Is religion rational?

Is it necessary?
by Dr. Khalifa Abdul Hakim

We gratefully acknowledge and thank the Institute of Islamic Culture for permission to
reproduce Chapter 1 from the book "Islamic Ideology" by Khalifa Abdul Hakim.
Obstacles to Belief

This book is intended to make the fundamentals of religion understandable and acceptable to a
class of intelligentsia who not having been brought up in the religious tradition doubt either the
necessity or the rationality of religion; and it is few who have been trained to think philosophically
about the ultimate problems either of morality or of existence in general. Our theologians have
lost touch with the heritage handed down to us by great thinkers, some of whom were, at the
same time, men of great religious experience. The theologians were considered to be the
guardians of religious truth and specialists whose verdict must be accepted as a true exposition
of religion but the scientific advance during the last two centuries has left the theologians in the
lurch; even the moral consciousness of the theologians had lagged behind the conscience of the
elite of the age. The result of the progress of scientific Rationalism was materialistic Naturalism.
Nature, was studied in terms of mechanism and mathematics; there was no place in it for any will
or purpose. During the course of evolution of religious consciousness, the multiplicity of gods of
arbitrary wills was replaced with the idea of One Creator who was Omnipotent and Omniscient
and his One God had a will and a purpose. But the Reality for Naturalism had neither will nor
purpose. There was no ought in it; there was only a must of purposeless mechanism; the laws of
mass and energy produced their effects irrespective of any good or evil; they were amoral and
beyond good and evil. The scientific outlook with this world-view gripped almost all intellectuals of
every nation, the uniformity of Nature and its deterministic causation had no place for a Good
God and Directing Will. God was banished from Universe; He was not needed. Laplace took his
book on astronomy to Napoleon in order to flatter the Emperor and get praise or prize for himself.
Napoleon glanced through the book and remarked, "How is it that I do not find the name of God in
your books?" Laplace replied, "Sire, He was not needed." Laplace was not much wrong within the
limits of mathematical physics or astronomy; to mix up theology with astronomy might vitiate both.
It is a good precept. 'Take not the name of Lord thy God in vain.' To talk of divine dispensation
and interference during the course of an experiment in a laboratory would tend to vitiate the
experiment. Science deals with interphenomenal relations where, for the time being, it would be
good if God is not interposed. For the scientific understanding of Nature, God has often been the
gapfiller of ignorance; He was the easy explanation of all happenings. The development of
Naturalism had to narrow down its sphere of work and its outlook for the purposed of
concentration on phenomenal inter-relation. For the scientific outlook only two vital factors were
left: mechanistic Nature on the one hand and scientific Reasoning on the other. This Nature and
this Reason were the sole realities; they mirrored each other; nothing else existed and nothing
else counted. Scientific Reason was the only instrument to grasp truth; what could not be
weighed and measured became the non-existent. God and moral values were imponderables and
so was the human mind itself. Consciousness which had discovered scientific truths was itself
banished from reality; it was neither a noumenon nor a phenomenon, but was called an
epiphenomenona, an intellectual by-product of the mechanistic causation of the brain cells. Life
and Mind must be explained away in terms of matter, which was assumed to be the Ultimate
Reality.

The scientific outlook in spite of its narrowness and one-sidedness did enormous service not only
in increasing man's knowledge of Nature and control over it, but its overflow into other spheres of
culture was also beneficial. From times immemorial the essential ideals of religion had got mixed
up with pseudo-scientific, mythological and legendary explanations of the workings of Nature. The
fundamental intuition of man that all Truth is one and inter-related led him to mix up things
hopelessly; facts were intertwined and confused with values in a most distracting manner. A man
who believed in religion was also expected to believe in all the myths about creation in which the
religious truths were wrapped. The man of science when he revolted against religion, his revolt
was mainly caused by the clash of his ascertained knowledge of Nature with the myths or
allegories in which he was expected to believe as literal truths about cosmological and historical
facts. The service done by Science to humanity consists partially in freeing the essentials of
religion from pseudo-scientific myths. With the advance of Science the relation between Science
and Religion tends to be clarified and the issues become more and more distinct.

The science of every age builds up a philosophy on its top as a superstructure of over-beliefs.
Mechanism and Naturalism built up a metaphysics of denials. As Nature was impersonal and
scientific reason dealt with Nature impersonally, therefore any personality in man or in the
universe was an illusion. All Nature is mathematical and as there is no will in triangles and circles
and their properties to follow from the logically and not volitionally therefore, the will in man must
be an illusion. All Nature is deterministic, governed by an inexorable Necessity; free-will is an
illusion. This is the philosophy of Mechanism and Naturalism.

Mechanistic Naturalism was still in full swing when Biology also began to develop. Vegetable and
animal kingdoms were studied more closely with the precision of the scientific method.
Revolutionary hypotheses were brought forward. The first shock of any great scientific discovery
has always had the effect of dislodging man from his assumed position in the universe. The first
shock always made him lose his balance and it takes some time before he is able to effect a
reorientation; initially he loses his bearings. This is what happened when the Ptolemaic
astronomy was proved to be wrong by Copernicus and the heliocentric theory established itself
by dislodging the geocentric theory. Man had always considered his abode, the Earth, as the
centre of the universe; the whole drama of creation revolved around his abode and himself; God
was specially concerned with him and the history of the earth. The religious outlook was so
intertwined with this view of the solar system and the heavenly bodies that the shaking of this
astronomical hypothesis meant for many the utter destruction of religious belief. But after some
time humanity always some how regained its balance and even clergymen began to say, 'What
does it matter to the salvation of man, whether the Earth goes round the sun or the sun goes
round the Earth; it is not an essential part of religious belief; Faith lies elsewhere and is secure
from all astronomical hypotheses.' Similar to the repercussions of the Copernican astronomy, the
reactions of the Darwinian hypothesis were disturbing to religious belief. The Darwinian
hypothesis of the origin of species along with the discoveries of geology created a great stir in the
religious belief of the West. The age of the world was not six thousand years and it was not made
in six days and the species of plants and animals were not created with their present structures
which were [instead] the result of the countless ages of the struggle for existence, of chance
variations and the survival of the fittest, where fitness only means brutal capacity to exterminate
the opponents ruthlessly and to get adjusted to the environment somehow. Darwin himself made
no direct attack upon religion but religious doubts sometimes disturbed him, as it related about
him that the sight of the resplendent feathers of the peacock chilled his spine with the doubt
whether all this beauty could really be explained away as the product of natural selection. But the
hypothesis gripped the whole intellectual world. The geology and biology that had become
integral parts of religious belief were lightly waived aside. Religious belief had again to be shifted
to safer ground where it could not be attacked by this overwhelming evidence. Copernicus had
destroyed the centrality of the Earth and the by disturbed man's privileged position; Darwin further
destroyed his dignity by making him a descendent of sub-human creatures and a little more
favoured animal than the beasts. Mathematical Astronomy and Physics required no God and
made man a helpless and deterministic part of Nature. God was required and man had no special
importance. Evolutionistic Biology presumed to explain plant and animal life with all its order and
adaptation and beauty as a product of naturalistic forces that were beyond good and evil; there
was no ordering Cosmic Consciousness; man, his morality and his values to which he attached
eternal and objective importance, were explained away as instruments in the ruthless struggle for
existence. Between themselves physics and biology seemed to have done away with religious
belief and killed it for all times. But is religion really destroyed once for all and has it now become
honestly impossible for a rationalist and a scientific freethinker to believe in religion in any shape?
We find, however, that religion is not destroyed and some of the most intellectual men thoroughly
acquainted with the achievements of science and appreciating its genuine contribution, still
sincerely believe in God with all the implications of such belief. How that is possible will gradually
become clear during the course of our exposition in this book.

It may be said in adverse criticism of religion that religion has been saving itself by constant
retreat and rear-guard action. It holds tenaciously to certain beliefs as essentials but when those
beliefs become untenable though the advance of knowledge the ground is shifted and belief
taken to a safer stronghold. But why accuse religion only of this constant shifting of the ground
when something is held to be true has become untenable? Scientific method is considered to be
the method of the discovery of truth par excellence and it is believed o be concerned with an
objective reality. Has not the progress of Science been from error to error or if you please from
lesser truth to greater truth? Science started with myths and legends and superstition; so did
religion. The progress of humanity has been shedding untruths or mythological explanations from
both. It is true that both have been retreating equally before the advancing knowledge of man.
Every advance in science characterizes a former hypothesis as an illusion or a myth which
explained certain phenomena to some extent for some time. Who can say that Science even at
present is completely free of myth and mysteries? Wit all the limitations of human knowledge and
experience, the hypothesis of pure mechanical naturalism is now being gradually superseded.
The great biologists say that life cannot be explained in terms of purposeless mechanism; it has a
causation sui generis. Psychologists like William James came to the conclusion that mind is more
than mere biological life; mental causation and the relation of body to mind cannot be explained in
merely biological terms. This may be called either the Retreat of Science or the Advance of
Science; it all depends on how you view it.

Science was for centuries mixed up with superstition and magic, and wild speculation, more the
product of the imagination of child-humanity than of observation, experiment and reason. Every
epoch has done something to free it from these encumbering accretions. Now it is claimed that
Science has finally found its ultimate postulates; the scientific outlook and the scientific method
are established once and for all. After this there may be new discoveries and new orientations but
the fundamental thesis of an ordered Nature amenable to the causal category and mathematical
reasoning would not change. An Einstein may alter the view of time and space and may replace
Newtonian physics with some more satisfactory explanation; he many replace absolutism by
relativity but even the law of relativity is subject to causation and mathematical reasoning and
hence absolute, because it is the very nature of law to be absolute. Science would go on
advancing indefinitely and as the infinity of Nature is inexhaustible so will the increasing discovery
of its secrets. But the ultimate postulates of science are established once and for all and it is not
considered derogatory to science that its earlier theories were replaced by some more
satisfactory explanation with the perpetual advance of observation and experiment.

Why should not religious advance be construed in the same manner? Science expresses a
fundamental human need, so does religion. Science studies phenomenal facts and their
interconnection and as science it need not step over the bounds that it has set for itself. Religion
is concerned with value judgments. Science tells us how things happen and in what order;
religion tells us the whence and why of these happenings. Science is concerned with only one
value, the value of phenomenal truth, the discovery of laws and uniformities. With other values it
has no direct concern. Beauty or Goodness or Love and Happiness are not its concern. Nor do
absolute beginnings and absolute ends concern it. When it begins to speculate on absolute
beginnings and ends it steps into the domains of metaphysics or religion. For science the
Ultimate Reality behind phenomena must ever remain unknowable as demonstrated by Kant and
Spenser; and from the strictly scientific view-point no such trespass into speculation is allowable.
As a Persian poet has put it in a beautiful simile., "Nature is an old book whose title page and
introductory leaves giving the purpose of the book and the name of the author have fallen away,
and similarly the leaves at the end have dropped off." You can read it only in the intervening
pages and make guesses about its authorship, its purpose and the end of the theme. But it is in
the nature of man to consider all Reality as one and all knowledge as one, however we may be
compelled by our limitations to effect a division of labour and a watertight partition of spheres.
Great scientists have always, somehow, not been able to resist the temptation to speculate on
the ultimate problems of existence.

We have said that Science has reached its ultimate postulates but reaching them does not mean
the end of enquiry; on the other hand, it is only a stable basis for all future advance and the
voyage of discovery continues. Could we not say similarly that religion too has reached its
ultimate postulates; spiritual progress is indefinitely open to mankind but the fundamental basis of
belief won't change.

This is the claim of Islam. Man reached the fundamental religious truth the One God exists and
that God is a creative sustaining and loving God, and human morality is a necessary corollary
from this fundamental hypothesis which must develop into Belief, Knowledge, Realisation and
Action. All Reality is one and is governed by an order which is at once rational and moral and
preserver of all real values. The Qur'an gives this as a fundamental postulate. In whomsoever this
belief has entered his heart and soul and is not merely a confession b the tongue, he has attained
to Truth and Well-being here and hereafter. "Whoever submits himself to Allah and he the doer of
good (to others), he has his reward from the Lord, and there is no fear for him nor shall he grieve"
(2:112). There are a number of sayings of the Prophet which corroborate it. "Show me a man who
from his heart believes in God and I will guarantee salvation for him." Such a man may not
necessarily remain a sinless man all of his life. There is a famous Hadith related by the saintly
companion of the Prophet, Abu Zar, that the Prophet said that if a man believes there is only One
God to be worshipped he is saved and shall enter Paradise. Abu Zar interrogated, 'even if he has
committed great sins'; he enquired thrice and the Prophet answered thrice, 'yes, even if he has
committed great sins.' The Prophet in all probability meant that such a man may slip into sin now
and then, but his heart being in the right place and his outlook on life being true and sound, there
is little chance of his becoming an habitual and a hardened sinner. Islam teaches that religion
reached its ultimate postulate when in taught humanity to worship one Good God and man has to
assimilate His attributes of goodness within human limitation. It is generally known that La ilaha-
ill-Allah and Muhammad-ur-Rasulullah (P.B.U.H.) sums up the religion of Islam; that there is no
God but Allah and Muhammad (P.B.U.H.) is His Prophet. But every Muslim knows that the
essential belief is the belief in One God; the Prophet is a clarifier and practiser of that belief and
not an end unto himself. He is a servant of God like all prophets and like all good and believing
men. Whoever believes in God also believes and reveres all the great and good men who have
shown the Path of Righteousness to man. No Muslim is a true Muslim who believes in one
prophet and not in the other; and the test of true prophethood laid down by Islam is believing,
preaching and practicing the Unity doctrine. Science has reached its ultimate postulates only
recently, but according to Islam religion reached it long ago; with Theism begins true religion and
with Theism it end; and the One God was revealed long ago to every civilised nation. "And there
is not a people but a warner has gone among them" (35:25). This is a doctrine of the fundamental
unity of religion in its essentials. Different people have followed different laws and customs and
adopted different modes of worship at different times but the belief in One God was the abiding
element of truth. Whenever this truth faded from the minds of a people they become ignorant and
unjust, and social injustice and tyranny practiced by them brought upon them the wrath of God.
The wages of sin is death and nations that lose the vision of truth perish; vice begins to
preponderate over good, ultimately leading to destruction.

When comparing science with religion, some people assert that science is universal, provable,
demonstrable and its results exactly predictable while about religion the world is divided into
hostile groups. Truth must be universal while religions as believed and practised by different
groups contradict one another. The Qur'an has dealt with this question repeatedly and given clear
answers. It says Religion too is concerned with Universal Truth: there is only one Religion and all
the religions are sects of it; that one True Religion is Belief in the Unity of all Reality and Belief in
Moral Order or the essential difference in Good and Evil, the results of which appear both here
and hereafter. In whatever creed Islam has found individuals living on the belief it has unstintedly
given praise to them and promised them the highest rewards of good life. All religions have a
tendency to become fossilized and hardened into orthodoxies claiming monopoly of truth and
salvation, barring the door of Paradise to all others who do profess certain doctrines or follow
certain rituals, customs or conventions. Islam was aware of this tendency that dogmas are the
living faith of the dead that have become the dead faith of the living. In order to warn humanity
against this tendency it defined the fundamentals of religion once for all: whenever they are
found, truth and well-being are there. Among the communities with which Islam came into direct
contact, the Jews and the Christians both claimed monopolies of truth and salvation; those who
did not subscribe to their dogmas and doctrines or their mode or worship were destined for
perdition.

Let me give a few quotations from the Qur'an to prove what Islam considers to be true and
universal religion and how it repudiates all claims to monopoly. "And they say: None shall enter
Paradise except he who is a Jew or Christian. These are their vain desires. Say: Bring your proof
if you are truthful. Yea! Whoever submits himself entirely to God and he is the doer of good to
others, he has his reward from his Lord, and there is no fear for him nor shall he grieve. And the
Jews say that Christians do not follow anything good and the Christians say, the Jews do not
follow anything good, while they recite the same Book; similar to them are the utterances of those
who have no knowledge; (2:111:112:113). God is not the monopoly of any particular people or
creed. To Him belong all directions; the conventional or ritualistic turning of faces to this or that
direction is relatively immaterial. "And Allah's is the East and the West, therefore, whither you
turn, thither is Allah's Face. God is Ample-giving and Knowing" (2:115). According to the Qur'an
living a virtuous life or doing good to others is the chief aim of all religious beliefs and practices.
Conventional differences are of little account except as customs and uniformities binding to a
particular group socially. "And every one has a direction to which he turns, but (the essential thing
is) hasten to do good works; wherever you are, Allah will bring you all together; surely Allah has
power over all things" (2:148). There is another verse in the Qur'an which not only gives the basis
of universal religion but mentions the followers of other creeds explicitly along with the Muslims
as upholders of truth and deserving of the attainment of highest well-being, if they only conform to
the fundamentals. It is a basis that would unite all the theists of the world who believe in a moral
order and as corollary believe in survival and requital. It is again essentially theism and virtue.
"Surely those who believe (i.e. enter the fold of Islamic life) and those who are Jews, and the
Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the last day and does good, they shall
have their reward from this Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve" (2:62). Islam
is full of praises of other scriptures and whenever it mentions an essential of religion it says you
will find it also in other scriptures. It calls other scriptures Light and Guidance in which essentials
of religion are given. It enjoins on all Muslims to revere all prophets, who have anywhere at any
time preached the doctrine of One God and social justice.

Islam accepts and responds to the demand of Reality and all Reality is one and therefore all Truth
should be one. It invites humanity to the fundamentals of one faith which has no sectarian
elements and which makes all modes of worship as of secondary importance. There is no doubt
that Islam organised society on a definite plan and created its own conventions; but it has the
fullest appreciation of the life of those who somehow have stood outside that system but still have
a hold on the essentials.