Tackling the Tide of Atheism - Taught by Ustadh Imran Iqbal

Some feedback regarding the course by Maulana Usman Ali (graduate of Darul Ulum London):

Mashallah Just returned from the one day programme on 'Tackling Atheism' by Ustadh Imran Iqbal.

Ustadh Imran Iqbal is indeed a competent brother and well grounded in methodological and epistemological issues (both Western and Islamic perspectives). He has prepared very well.

It was definitely not any mental diarrhoea, rather a very consistent and coherent set of philosophical/theological rules were addressed and their application. Attendees generally seemed mature and well versed in some aspects of the field. He had everyone engaged well for over 9 hours; something a normal talk would fail to do.

He spoke elaborately on various themes of philosophy (epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, philosophy of science and philosophy of language), touched on the role of reason and sense in acquisition of knowledge (rationalism, empiricism and the kantian synthesis), provided axioms and methodological frameworks (three laws of thought [laws of identity etc.], inductive, deductive and adductive reasoning etc.), propounded a case study on the use of logic (in Ghazalian terms i.e. syllogisms are Quranic discourse with verses where this method is used), and gave common types of reasoning (historical, logical textual, analogically [but missed evolutionary logic maybe due to lack of expertise/familiarity]).

Most importantly, he discussed and illustrated the application to various cases of an Islamic rationality model by Sayf al-Din al-Amidi in which he elaborates epistemological and methodological foundations to knowledge (necessary vs acquired knowledge; necessary knowledge based on axioms [three laws of thought], sensory [five external and one internal] and induction [series of sensory], while acquired knowledge being rational [demonstrated] or transmitted [textual] indicators).

He spoke on the difference between kalamic and atharism, in that kalamic is a defence to banish doubt. It is a model for us to consistently articulate a defence of our religion.

He placed Ibn Taymiyya's refutation of logic in its correct prospective; in that Ibn Taymiyya argues that the definition systems are Greek and not Quranic, and that this worry of Ibn Taymiyya has no bearing on Muslim theologians as they don't use definitions in Greek terms. He also alluded that Ibn Taymiyya felt threatened that mantiq is merging into usul, which is not the case. Therefore, looking at the whole scale of things, Ibn Taymiyya's radd is weak. Muslims scholars were philosophical of Islamic tradition and not Greek tradition. They didn't play with their game, but started a new game.

He asked what reasons do we have that Quran is from Allah without subscribing to aql. None! As the underlining reason would be that it is transmitted by overwhelming number etc, and that is inductive reasoning. Aql is justifying naql to start with. For example, he contrasted this with Allah's "yad" debate, in that, aqlan we cannot ascribe bodily part to Allah, but naqlan "yad" is transmitted. So aql justified a naql.

He critiqued natural and revealed theology in great depth and mentioned that the further you go away from revealed theology, the more speculative it gets.

He then critiqued the philosophy of science on issues related to verificationism and falsificationism. He made me laugh when he taunted the 'negative atheism' as "intellectualising ignorance". He defined various types of atheism and agnosticism and even theism (pantheism and panentheism to name just two).

He used one particular cosmological argument in the most general form (there must be a first cause) - why is there something rather than nothing? Here he gave two prospectives, namely: atemporal (Aquinas and Avicenna) and temporal (mutakallimun and Ghazali). He addressed the question on creatio ex nihilo (everything which has a beginning has a cause etc). He broke down each premise in this formation with philosophical [against physical existence of actual infinity] and scientific [absolute beginning of the universe] arguments. Infinity has two subtypes - actual and potential, and how both are impossible, thus the universe has a beginning and end. Asharis argued against infinity via temporal arguments of kalam. Cantors mathematical set theory model of infinity is absurd in reality. Here we addressed many philosophy of mathematics problems and went onto critique the scientific Big Bang cosmology with some objections.

He nicely presented the Quranic Miracle (ultimate falsification test) to bring an ayah like it (16 words and 68 letters merely).

He examined issues in Western theodicy (God with the existence of evil) and Islamic prospective. He warned that we should not debate this with an atheist as the fundamental debate is about God and when that is solved, theodicy won't remain a problem. He gave Jabriyya, Mu'taliza and wasatiyya (Middle path) positions on theodicy. God is amoral being one of many arguments. Asharis thus reject the question of theodicy as meaningless. He gave analysis on the best-of-all-possible-world theodicy (optimism in Western phylosophy). He said theodicy is not a fundamentally an usuli discussion. He did highlight that theodicy is about Allah's attribute rather than dhat, thus in the realm of naql and not aql, in general.

He solved the Qadr issue using prospective argument. Humans have Qadr (free will) but Allahs perspective here is jabr (determinism).

Apologies for the length but this was an overview of most topics.

Wa 'alaikumus salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh

I believe there was a recording done but it doesn't seem like it will be released. There may be a repeat of this course taking place in London in the near future so keep an eye out insha'Allah.