Islam and the Secular Age: Between Certainty and Uncertainty

If we carefully understand what the Secular Age is, then I believe we take one step closer to understanding exactly how it is that, although our Muslim predecessors before modernity possessed less knowledge about the material universe and resources than us, they had more conviction about their faith and deen, which enabled them to establish and leave a legacy of a profound civilization; and why, despite our currently having more knowledge and resources, we are plagued with less conviction about ourselves and our faith, and therefore contribute less to our communities and to civilization as a whole.

Spaces and even time become stripped of the sacredness that for millennia had functioned as a reminder of the life to come. Because of this, the Secular Age is one in which humanity no longer searches for fulfillment outside of this world or beyond the human condition. Humanism itself is the locus of the search for meaning and goals. All drive and pleasures are reduced to the Quranic concept of the self and its whims, the nafs and the hawa.

The second component of secularity is an overall decline in belief in God and in religious practice among believers themselves. This phenomenon is a consequence of the first component. Belief itself has become subject to scrutiny in the “rational” sense and as a result it becomes juxtaposed with disbelief not only in theory but in practice. This does not mean that there were no disbelievers in pre-modern Muslim societies. It means simply that disbelief in Muslim societies in the past was not normalized at all. I am using disbelief here to indicate not diversity in faith, but the rejection of the notion of God or a transcendent, ultimate reality. Even in Western Europe, there was no conception of atheism until the 17th century. It was inconceivable in pre-modern Europe that someone would not believe in God. In the Secular Age, belief and disbelief in God not only is equally conceivable but equally acceptable. The mass acceptability in society of unbelief and of uncertainty of belief is normalized now. The Secular Age produces so many viable options for what it means to be human that Muslims themselves have accepted the multiplicity of options rather than questioning the options. Our engagement in a multiplicity of manners of thinking and being have pulled us into doubt. There are so many alternatives that certainty (yaqeen) in belief is no longer a given. We doubt certainty even exists because the majority of people are uncertain and appear perfectly happy living in conditions of doubt. Enter component three of the secular age: new conditions of belief.

This final ingredient is the presence of this doubt coming home to roost. Secularity involves living under conditions where doubt is the norm, and because it is normalized it becomes acceptable and okay. As Muslims, since the migration of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) from Mecca to Medina to just after World War I, we have always been a people who have lived in a society where belief in God was never seriously challenged. Now, there are few places on earth where that is the case. Faith in a higher power has simply become one of many possibilities. This phenomenon has been called the Nova Effect. Because the Secular Age has ushered in the equalization of the polar opposites of orthodoxy and disbelief, a multiplicity of other options have emerged to fill in the gap.

Yet there is a solution to this apparent malaise. The solution is to ignore the options and search for certainty itself. In the first revelation of the Quran, we are informed of the paradigmatic state of the human being as one who learns - a prerequisite to exiting doubt. The Quran says, “He taught man that which he did not know.” The Prophet peace and blessings be upon him said, “Leave that which makes you doubt, for that which does not make you doubt.” Doubt, termed shakk in Arabic, is a stage that is two steps away from certainty in Islam. When one leaves doubt, one then enters into the stage of belief (zann). This is a thorny area because belief may or may not be properly justified. As belief increases in intensity it becomes conviction (ghalabat zann). Conviction is mathematically described by some scholars as being between 75-98% sure about the validity of one’s belief. When one reaches 99%, certainty (yaqeen) is achieved.

Reference to certainty appears in three different ways in the Quran. The first is certainty based upon knowledge and learning. This is termed in the Quran, ilm al-yaqeen. Learning involves accurate conceptualization of and proper judgment about a thing. In order to accomplish this, we need to ensure that we understand and define the relevant constructs properly, a feature that is normally the central facet in any course on Aristotelian logic. The ability to properly conceptualize concepts leads to our ability to precisely define terminology, and this in turn enhances our ability to speak and formulate propositions and thereby reason correctly. This is central to knowing and understanding. We live in an era now in which the Nova Effect has produced so much uncertainty and doubt to the point where many no longer understand and reason. Essentially, we have become a society that no longer “knows” anymore. The Secular Age has conditioned us to think differently. Consequently, achieving certainty becomes a tall order of business.

The second form of certainty is based upon observation and is called in the Quran, ayn al-yaqeen. This level of certainty arises from a high degree of conviction that emerges from witnessing a phenomenon. The overwhelming majority of sensory input is visual. Witnessing phenomena facilitates conviction in their validity or reality. However, if the environment and phenomena that we witness on a daily basis, such as architectural structures, social media, and even art are bereft of sacred references then we reduce ourselves to a certainty in only material phenomena. Furthermore, the problem is that the understanding of reality is actually undermined because in the Secular Age we have now become so skeptical that we scrutinize even our witnessing of things to such an extent that we lose any conviction about having witnessed something in the first place. Therefore, nothing but doubt remains and reigns. This goes back to the damage done by the Secular Age in taking references to God and the transcendent realm out of public spaces. It de-facilitates certainty based upon witnessing spectacular events.

The third form of certainty in Quranic terms is haqq ul-yaqeen. This refers to certainty that arises as a result of personal experience. Our experiences have drastically shifted from those of our predecessors. The Secular Age has altered our reliance on spiritual and in many cases interpersonal and natural experiences. We go to see a horror movie to get scared because we crave the artificiality of a horror film. But people who believe in possession and Jinn don’t need to watch movies about paranormal activity. We struggle and even travel to obtain the simplest experiences that were daily phenomena for our pre-modern predecessors. We are cut off and detached from spiritual experiences and have traded them for rationalized routine. What’s worse is that we have accepted this condition of affairs of depriving ourselves from experiencing what is beyond this temporal life. We are content in living life to the fullest extent materially but not experiencing its spiritual depths. The Secular Age is an age in which self-sufficient humanism, defined by frequently shifting standards, is enough. This means that there has actually been a shift in the object of experience. The Secular Age no longer wants people to engage in spiritual, transcendental, profoundly intellectual experiences. The object of experience now is the human person herself. It’s a radicalized version of individualism. Not only am I concerned with me, but only the trinity of me, myself and I alone can suffice me. It is the ultimate inversion of the Islamic eschatological system: I reward myself and I punish myself. Life is essentially about me ascending into higher degrees of pleasing myself and finding comfort in myself - nothing outside of me matters anymore. Self-sufficing humanism not only is an option in the Secular Age, but it is a widely available and arguably the dominant option. Any goal or objective beyond human flourishing becomes very difficult to conceptualize. This shifts the goal away from certainty to something entirely uncertain, for the self is prone to instability.

Certainty is mentioned twenty-seven times in the Quran. The Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him, and by extension his followers, are urged in the Quran to “worship your Lord until what is certain (al-yaqeen) comes to you.”What is certain, in this verse, indicates two things, according to scholars of Quranic exegesis. The first indication is death. Death is the ultimate answer for what it means to be human. For no matter what we build and what we do, we must all deal with death in general and individually we will all pass away. Therefore, the initial meaning is to be consistent believers and hold on steadfast to your principles, your practices and your convictions throughout your encounters with the deaths of others and until we ourselves pass away.

The second indication in the verse is certainty itself. This means that the role of constant ritual worship (ibada) in Islam on a daily basis is to facilitate and reinforce certainty in all its forms. First, we must learn how to perform ritual worship, what validates it, what invalidates it, how we may improve upon the quality of our ritual performances, and the like. We must also learn about Who it is we are worshipping and why; what exactly it is that differentiates God from the world, and what the last revelation has to say about all of this. This facilitates certainty at one level. Then we must practice what we learn and witness others practice as well. This will bring about our witnessing a level of our own conviction and that of others that will inspire us as well, thereby facilitating certainty in witnessing spectacular events.

The principles by which we determine what to believe or do must in the end, so it is often held, be principles of our own making. Once the Enlightenment has undergone the notion that they are imposed on us by a higher-being, and the Scientific Revolution shown that they cannot be read off the fabric of the world, which is now seen to be normatively mute and devoid of directives, the conclusion appears inescapable that we alone must be their sources. The authority of any principle of thought and action is an authority we bestow upon it ourselves. Because we rely on ourselves, we doubt more and certainty becomes more distant.

Certainty is achieved through knowledge acquired from learning, not through sound bites, gossip, and rhetoric. Certainty is enhanced by proper religious practice, not from an idiosyncratic posture of disengaged-inclusion. Certainty reaches its zenith with truly profound, reflective, transcendental experiences, not episodic encounters with others on social media and productions of fiction. These forms of certainty and the pursuit of certainty itself must endure, until our certainty meets what is ultimately certain about our existence - its end.