Is God Bound To Tell Us The Truth? This Old Theological Controversy Has Deep Implications for Present Secular Muslim Society and Polity

By Arshad Alam, New Age Islam 29 May 2023 The Dominant School within Islam, the Asharis, Have Never Been Able To Satisfactorily Answer This Question Main Points: 1. The Ashari have always argued that everything comes from God; that objects and acts do not have intrinsic qualities 2. It follows from this philosophical position that God is beyond good and evil and that He is not duty bound to tell us the truth always 3. Ghazali and Fakhruddin Razi have also written on the issue; in the Indian context, there is long debate on the issue going back to the 18th century 4. Theological issues are ultimately about the organization or re-organization of society and polity ------ Long years ago, a Barelvi madrasa principal told me that the Deobandis believe that Allah can lie. Being a Barelvi, he had a different opinion of course. Attributing something which is inherently defective to the Almighty can never be justified, the Barelvi Alim told me. The elders of the Sunni (Barelvi) Tanzeem, he told me, were therefore right in arguing that Deobandis are outside the pale of Islam. Since Islamic studies was not my forte, I did not pay particular attention to the theological arguments which this Alim was making. I thought that this was another addition to the multiple ways in which differences were created and boundaries drawn between different Masalik in the Muslim society. However, it appears that this is a pretty ancient problem (Mas'ala) that the Ulama have been grappling with. The problem is this: if God is all powerful and there is nothing that he cannot do, then theoretically it is also possible that He could lie. In the context of my discussion with the Barelvi Alim, he told me that the Deobandis argue that it is within the powers of Allah to create another Muhammad, the prophet of Islam and the seal of all prophets. He, however, believed that since Allah has already said that the prophet is perfect (insan al kamil), there can be nothing which is beyond perfection. By extension, arguing that Allah can create another Muhammad is tantamount to lying and blasphemous because it is casting aspersions on the very word of God. Actually, the Deobandis were the not the ones to start this debate of the possibility of creating another Muhammad (Imkan-e-Nazir-e-Muhammadi). In the Indian context, this debate started with the publication of Shah Ismail’s Taqwiat ul Iman, in which he argued that it was well within the power of God to create another Muhammad, since all powers of Muhammad were vested in him by God in the first place. The Deobandis do not consider Shah Ismail as one of their own, but in the eyes of the Barelvi Alim, such distinctions get blurred. But what is important to understand is that this was not a trivial matter and this can be gauged from the fact that prominent Ulama of the time, including Imdadullah Makki and Fazl e Haqq Khairabadi, waded in this controversy and took issue with Shah Ismail. And the reason is that the ramifications of the debate about Imkan-e-Nazir-e-Muhammadi does not stop at the theoretical possibility of creating another Muhammad but goes to the very heart of the nature of God Himself. For if we accept that God can lie, then the very word of God contained in the Quran becomes doubtful. If God can lie, then there is no guarantee that Muhammad was actually a prophet sent by Him with an eternal and everlasting message for all mankind. In short, the entire edifice of the Muslim belief could collapse if we accept the premise of a God who is also capable of lying. It is because of this reason that the Ulama have devised ways to “prove” that Allah cannot lie. The foremost “restorer”, Ghazali, completely negates such a possibility of a lying God. He argues that “lying [from God] can be ruled out for it is a feature of speech, and the speech of God is not a voice that it could be mistaken. Rather it is an attribute subsisting in His exalted self. For everything that a human knows, there is in his self a declaration about what he knows that is in accordance with his knowledge, and falsity is inconceivable here. It is similar in the case of God, the exalted” (Al Iqtisad Fil Itiqad). On the question of Prophethood, Ghazali tells us to observe regularity and patterns in the universe created by God. For example, all observed cases of fire coming in contact with dry cotton have been followed by the cotton being burned. Thus, we can be justified, Ghazali says, in believing that next time fire comes in contact with dry cotton, it will lead to the same result. But in the case of God creating miracles in support of impostors, there seems to be no observable pattern or regularity to which the mind can appeal to. Ghazali, therefore, concludes that God does not empower impostors as prophets; that prophets are prophets because they are ordained by God and because God has made them on a regular basis. The Ulama also devoted considerable time and energy to prove the truthfulness of Prophethood. For if it is in the power of God to do anything and everything, it is also possible for him to exalt an impostor (rather than a real prophet) and make him do miracles. How then do we actually know that Muhammad was really a prophet and that his message is true for all eternity? Ulama like Fakhruddin Razi weighed in on the issue and argued that it cannot be “conclusively shown that everyone whom God the exalted supports is truthful. This can only be assumed if it is established that lying is impossible of God. If one denies the intrinsic goodness or evilness of God’s actions, then how can we know that it is impossible that He is lying?” Razi argues that it is impossible for God to lie as lying is a sign of imperfection which God cannot be. Moreover, ‘miracles’ attest to the divine mission of the true prophet. Citing the example of Moses, Razi concludes that all prophets have been imbued with miraculous powers, an attribute which can be given to them by God, the exalted. Impostors can exist, but they cannot perform miracles. But these “proofs” certainly do not answer the moot question asked. This moot question is present in Plato’s Euthyphro, where Socrates asks whether “the pious” is simply what the gods command or whether the gods only command what is intrinsically pious. Do acts like pillage, murder or helping the poor have intrinsic moral qualities which is why God forbids or commands them? Or is it the other way round: that acts like stealing and killing are evil simply because God forbids them. What the Barelvi Alim I spoke to perhaps didn’t know is that within the Islamic tradition, the predominant view on the issue has been the latter: that acts are good or evil depending on the command of God. The two dominant schools of the Asharis and the Maturudis favoured this view, which can be termed as “divine command ethics”. However, schools like the Mutazila and some branches of Shi’ism favour Plato’s own position that social acts have intrinsic moral qualities. Since Mutazilas went out of fashion fairly early in Islamic history, we can say that the predominant view within Islamic theology was that of the Asharis. They believe God is not bound by human prejudices concerning good and bad. He may do as He pleases and is not accountable for what He does. The Asharis have been the greatest propagators of the “divine command ethics”, which argues that everything must necessarily come from God; that He alone is the ultimate cause of everything. But this raises the following question: if nothing has intrinsic moral value apart from the divine fiat and God is free to do and command as He pleases, then is there any reason to believe that He is bound to tell us the truth? For example, He promises that worshippers will be rewarded with a place in heaven but is He bound to keep this promise? A further related problem with the “divine command guidance” is this: what guarantee is there that God has not enabled impostors and liars to produce miracles in support of their claims of being divinely instituted “spokesmen” of God? For the Mutazila, the answer was simple: that God is perfect and hence He cannot lie as the latter is a sign of imperfection. However, a similar claim cannot be made by the Asharis like Razi and Ghazali because they do not believe that things or acts can have innate or intrinsic qualities. They belong to the school where everything must necessarily come from God, including lying or truthfulness. In the writings of Razi and Ghazali, we see their discomfort in answering this question. At times, they invoke the scripture (since the Quran is true, God also must be true) but this recourse is boringly circular which takes us nowhere. At other times, they use the Mutazila principle that lying is intrinsically evil, thereby contradicting their own Ashari philosophy. This is not just a theological question but has deep implications for Muslim society and polity. If we acknowledge that acts have qualities which are independent of God, then we can be moral without being God fearing. Such ethical and moral values have the power to organize societies and government without any reference to a God or a religion. It is perhaps this realization of secular possibilities that made the Asharis like Ghazali come after the Mu’tazillas and other rational philosophers, declaring them to be outside the pale of Islam. The question is still being asked in various forms. But there is perhaps nothing in the intellectual arsenal of the dominant school in Islam which can answer it. ----- A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia. URL: https://newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/god-truth-theological-secular-muslim-society-polity/d/129876 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism