There Has Always Been Fake News: Misinformation and Islamic Critical Epistemology

World crises are not new to us. In our short lifespans, there have been multiple genocides, such as in Bosnia and Rwanda, and immense droughts and mass starvation, as in Somalia. We have experienced multiple economic recessions and violence and injustice continues against our brothers and sisters in East Turkestan, Kashmir, Palestine, and beyond. Along with its impact on our lives, it also shapes our thinking. And with the increase of that impact, we also see an increasing awareness of intentional lies and conspiracy theories.

Islamic anthropology, the way Islam conceptualizes the human, is one of optimism as opposed to pessimism, as seen in its rejection of the concept of original sin. But Islam also promotes realism; it is not naïve. People hurt others and can be truly evil. And one of these harms is that a lot of people lie. But as a prophetic tradition states, this behavior should not become natural for a believer:

Lying has always been seen as an evil within the intellectual history of mankind. Only in certain exceptional circumstances has it been viewed as acceptable or even necessary, such as to ward off an immense harm like the loss of life. Within the Islamic ethical tradition (akhlāq), lying (kadhib) is described thus:

The famous Ottoman scholar Ṭāshkuprī’zāda (d. 968 AH) comments on this by making a comparison between prophethood and civilization: If truthfulness (ṣidq) was not the foundation of prophethood, then revelation and the Shariah would become void. So, similarly, truthfulness is the foundation of civilization; no society can uplift itself without humans being truthful to another. 

It has always been a concern how lies, false information, and fake news affect personal character, relationships, and society as a whole. With the rise of social media and the associated ease of creating, receiving, and sharing information, this concern has increased as well. The basic definition of misinformation is “wrong information,” whereas disinformation is explained as “false information spread in order to deceive people.” Misinformation can be created unintentionally, or based on badly informed approaches to science, but disinformation is meant to distort our view on the truth of the matters involved. It involves a deliberate lie. We see this spectrum of misinformation and disinformation with information on the coronavirus. During crises, people often turn to blaming the cultural and religious Other among them. During medieval plagues, Jews were seen by the dominant Christian community as the cause of the pandemic. In several countries, Muslim minorities were blamed for coronavirus outbreaks. This cultural and religious othering is underpinned by the psychological mechanisms of xenophobia and, more recently, Islamophobia. Some types of misinformation may seem harmless, much of which is also meant to scam people, but there is also misinformation that kills people.

Although untruth and lies should be against the nature of a believer, Muslims also are both victims and perpetrators when it comes to misinformation. The amount of misinformation going around among Muslims is no different to that of non-Muslims and can include world politics, health and medicine, and even financial scams, some of which are especially targeted at Muslims. The Prophet Muḥammad ‎ﷺ‎‬‎‬ warned us about uncritically forwarding information:

The Qur’an also warns us against accepting information uncritically:

Some fake news might kill people. One of the central maxims of Islamic law and ethics, as within the medical community, is to avoid and remove harm. We, therefore, have a strong obligation to understand how we are informed, and how we can be informed correctly to avoid harm to ourselves and to others (i.e., information literacy). This shows that Muslims (and non-Muslims as well) must adopt a critical engagement with information. Thankfully this knowledge has been taught for centuries by the Islamic tradition.

Epistemology is the technical term for the theory of human knowledge, its nature, origin, and limits. It is in a sense the first science of all other sciences. What is knowing, and how do we know? Greek philosophy understood it to be part of the discussion on psychology, the human mind, and this is also how it came to be studied within Islamic philosophy and its wider intellectual history. The question of how we can know things has a deep significance for theology as well. How can we know God, that He exists, what He wants from us, and that He communicates to us? Classical epistemology is therefore discussed both in works on dogma and philosophical theology (ʿaqīdah and ʿilm al-kalām) and philosophy of law (uṣūl al-fiqh), wherein they were labeled “causes of knowledge” (asbāb al-ʿilm) or “sources of knowing” (maṣādir al-maʿrifa). These causes are summarized in the famous 13^th-century Māturīdī creedal tract ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafī as:

(1) sound sense perception (al-ḥawāss al-salīmah),
(2) reliable reports (al-khabar al-ṣādiq),
(3) intellect/reasoning (al-ʿaql). 

These debates on sources of knowledge were discussed in early works of kalām on the topic of both ethics and prophethood, as why would we need “revelation” as a source of knowledge? Can humans attain full truth about the world on their own? So, theologians started to divide up different forms and causes of knowledge. The physical world and its physical workings are observable with the senses (ḥiss), understandable through the intellect (ʿaql) which is aided by the imagination, the heart, and the primordial nature (fiṭrah), which all together can direct us towards truth and goodness. These constitute empirical, rational, and deductive knowledge (al-ʿilm al-naẓarī wa-al-istidlālī). Humans also create knowledge, customs, and technology; i.e., cultural knowledge. Some natural and cultural knowledge is continually generated anew (“innovation”), other forms are lost but, in general, there is a form of knowledge accumulation within cultures that is shared through “reports,” i.e., related or transmitted knowledge (al-ʿilm al-naqlī). Some reports are doubtful, others trustworthy. So, there are grades of trustworthiness of related knowledge, in the same way prophetic traditions (ḥadīth) were graded and the people relating them were judged on reliability (the science of ʿilm al-rijāl), whereby unknown and lying persons were not accepted. You can have general reports which generate speculative or possible knowledge (ẓannī), and undeniable or certain knowledge (al-ʿilm al-ḍarūrī)—for example, knowledge of the existence of a major city like London or a major historical figure such as Alexander the Great. So, we have constant newly generated knowledge about the world around us and shared accumulated knowledge, both of which provide us several possibilities for how to explain the world. But does this provide us with a total explanation of the world? Is there existence beyond the physical? How do we attain certain knowledge about the non-physical world? Is there a purpose to the world and can we know its end? Kalām theologians believed a certain ‘minimal’ theology and ethics were knowable to humans through senses, intellect, and shared knowledge without the assistance of revelation. But to fully know our ethical responsibility, what God expects from us, how to be in this world, we need help. We need prophets! But how do we know what information is truly from God? Many people claim prophethood. There are many religions. To know who is sent by God, to know his information is truly from God, we need signs of authenticity only God could generate. Miracles, supernatural events, could only be generated by the Controller of the World. How do we recognize them and know about these signs? We end up again with our human limitations of senses (observe miracles), intellect (recognize true from false and think about their meaning), and shared knowledge (we tell others about them). Also, prophets bring information, i.e., revelation, which we need to maximize our theology. So, we also then need to distinguish possible from certain knowledge in relation to the shared knowledge going around about prophets and their revelations. We need to check if they fit with our minimal theology and we need to grade the shared reports. The shared reports need to be graded from unreliable to possible to certain knowledge as different aspects of our lives demand different levels of certainty. If a certain act must be punished with the death penalty, we want to have maximum certainty God said this and meant this. So, the level of certainty required of the attained knowledge is equal to the impact it has on our lives. So minimal theology is dependent on empiricism, historicity, reason, and logic, and maximal theology also depends on them. We therefore need to use these three sources of knowledge in all things and use them critically as we are responsible for what we accept as knowledge, especially knowledge that is the basis of our acts. We therefore also need to know how we can critically examine the contents of both the shared knowledge and the reasoning applied to it. Here again, the Islamic tradition has provided us with a lifeline.

Islamic civilization from its inception had systematic ways of correct reasoning that were indigenous to the Islamic intellectual tradition; however, from the 11^th century onwards, the formalized system of Arabic logic (ʿilm al-manṭiq) became the dominant intellectual tool for reasoning and critical analysis. As the Islamic scholar Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī famously proposed in his influential treatise on Islamic legal philosophy, Distillation of the Principles of Jurisprudence (al-Mustaṣfá min ʿilm al-uṣūl), Islamic logic is not merely a tool for correct reasoning. He says about logic:

Logic in the Islamic intellectual tradition serves as a principal tool for scientific discourse and discovery, which guarantees a certain precision in scientific reasoning and a safeguard against hidden assumptions and logical fallacies. As a system of rules and guidelines regarding correct thinking, logic covers such topics as how to make proper definitions (al-ḥadd) and propositions (al-qaḍīyah) and how to construct correct arguments in the form of syllogisms (al-qiyās). What are the underlying premises of a provided argument—how is it conceptualized (taṣawwur)? We also need to verify (taṣdīq) this conceptualization—are correct definitions and propositions being used? Do we know exactly what we mean when we speak of a term? Are we speaking about the same thing? Logic as a system for proper reasoning and eliminating unwarranted beliefs, hasty conjectures, or fallacious arguments can provide rational guidance in our modern world of fake news and misinformation.

Logic is, in fact, part of a larger toolkit in the Islamic tradition for “thinking straight” (i.e., proper reasoning) in all intellectual endeavors. This toolkit includes, besides logic, the sciences of dialectics (ʿilm al-baḥth wa-al-munāẓarah), rhetoric (ʿilm al-balāghah), and semantics (ʿilm al-waḍʿ). Together, these are called the “instrumental sciences” (ʿulūm al-ālah), which were fundamental prerequisite studies for the student of sacred knowledge (ṭālib al-ʿilm) to master before moving on to the so-called “higher sciences” (ʿulūm al-ʿāliyah), such as Islamic law (fiqh), legal philosophy (uṣūl al-fiqh), Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr), or philosophical theology (kalām). Logic became part of an Islamic Organon of sorts, that was to take center stage in the classical Muslim madrasah educational curriculum.

Notwithstanding Orientalist claims that logic in the Islamic world stopped flourishing after the 14^th century, recent academic scholarship has shown that logic, in fact, continued to develop and flourish well into our modern times. Current research is thus slowly, but steadily, catching up to the fact that logic and other intellectual ancillary sciences are being taught in Muslim theological seminaries today throughout the Muslim world as part of a lived intellectual tradition. We, as Muslims, would do well to cherish this tradition and learn it, especially in times in which misinformation, faulty reasoning, and conspiracy thinking reign supreme.

And now we return to where we started. False information can have an immense negative impact on our lives. It therefore requires high reliability before any information is accepted, applied, and shared around with others. Uṣūl al-fiqh, the fundamentals of Islamic jurisprudence, only accept a certain scope of sources, tools of interpretation (hermeneutics), and expertise to determine Islamic law. The science of medicine has its own uṣūl as well, which is why Islamic fiqh councils across the world have involved medical experts to create opinions on modern bioethical issues such as cloning and organ donation. We need to respect the domain of each science. We have to trust and follow (taqlīd) the experts who are qualified to deal with these subjects (Qur’an 21:7). But like Muslim scholars, members of the scientific community also differ with one another, so it is strongly recommended in the same spirit to follow the majority (jamhūr) and consensus (ijmāʿ) opinions, and avoid outlying (shādhdh) ones. We have both the right and obligation to be informed, to understand what is going on, and to know how to act in the best fashion so we can avoid harm. This requires a critical engagement with information as has been taught by our intellectual tradition for centuries. The Islamic tradition has provided us with powerful tools to assess the information coming to us at multiple levels of analysis. We observe them through our senses almost unwillingly, so we need to judge them critically. Where is this information from, what is its source, and what is its chain of transmission (isnād)? How did it reach me? Who said it, and are they reliable and qualified to discuss these matters? What is the background of this information? Is it reasonable, logical, and can it be confirmed and corroborated by other information out there? What is the majority opinion or consensus on this? Does it have sound premises? Does this information help me avoid harm to myself and others?

A case study we can all learn from, were the many false claims circulated in the early days of the COVID pandemic. When it was claimed, for example, that 5G technology was related to the coronavirus outbreak, we should have asked where this claim originated from. Was it claimed by scientists who had the necessary knowledge to question and research such a connection, or was it a claim of non-specialists? It turns out it was the latter. We always need to investigate if non-specialists are utilizing sound definitions and premises. For example, did they use valid data and arguments to make the claim for a causal relationship between 5G electromagnetic radiation and a transmittable biological disease? It turns out they did not. When we dig deeper, we see that there had been earlier public concerns about 5G technology, and this concern was then falsely connected to the coronavirus outbreak. Not only was it a claim of non-specialists, but it also lacked a sound isnād. It could therefore be dismissed as unreliable knowledge. Fake news.

When a fellow believer shares information, we are obliged to have a good opinion (ḥusn al-ẓann) about that person. But there is a scope to ḥusn al-ẓann. Trust your fellow human, especially your brother or sister in faith. But don’t assume they have checked the sources. Ask them where they got their information from and why they think it is reliable. Be critical together. In the spirit of the critical apparatus of our intellectual tradition, we need to apply an adāb, an ethical conduct, of forwarding and sharing information.

We say: As God the Exalted created mankind and determined for them that their existence is dependent on survival, and He created for them the necessities [of survival] such as food, drinks, clothing, homes, and things of such nature. So, mankind was made covetous for those necessities in service of their own existential survival [and are therefore hostile] towards others, and are not content with what God the Exalted provides them and will therefore allow injustice, usurpation, theft, murder, etc. So there is no escaping that men are to be united by people of law, who are sent to them to forbid those evils. They make a system of law and order between the people in this world and in order that they do not destroy this world. And guide them towards worshipping their Lord with their bodies and wealth so that they deserve by it paradise in the Hereafter. And those who do not do this are, in the Hereafter, a people lost and destroyed. 

Ibn Kamāl Pāshā, al-Munīr fī al-mawaʿiẓ wa-al-ʿaqāʾid (Istanbul: Dār al-Lubāb, 2018), 46. Translation by A. Y. Mol.