” Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:362.
120 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:72. There is also a colloquial expression in Arabic that rhetorically asks one who is taking a circuitous and cumbersome approach to a simple matter, “Where is your ear, O Juḥā?” The character Juḥā (who may have been a real person named Abū al-Ghuṣn Dujayn al-Fizārī) is the subject of a variety of amusing tales and folklore; “Mullah Nasruddin” is the corresponding figure in the Persianate and South Asian Muslim world.
121 This is the description used by Ibn Taymīyyah’s student Ibn al-Qayyim in
al-Ṣawāʿiq al-mursalah (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣimah, 1408 AH), 1:335. The phrase itself is borrowed from a wife’s description of her husband in the famous hadith describing the story of Umm Zarʿ (
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 2448a,
https://sunnah.com/muslim/44/135).
122 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 2:206.
123 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:255. He also mentions that familiarity with some abstruse sciences that are intrinsically sound, such as mathematical disciplines, is actually a religiously desirable goal according to the scholars of the Sunnah since it strengthens the mind akin to exercising for the body. See also Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:105.
124 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:197. “
Fa-mithlu hadhā al-taṭwīl wa-al-taʿqīd qad yakūnu fīhi manfaʿah li-man yusafsiṭ wa yuʿānid.”
125 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 286–287: “
fa-awrathahum al-manṭiq tark mā ʿalayhi ulāʾika min tilka al-ʿaqāʾid.” In a similar vein, Toni Vogel Carey argues that philosophy progresses only by destroying old arguments, doubting current knowledge, or clarifying concepts. Toni Vogel Carey, “Is Philosophy Progressive?,”
Philosophy Now, 59 (2007): 19–21.
126 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:46.
127 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:238.
128 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:306. On the corruption of the
fiṭrah, see also Kazi, “Reconciling Reason and Revelation,” 277.
129 Ibn Taymīyyah explains that one of the causes of corruption of the
fiṭrah is a lack of familiarity with the Sunnah and with hadith.
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 202.
130 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:37–38.
131 This is akin to the distinction between
production by reason,
epistemic merit, and
rational support as discussed by Don Garrett, “ ‘A Small Tincture of Pyrrhonism,’ ” 80. Ibn Taymīyyah draws an interesting connection between theology and epistemology by discussing the angelic and satanic sources of belief production; see
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 47–57.
132 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:460: “
bal yaḥtāju kathīr minhum fī huṣūli dhālika ilá sabab muʿīn lil-fiṭrah.”
133 Ibn al-Qayyim,
Miftāḥ dār al-saʿādah, 2:889–91.
134 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 5:299.
135 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:300.
136 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 9:161: “
wa-hiya ṭarīqah athbatū bihā al-jalī bi-al-khafī wa-arādū bihā īḍāḥ al-wāḍiḥ.”
137 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:131.
138 See Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:284, where he says that it is the light of clear reason (
ṣarīḥ al-maʿqūl) combined with the light of authentic scripture (
ṣaḥīḥ al-manqūl). Similarly, Ibn al-Qayyim writes that it is the light of revelation (
waḥy) combined with the
fiṭrah or the intellect (
ʿaql), or the light of religion (
sharīʿah) combined with the
fiṭrah. See Ibn al-Qayyim,
al-Ṣawāʿiq al-mursalah, 3:851–52 and Ibn al-Qayyim,
al-Wābil al-ṣayyib (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth, 1999), 1:53.
139 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Majmūʿ al-fatāwá, 16:191–93.
140 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Majmūʿ al-fatāwá, 16:199.
141 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Majmūʿ al-fatāwá, 16:199.
142 This section parallels an abbreviated discussion on Münchausen’s trilemma in an earlier article. Zohair Abdul-Rahman and Nazir Khan, “In Pursuit of Conviction II: Humanity Needs God,”
Yaqeen, October 11, 2019,
https://yaqeeninstitute.org/zohair/in-pursuit-of-conviction-ii-humanity-needs-god/.
143 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:458.
144 These initial two modes thus represent the skeptic’s rejection of the viewpoint being advanced by his opponent, hence sometimes termed the “material modes” or the “challenging modes,” while the remaining modes, which comprise the trilemma, entail the skeptic’s inquiry into the justification of the opponent’s viewpoint and are hence termed the “formal modes” or the “dialectical modes.” See J. B. Bullock, “The Challenges of the Modes of Agrippa,”
Apeiron 49, no. 4 (2016): 5.
145 Also commonly known as Münchhausen’s trilemma.
146 There are also some permutations that combine these options but do not significantly impact the trilemma. See, for instance, P. Tramel, “Haack’s Foundherentism is a Foundationalism,”
Synthese 160, no. 2 (2008): 215–28.
147 Diego E. Machuca, “Agrippan Pyrrhonism and the Challenge of Disagreement,”
Journal of Philosophical Research 40 (2015): 23–39.
148 And no finite mind can possess an infinite series of justifications for belief or even justify the existence of an infinite series. A detailed response is offered in Stephen Wright, “Does Klein’s Infinitism Offer a Response to Agrippa’s Trilemma?,”
Synthese 190 (2013), 1113–30.
149 For a discussion of the problematic nature of these options identified by Hellenistic philosophers, see P. D. Klein, “Epistemic Justification and the Limits of Pyrrhonism,” in
Pyrrhonism in Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. D. Machuca, The New Synthese Historical Library, vol. 70 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012).
150 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 339.
151 Ibn Taymīyyah frequently cites an anecdote of al-Rāzī and a Muʿtazilī theologian presenting their intractable disagreement before Najm al-Dīn Kubrá (d. 618 AH), who told them that through spiritual insights (
wāridāt), he was able to attain the certainty that eluded them in their philosophical debates. Ibn Taymīyyah,
Bayān talbīs al-Jahmīyah, 2:184–86;
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 64–65; and
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 7:430–32. See also El-Tobgui,
Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation, 295–96.
152 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 49.
153 See, for instance, Qur’an 16:3 and 38:27. On this issue, Ibn al-Qayyim writes, “
Bāṭil refers either to something false that does not exist or to something that exists but has no benefit.” Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah,
Ighāthat al-lahfān (Mecca: Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid, 2011), 429. See also Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 274. This can be taken further by arguing that both usages are actually fundamentally linked conceptually.
154 John Whittaker, “The Logic of Authoritative Revelations,”
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 68, no. 1–3 (2010): 167–81.
155 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 339;
al-Radd ʿalá al-manṭiqīyīn, 1:13–14.
156 While foundationalism is the view that basic beliefs justify nonbasic beliefs, classical foundationalism adds two requirements. First, nonbasic beliefs have to be logically deduced from basic beliefs. Second, the basic beliefs must be infallible, that is, it must be logically impossible for them to be erroneous. The second requirement falls subject to solipsism and other varieties of radical skepticism examined earlier. The problem with classical foundationalism is that the vast majority of seemingly self-evident beliefs are deemed unjustified. See Noah Mercelino Lemos,
An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 51–55.
157 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Majmūʿ al-fatāwá, 16:195.
158 Jamie Turner, “Islamic Account of Reformed Epistemology,” 25.
159 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:114. See also
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:305, where he mentions that a child hit on the head knows by the
fiṭrah that someone is responsible for this and does not need a philosophical argument.
160 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 2:59.
161 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 10:76.
162 For instance, preschool-age children act according to an assumption of deterministic causal relations, accepting stochastic causal inferences only when the former do not match occurrences. Laura E. Schulz and Jessica Sommerville, “God Does Not Play Dice: Causal Determinism and Preschoolers’ Causal Inferences,”
Child Development 77, no. 2 (2006): 427–42.
163 Konika Banerjee and Paul Bloom, “Why Did This Happen to Me? Religious Believers’ and Non-Believers’ Teleological Reasoning about Life Events,”
Cognition 133, no. 1 (2014): 277–303.
164 Justin L. Barrett and Jonathan A. Lanman, “The Science of Religious Beliefs,”
Religion 38, no. 2 (2008), 109–124; Deborah Kelemen and Cara DiYanni, “Intuitions about Origins: Purpose and Intelligent Design in Children’s Reasoning about Nature,”
Journal of Cognition and Development 6, no. 1 (2005): 3–31. For a demonstration in a primarily atheistic culture, see Elisa Järnefelt, Liqi Zhu, Caitlin F. Canfield, Marian Chen, and Deborah Kelemen, “Reasoning about Nature’s Agency and Design in the Cultural Context of China,”
Religion, Brain and Behavior 9, no. 2 (2019): 156–78.
165 Ara Norenzayan and Will M. Gervais, “The Origins of Religious Disbelief,”
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17, no. 1 (2013): 20–25.
166 Justin Barrett,
Born Believers: The Science of Children's Religious Belief (New York: Atria Books, 2012), 172–73.
167 This is how Barrett identifies a childhood inclination for belief in “gods,” but the psychological findings can just as easily be identified with belief in angels and devils under a monotheistic tradition.
168 Barrett,
Born Believers, 137. Barrett also notes that he received emails from Muslims notifying him that this thesis is standard teaching in Islam; however, he dismisses this by stating that the psychological research does not suggest that “children are born to believe in orthodox Muslim, Jewish, or Christian theology” (151). However, the dominant understanding in the Islamic tradition is actually quite explicit that the
fiṭrah is only a natural inclination towards God, not the idea that a person is aware from birth of the theological doctrines of Islam. See Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:460–61.
169 It may be argued that there are also many undesirable behaviors that come naturally to children, such as bullying, selfishness, and temper tantrums. However, this misses a crucial distinction. There is a
childlike way of construing reality and providing a moral conscience of what is right and what is wrong, and this is termed the
fiṭrah. Then there are
childish behaviors and impulsive urges, which are termed the
nafs and are recognized to be wrong by the
fiṭrah.
170 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:309–10.
171 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 10:74.
172 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Naqḍ al-manṭiq, 58.
173 Nuʿmān Khayr al-Dīn al-Ālūsī,
Rūḥ al-maʿānī fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm wa-al-Sabʿ al-Mathānī (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 25:141–42.
174 See Markus Lammenranta, “The Role of Disagreement in Pyrrhonian and Cartesian Skepticism,” in
Disagreement and Skepticism, ed. Diego E. Machuca (New York: Routledge, 2013), 46–65.
175 René Descartes,
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 11.
176 Lammenranta, “Role of Disagreement,” 61.
177 Lammenranta, “Role of Disagreement,” 52.
178 Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 3:365.
179 Diego E. Machuca, ed.,
Disagreement and Skepticism (New York: Routledge, 2013), 3 (editor’s introduction).
180 Machuca,
Disagreement and Skepticism, 4, 7.
181 Machuca writes: “The most prominent example of the use of disagreement to undermine ethical realism is no doubt John Mackie, who based his “moral error theory” on two arguments: the argument from queerness and the argument from relativity, which is actually an argument from disagreement. Ethical skeptics usually conceive of this argument as an inference to the best explanation: they claim that the best explanation of the existence of persistent and widespread disputes about moral issues is that moral beliefs do not reflect an objective moral reality, but merely the perspectives of those holding such beliefs” (10).
182 Ali Hasan, “Is Theism Rational?” in
Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy, ed. Koterski and Oppy (Michigan: Macmillan Reference, 2019), 126.
183 Hasan, “Is Theism Rational?”
184 H. G. Blocker,
The Meaning of Meaninglessness (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), 33–40.
185 Joshua Lewis Thomas, “Meaningfulness as Sensefulness,”
Philosophia 47 (2019): 1555–77.
186 Thomas, “Meaningfulness as Sensefulness.”
187 Refusing to follow the truth is an outcome of this choice as reflected in the fact that Ibn Taymīyyah pairs the term
musafsiṭ (radical skeptic) alongside
muʿānid (stubborn). See Ibn Taymīyyah,
Darʾ taʿāruḍ, 8:323;
Bayān talbīs al-jahmīyah, 2:341.
188 Ibn Taymīyyah,
al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ li-man baddala dīn al-Masīḥ (Riyadh: Dār al-ʿĀṣimah, 1999), 3:102–3.
189 Zohair Abdul-Rahman and Nazir Khan, “In Pursuit of Conviction II,”
Yaqeen, October 11, 2019,
https://yaqeeninstitute.org/zohair/in-pursuit-of-conviction-ii-humanity-needs-god/.
190 A full exposition of how the paradigm of
tawḥīd addresses the spiritual, intellectual, and moral questions of