Why Everyone Thinks They're Right: The Brain Science Behind Q.6:108
By V.A. Mohamad Ashrof, New Age Islam
10 February 2026
There's a verse in the Quran that contains a remarkable insight into human psychology. It says: "We have made each people's deeds appealing to them" (Quran 6:108). At first glance, this might seem like a simple observation about human nature. But modern brain science reveals something extraordinary: this ancient text precisely describes complex biological mechanisms that neuroscientists are only now beginning to fully understand.
Think about it. Why does a devout Christian feel deeply move by communion while a Muslim finds the same ritual meaningless? Why does a conservative feel viscerally certain that their values are correct while a progressive feel equally certain about the opposite? Why do intelligent, thoughtful people look at the same evidence and reach completely different conclusions about what's right and wrong?
The answer isn't that one group has discovered the truth while others remain in darkness. The answer lies in how our brains work. And understanding this biology might be the key to living peacefully in our increasingly diverse world.
Brain Doesn't Show You Reality—It Creates Your Reality
We like to think our brains are like cameras, passively recording the objective truth about the world. We imagine that if we're smart enough, educated enough, and honest enough, we'll simply see reality as it is and make correct judgments. But neuroscience reveals something very different and somewhat humbling: your brain is more like a painter, actively creating a picture of reality that makes sense based on your past experiences, your culture, and your social group.
This isn't a defect or a flaw that better education could fix—it's a fundamental feature of how human consciousness works. Your brain doesn't wait for objective truth to announce itself. Instead, it's constantly generating interpretations, predictions, and value judgments, colouring everything you experience with emotional significance and moral weight.
At the centre of this process is a chemical called dopamine, working through a network of brain regions collectively called the mesolimbic pathway. For decades, scientists thought dopamine was simply a "pleasure molecule" that made you feel good when you ate chocolate or won a game. But breakthrough research in 2025 revolutionized our understanding in ways that seem almost designed to explain the ancient Quranic verse.
Scientists discovered that dopamine doesn't measure objective pleasure or truth. Instead, it creates subjective value—it makes certain things feel right to you, regardless of whether they actually are right in any objective sense. When researchers studied individual dopamine neurons firing in primate brains, they found something remarkable: the same external reward could trigger vastly different dopamine responses in different individuals based on their internal "utility function"—their personal and cultural framework for what matters.
Here's how it works in everyday life: When you do something that aligns with your values—whether that's attending a religious service, making a political argument you believe in, supporting your favourite sports team, or following a cultural tradition you grew up with—a region deep in your brain called the Ventral Tegmental Area releases dopamine. This isn't a conscious decision; it happens automatically and instantaneously.
This chemical surge travels through neural pathways to other brain regions, particularly the nucleus accumbens (sometimes called the brain's "reward centre") and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (a planning and decision-making region just behind your forehead), creating a powerful feeling of satisfaction, rightness, and correctness. It's the neurological equivalent of your brain saying "yes, THIS is good, THIS is right, do more of THIS."
Consider a specific example: Imagine two people watching a political debate. One person hears their candidate speak and feels a warm glow of agreement, nodding along, finding the arguments compelling and obvious. The other person hears the same words and feels irritation, immediately spotting flaws and inconsistencies. Same words, opposite reactions. The difference isn't in the objective quality of the arguments—it's in how each person's dopamine system responds based on their pre-existing political identity.
Or consider religious practice: A Muslim performing the five daily prayers experiences a deep sense of spiritual satisfaction and rightness with each prostration. A Catholic receiving communion feels profoundly moved and connected to the divine. An atheist participating in a humanist ceremony feels genuine meaning and purpose. These aren't illusions or self-deceptions—they're real neurochemical states, genuine experiences of beauty and correctness. But they're subjectively generated by each person's brain, not objective properties of the practices themselves.
This is exactly what the Quran means by "making deeds appealing." Your brain literally "decorates" or "beautifies" your actions with positive feelings, making them seem inherently good and right. The Arabic word used in the verse, zayyana, means "to adorn" or "to beautify"—a surprisingly precise description of what dopamine does in your brain. It's as if the verse is describing the brain's chemical messenger system thirteen centuries before scientists discovered neurotransmitters.
The Reinforcement Trap: How Your Brain Locks You In
But it gets more interesting—and more troubling. Your brain doesn't just make your current beliefs feel good. It actively strengthens them through a process scientist call reward prediction error, creating a kind of neurological trap that's very difficult to escape.
Imagine you perform an action—maybe you donate to a charity that aligns with your political values, attend a worship service from your faith tradition, or post a comment on social media defending a position you hold dear. Your brain expects this to feel good, and it does. But if it feels even better than expected—maybe you receive affirmation from your community, or you feel particularly connected to God, or your post gets lots of supportive likes—your brain releases an extra burst of dopamine.
This burst does more than just reward you in the moment. It physically rewrites your neural pathways, strengthening the connections between neurons involved in that behaviour. Think of it like water flowing down a hillside: the more water flows through a particular channel, the deeper that channel becomes, and the more likely future water will flow the same way. Your neural pathways work similarly.
The practical result is profound: Over time, this creates a self-reinforcing loop that becomes harder and harder to break. The more you engage in behaviours your brain has labelled as "good," the stronger those neural pathways become, and the better those behaviours feel. A devout Christian who attends church regularly will find each service increasingly rewarding over time. A dedicated activist will find each protest march increasingly meaningful. A committed conservative will find each defence of traditional values increasingly satisfying.
Meanwhile, alternative behaviours—things that other people might find appealing—start to feel not just different, but actively wrong, uncomfortable, or even threatening. The neural pathways for those alternatives remain weak or undeveloped, so your brain has no dopamine "hooks" to make them feel attractive. A lifelong atheist invited to a religious service might feel awkward, bored, or even anxious—not because there's anything objectively wrong with the service, but because their brain hasn't built the neural infrastructure to find it rewarding.
This explains something that puzzles many people: why individuals often become more entrenched in their beliefs over time rather than less, even when they encounter contradictory evidence. It's not stubbornness or closed-mindedness in the moral sense—it's biology. Your brain has literally rewired itself, through years or decades of repeated practice, to find your particular way of life neurologically rewarding and alternatives neurologically aversive.
Consider someone raised in a deeply religious household who practices their faith for forty years. Every prayer, every ritual, every act of worship has triggered dopamine release, strengthening those neural pathways. Their brain has become optimized, through tens of thousands of repetitions, to find their specific religious practice deeply rewarding. For such a person to even consider an alternative worldview isn't just intellectually challenging—it's neurologically painful, requiring them to abandon neural superhighways they've spent a lifetime building and start developing new pathways from scratch.
The Value Calculator in Your Forehead
While dopamine provides the chemical fuel for making things feel appealing, another brain region acts as the architect of your values. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex, located just behind your forehead, functions like a complex calculator that assigns worth to different actions and beliefs.
This region integrates information from all over your brain—emotional signals, social norms, abstract principles, personal benefits—and collapses them into a single answer: "Is this good or bad? Should I do this or not?"
Here's the crucial part: when you're evaluating your own culturally approved behaviours, this brain region doesn't give you an objective assessment. Instead, it actively "beautifies" your actions by weighting certain factors more heavily than others. It might prioritize loyalty to your group over fairness to outsiders, or traditional authority over individual rights, or ideological consistency over contradictory evidence.
This means that an action which an outsider might see as harmful or irrational can be processed in your brain as a clear moral victory. Your prefrontal cortex isn't lying to you—it genuinely computes a positive value based on the weights your culture and experience have programmed into it.
Even more striking: this region actively suppresses signals of doubt or uncertainty. It silences the neural alarm bells that might otherwise make you question whether you're doing the right thing. This is why people can feel absolutely certain about their moral positions even when facing ambiguous or contradictory evidence.
We know this brain region is essential for moral feelings because when it's damaged—by stroke, dementia, or injury—people lose the ability to find socially appropriate behaviour appealing. They might act impulsively or antisocially without feeling guilt or shame, because their brains can no longer perform the biological "beautification" that makes good behaviour feel good.
Why Criticism Hurts (Literally)
The Quranic verse doesn't just describe how beliefs become appealing—it also warns what happens when those beliefs are challenged. The verse cautions that insulting others' sacred symbols leads to retaliation "out of ignorance." Neuroscience reveals that this "ignorance" isn't a lack of information or education—it's a sophisticated biological defence system that activates automatically when your core identity is threatened.
When someone challenges your deeply held beliefs—whether through argument, mockery, or simply living differently—a region called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) immediately detects the conflict between what you believe and what you're being told. This conflict doesn't just feel intellectually uncomfortable—it literally hurts, activating many of the same neural pathways involved in physical pain.
Brain imaging studies have made this visible: when researchers put people in MRI scanners and challenged their core moral or religious convictions, the pain-processing regions of their brains lit up like Christmas trees. The ache you feel when someone attacks your beliefs isn't metaphorical—it's real neural distress, processed by your brain as a threat to your wellbeing as serious as a physical injury.
Think about the last time someone criticized something you cared deeply about—maybe your religion, your political party, your country, your parenting choices, or your professional identity. Remember that visceral, gut-level reaction? That tight feeling in your chest, that rush of defensive anger, that immediate urge to fight back? That wasn't a character flaw—it was your ACC sending distress signals throughout your brain, triggering a cascade of defensive responses.
For most people, this neurological pain triggers an automatic defensive response. Your brain doesn't interpret the discomfort as a signal that you might need to reconsider your position—that would require metacognitive sophistication that most people haven't developed. Instead, it interprets the pain as a threat that must be neutralized, immediately and decisively. The default response isn't "Hmm, maybe I should think about this more carefully" but rather "This person is wrong and attacking me—I need to defend myself."
The Neuroscience of Motivated Blindness
A ground-breaking 2025 study revealed exactly how your brain maintains your beliefs despite contradictory evidence. Using brain imaging technology, researchers found something remarkable: when people encounter information that contradicts their established beliefs, their brains actually process and store that information—but then refuse to use it.
The study showed that contradictory evidence gets encoded in working memory, stored in the parietal cortex at the back of your brain. But when it's time to make a decision, your prefrontal cortex performs what researchers call "selective readout." It systematically filters out the uncomfortable contradictory information while amplifying the confirming information.
This happens entirely outside your conscious awareness. You genuinely believe you're considering all the evidence when, in fact, your brain is showing you an edited version of reality—one that supports what you already believed.
This is the neurological basis of what the Quran describes as "adornment." Your brain literally decorates your memory of events to make yourself look good and your beliefs appear well-supported, even when an objective observer might see things very differently.
The Amygdala Hijack: When Thinking Shuts Down
When the challenge to your beliefs becomes more intense—especially when someone insults your sacred symbols or core identity with contempt or mockery—an even more dramatic neural response occurs. Your amygdala, an almond-shaped structure deep in your brain that has served as humanity's threat-detection system for millions of years, perceives the attack on your beliefs as equivalent to a physical attack on your survival.
This isn't hyperbole—your amygdala genuinely cannot distinguish between an existential threat to your physical body and an existential threat to your conceptual identity. Both trigger the same ancient alarm system that kept your ancestors alive on the African savanna when lions approached.
This triggers a flood of stress hormones—cortisol and adrenaline—that rapidly shift your entire nervous system into fight-or-flight mode. Your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate, your muscles tense, your digestion shuts down, and your blood flow redirects from your thoughtful prefrontal cortex to your reactive limbic system. In this state, your amygdala effectively "hijacks" control from your prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for careful reasoning, empathy, nuanced thinking, and behavioural inhibition.
Imagine a heated argument about religion or politics. One person makes a disparaging comment about the other's sacred symbols—maybe mocking someone's prayer practices, or calling their political ideology evil, or insulting their prophet or founding fathers. The person whose symbols were insulted feels a sudden surge of rage. Their face flushes, their voice rises, their hands clench. They might say things they'll later regret, make arguments they don't really believe, or even become physically aggressive.
This is the biological definition of the Quranic term jahl, usually translated as "ignorance." It's not a lack of education, intelligence, or good intentions—it's a neurological state where the person is physiologically incapable of engaging in rational analysis or empathetic understanding. Their brain has temporarily shut down the circuits required for constructive dialogue and activated circuits designed for immediate survival response.
In this state, the person isn't choosing to be unreasonable or refusing to listen—they're literally unable to process complex information, consider alternative perspectives, or regulate their emotional responses. The thinking parts of their brain have been temporarily taken offline by the survival parts.
This explains why religious and political arguments so often escalate into hostility despite everyone's apparent intelligence and good intentions. Once the amygdala hijack occurs, both parties are operating with diminished cognitive capacity, each perceiving the other as an existential threat. They're not having a rational discussion between two thinking humans—they're engaged in a primitive threat response between two animals whose brains believe their survival is at stake.
The tragic irony is that this defensive response, designed to protect the group and preserve social cohesion, often achieves the opposite. By making productive dialogue neurologically impossible, the amygdala hijack ensures that misunderstandings deepen, stereotypes harden, and conflicts escalate—exactly what the Quranic verse warns against when it counsels against insulting others' sacred symbols.
The Tribal Brain: Why "We" Matters More Than "I"
The Quranic phrase "each people" (emphasizing groups rather than individuals) points to another crucial insight: the "appealing deeds" phenomenon isn't just individual—it's deeply social.
Your brain contains specialized circuitry in the medial prefrontal cortex dedicated to thinking about social groups and collective identity. Brain imaging reveals something striking: for most people, this region activates not only when thinking about yourself but also when thinking about your group—your religion, your nation, your political party, your cultural community.
This neural overlap means your brain literally processes your group's beliefs and practices using the same machinery it uses for your personal identity. The group's deeds aren't experienced as external phenomena to be objectively evaluated—they feel like extensions of yourself.
This is why criticism of your group's practices hurts just as much as personal criticism. It's why you feel genuine pride in your community's achievements even when you played no role in them. Your brain has blurred the boundary between self and tribe.
Oxytocin, often called the "love hormone," plays a crucial role in making group practices feel appealing. But research reveals a troubling complexity: while oxytocin promotes trust, cooperation, and warm feelings within your group, it simultaneously increases suspicion and hostility toward outsiders.
Scientists call this "parochial altruism"—being generous and cooperative with your own people while being defensive or aggressive toward others. Oxytocin doesn't make you universally loving; it makes you tribally loyal.
This neurochemical state creates a biological barrier between groups. The practices of your own community feel not just familiar but morally superior and existentially necessary, while the practices of other communities seem suspect, threatening, or simply wrong—regardless of their objective merits.
Different Cultures, Different Brains
One of the most profound discoveries in recent neuroscience is that culture doesn't just influence your thoughts—it literally reshapes your brain's physical structure. This field, called cultural neuroscience, shows that "each person" truly possess differently wired brains based on their sustained cultural experiences.
For example, people raised in collectivist cultures (common in East Asia) show heightened reward activation when performing actions that benefit the group, even at personal cost. Their brains have been shaped to find group-oriented behaviour neurologically pleasurable.
In contrast, people from individualist cultures (common in the West) show higher activation for behaviours that benefit themselves as individuals, even when such actions might harm collective welfare.
This isn't a matter of conscious choice or moral reasoning—it's structural rewiring of the reward circuits based on years of cultural conditioning. Your brain physically adapts to find the specific deeds valued by your culture naturally rewarding.
This means the subjective "appeal" of your cultural practices isn't just psychological—it's literally built into the architecture of your neural networks.
Why Evolution Made Us This Way
From an evolutionary perspective, none of this is an accident, a bug, or a design flaw in the human brain. The human brain didn't evolve to discover objective truth or engage in philosophical contemplation—it evolved to help our ancestors survive and reproduce in intensely competitive social environments where being wrong could mean death and being ostracized could mean starvation.
For most of human history—roughly 300,000 years for modern humans and millions of years for our hominid ancestors—survival depended almost entirely on belonging to a cohesive social group. Individual humans are remarkably weak and vulnerable compared to other large mammals. We have no claws, no armour, no venom, relatively poor senses of smell and hearing, and we're slower than most predators. Our only survival advantage was cooperation in organized groups.
But this created intense evolutionary pressure for neural mechanisms that promote group cohesion. Imagine two different individuals in an ancestral human tribe:
Person A has a brain that makes them question the group's practices, feel sympathetic toward rival tribes, and find the community's rituals unrewarding or arbitrary. They often express doubts, refuse to participate fully in group ceremonies, and advocate for changing traditional ways. Over time, the group perceives them as unreliable, dangerous, or contaminated. They face social punishment, get excluded from cooperative ventures, struggle to find mates, and might be expelled from the group entirely—a death sentence in the ancestral environment.
Person B has a brain that makes their group's specific practices feel inherently appealing and correct. They experience strong dopamine rewards from conforming to local norms, feel oxytocin-mediated bonding with fellow group members, and automatically assign high value to culturally sanctioned behaviours. They're seen as loyal, trustworthy, and normal. They receive social approval, access to resources, cooperative partners, and attractive mates. They thrive and successfully raise children who inherit their neurobiology.
Over thousands of generations, this process created a biological "lock" on cultural practice. The individuals whose brains made their group's deeds subjectively appealing left more descendants than those whose brains remained sceptical or critical. The subjective appeal of culturally specific practices became not just a transient psychological state but a heritable neurobiological trait, shaped by millennia of evolutionary pressure.
Evolution essentially guaranteed that each population's descendants would find their inherited cultural framework neurologically rewarding. By making "each people's deeds appealing to them," the evolutionary process ensured human groups remained internally committed to behavioural strategies that had kept their ancestors alive—even when those strategies might appear irrational, harmful, or morally problematic from an external universalist perspective.
This is why you can't simply argue someone out of their deeply held beliefs with logic and evidence. You're not just fighting their conscious reasoning—you're fighting millions of years of evolutionary programming designed to make group loyalty feel better than objective truth.
Same Hardware, Different Settings
Evolutionary psychologists have identified several basic moral "modules" that appear to be universal across cultures: Care (preventing harm), Fairness (reciprocity and justice), Loyalty (group solidarity), Authority (respect for hierarchy), and Sanctity (purity and disgust).
But here's the key: while all humans have these modules, different cultures calibrate their relative importance very differently. A warrior culture facing constant external threats might heavily weigh Loyalty and Authority, making aggressive defence of the group feel morally beautiful. A peaceful agricultural society might emphasize Care and Fairness, making cooperation and conflict-avoidance feel right.
When you perform an action that strongly activates your culture's prioritized moral foundations, your brain's reward system "beautifies" it with dopamine. This explains why people from different backgrounds can look at the same action and reach opposite moral conclusions—they're using the same neural hardware but with radically different settings.
The Prediction Machine
Cutting-edge neuroscience increasingly views the brain as a "prediction machine"—constantly generating expectations about the world and trying to minimize surprise and uncertainty. From this perspective, familiar cultural practices feel appealing precisely because they're predictable.
Your brain finds actions that conform to established patterns inherently rewarding because they reduce the metabolic cost of constant adaptation. This creates what researchers call "moral magnetism"—a pull toward the familiar that makes traditional practices feel safe and right while novel or foreign practices feel uncomfortable and wrong, regardless of their objective ethical merit.
This is why cultural change often feels threatening even when it might be beneficial. Your brain is designed to prefer the predictable over the unknown.
Can We Escape Our Neural Prisons?
This might all sound depressing. If our brains are hardwired to make our own group's practices seem obviously correct while dismissing alternatives, are we trapped in a permanent state of mutual incomprehension and conflict?
The answer is no—but escaping requires understanding and effort.
The key is neuroplasticity: your brain's lifelong ability to reorganize itself through new experiences and conscious practice. While you can't simply decide to stop finding your cultural practices appealing, you can gradually train your brain to expand what it finds rewarding.
The first step is what we might call "neuro-humility"—recognizing that your profound sense of moral certainty, your gut feeling that your values are obviously correct, arises from the same biological mechanisms described in this article. Everyone experiences these mechanisms. Your certainty is not evidence that you've discovered objective truth—it's evidence that you have a normally functioning human brain.
Research shows that people with stronger "metacognitive sensitivity"—the ability to recognize they might be wrong—show dramatically reduced aggressive reactions when their beliefs are challenged. Instead of experiencing contradiction as a threat requiring defence, they experience it as an invitation to reflection.
Rewiring Reward: The Science of Moral Change
Once culturally transmitted behaviours become automated habits, they're stored in deep brain structures and operate below conscious awareness, highly resistant to change. But through sustained effort—what Islamic tradition calls mujahadah (spiritual struggle)—you can recruit your prefrontal cortex to override these automatic responses.
Studies show that after approximately six to twelve months of consistent practice—whether through interfaith dialogue, perspective-taking exercises, exposure to diverse viewpoints, or meditation designed to reduce tribal bias—your brain's valuation network begins to "adorn" new, more inclusive behaviours with the same dopamine rewards previously reserved for tribal practices.
In other words, you can train your brain to find bridge-building, empathy, and pluralism as neurologically appealing as group loyalty. The subjective sense of "rightness" is revealed to be a malleable state that can be consciously redirected.
This doesn't mean abandoning your identity or pretending all beliefs are equally valid. It means expanding your circle of moral concern while maintaining your core commitments.
Rewiring Your Brain: The Science of Transformation
Most culturally transmitted "appealing deeds" eventually become automated habits, stored in deep brain structures called the basal ganglia and operating below conscious awareness. These automatic responses are highly resistant to voluntary modification—which is why New Year's resolutions so often fail and why telling someone "just be more open-minded" rarely works.
However, through sustained conscious effort—a process analogous to what Islamic tradition calls mujahadah (spiritual struggle)—individuals can recruit their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (the brain's executive control centre) to override these automatic habit loops and consciously redirect behaviour toward more inclusive, empathic, or universalist moral frameworks.
The science here is both challenging and hopeful. Longitudinal studies tracking people over months and years demonstrate that behavioural change follows a predictable neuroplastic timeline. After approximately six to twelve months of consistent, deliberate practice—whether through regular interfaith dialogue, structured perspective-taking exercises, sustained exposure to diverse cultural contexts, or contemplative practices specifically designed to reduce in-group bias—measurable changes begin appearing in brain structure and function.
The vmPFC valuation network, which previously assigned high dopamine rewards only to parochial tribal practices, begins to "adorn" new, more cosmopolitan behaviours with similar neurochemical satisfaction. Someone who initially felt anxious or hostile attending an unfamiliar religious service might, after repeated exposure combined with genuine curiosity, begin to experience authentic appreciation and even spiritual resonance. A political partisan who initially felt visceral disgust toward the opposing party might, through sustained contact with thoughtful members of that group, develop genuine respect and even friendship.
The subjective "appeal" is thus revealed to be a malleable neuroplastic state that can be consciously redirected through intentional effort and supportive social environments. But the key word here is sustained. A single positive interaction won't rewire decades of neural conditioning. The brain requires repeated, consistent experiences over many months to build new dopamine-reward associations strong enough to compete with existing tribal loyalties.
Think of it like learning a new language or musical instrument. At first, everything feels awkward, effortful, and unrewarding. Your brain hasn't built the neural infrastructure to make the new skill feel natural or enjoyable. But with consistent practice over months, the neural pathways strengthen, automation increases, and what once required painful conscious effort begins to feel smooth, natural, and intrinsically rewarding. The same principle applies to moral transformation: with sustained practice, inclusive and pluralistic engagement can become as neurologically appealing as tribal exclusivity once was.
This finding carries profound implications for religious education, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding initiatives. It suggests that rather than attempting to suppress or eliminate the brain's tendency to create subjective appeal—a neurologically impossible task that would require fighting millions of years of evolution—interventions should focus on gradually retraining the reward system to find inclusive, dialogical, and pluralistic behaviours as appealing as traditional in-group practices.
Practical Implications: Building a Pluralistic World
Understanding this neuroscience has profound implications for how we approach religious and cultural diversity in practical, real-world contexts—from family conversations to international diplomacy.
First, it provides a scientific rationale for the ancient wisdom of not insulting others' sacred symbols. Such provocations reliably trigger the amygdala hijack and defensive aggression described earlier, making productive dialogue neurologically impossible. Respect for others' symbols isn't just politeness or political correctness—it's a prerequisite for keeping the thinking parts of everyone's brains online and functional.
Consider contemporary conflicts over religious symbols: cartoons of prophets, flags being burned, sacred texts being desecrated. From a purely secular, rationalist perspective, these might seem like trivial matters that shouldn't provoke violent responses. But neuroscience reveals why they reliably do: these symbols are neurologically tagged as extensions of personal identity, and attacks on them trigger the same survival circuits as physical threats. Understanding this doesn't mean we must accept violence as justified, but it does help explain why symbolic conflicts are so intractable and why mutual respect for symbols is neurologically necessary for peace.
Second, this neuroscience fundamentally reframes the question of religious truth. Instead of asking "Which religion is objectively correct?"—a question that immediately triggers defensive neural cascades in everyone involved—we can ask "How do we peacefully coexist while acknowledging that we all experience these same neural mechanisms that make our different paths feel equally certain to us?"
This shift is crucial and potentially transformative. When you understand that a devout Hindu's certainty about their path comes from the same dopamine circuits, prefrontal valuations, and defensive systems as a devout Christian's certainty about theirs, the theological disagreement becomes less existentially threatening. Neither person is delusional, morally inferior, or cognitively deficient—both are experiencing normal human neurobiology operating within different cultural frameworks that were transmitted to them through no choice of their own.
Third, it suggests concrete approaches for education and conflict resolution. Rather than trying to eliminate religious identity or tribal loyalty—which would require dismantling evolutionarily ancient neural systems, a practical impossibility—we should focus on building metacognitive skills and perspective-taking abilities that allow people to hold their convictions strongly while simultaneously recognizing the legitimacy of others holding different convictions with equal strength.
Educational curricula could explicitly teach the neuroscience of belief, showing students brain scans of people from different faiths experiencing certainty about contradictory doctrines, demonstrating that the neural signatures of religious conviction look identical across traditions. This doesn't relativize truth claims, but it does cultivate humility about the reliability of subjective certainty as a guide to objective truth.
The Ancient Wisdom in Modern Terms
The comprehensive scientific evidence confirms that the Quranic observation in verse 6:108 represents a remarkably precise description of human neurobiology, articulated thirteen centuries before the invention of brain imaging technology.
The "adornment" of culturally specific practices emerges from a complex biological architecture involving dopamine-based reward systems, prefrontal value integration, defensive cognitive mechanisms, social identity circuits, tribally-focused neurochemistry, and evolutionary adaptations that made group conformity neurologically pleasurable.
These mechanisms operate largely outside conscious awareness, creating the powerful subjective experience that your cultural practices are self-evidently superior while alternatives appear foreign or wrong. The verse isn't advocating relativism—claiming all practices are equally valid—but articulating a psychological reality: humans are biologically predisposed to experience their inherited frameworks as correct, and this predisposition is universal.
The Neuro-Ethics of Pluralism: A Quranic Charter for Global Diversity
In an era of hyper-polarization, the Quran provides a profound biological, ethical, and interreligious framework for pluralism long before modern neuroscience identified the “reward circuitry” of belief. The ground-breaking intersection of Quran 6:108 and cognitive science reveals that our sense of “rightness” is not merely cultural arrogance, but a divine-biological mechanism embedded within human nature. Yet the Quran clarifies that this mechanism was never meant for tribal isolation, supremacy, or hostility, but for a higher evolutionary, moral, and spiritual purpose: to transform difference into ethical maturity, and diversity into a shared civilizational responsibility.
The Quranic insight, “We have made each people’s deeds appealing (zayyana) to them” (6:108), anticipates what neuroscience now describes as the mesolimbic dopamine system—the brain’s reward circuitry that reinforces what feels meaningful, safe, and correct. Human brains do not merely record reality; they interpret, filter, and emotionally “decorate” it. In this sense, conviction is not simply an intellectual conclusion; it is often a neurochemical experience. The Quran, with remarkable psychological realism, acknowledges that the visceral certainty felt by different religious and cultural groups is a universal human trait. By recognizing this neuro-chemical “adornment,” we develop what may be called Neuro-Humility—the realization that our conviction is often a feature of our biological wiring, not necessarily an objective mandate to devalue others. This is precisely why Quran 6:108 immediately warns against insulting the sacred symbols of other communities: contempt becomes a psychological trigger that intensifies defensive identity reactions and multiplies hatred. When human beings perceive their sacred world as attacked, the brain reacts not with calm reasoning but with threat perception, emotional reactivity, and retaliatory hostility. Thus, the Quran’s warning is not only a moral instruction but a deeply scientific insight into how human cognition escalates conflict.
This leads to the deeper question: Why did the creative process produce such diversity in the first place? Why do human societies develop different languages, different rituals, different moral cultures, and different sacred imaginations? The Quran answers this in one of its most powerful pluralistic proclamations: “O mankind, We created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another (li-ta‘arafu)” (49:13). This verse transforms diversity from an accident of history into an intentional divine architecture. It refutes the primitive logic of tribal superiority and challenges the evolutionary impulse of fear toward the outsider. Modern neuroscience describes the “amygdala hijack,” a survival-based tendency where the brain’s fear centre reacts quickly to perceived threats, especially when encountering unfamiliar groups. Such fear often leads to stereotyping, prejudice, and exclusion. Yet the Quranic command is not to surrender to this evolutionary impulse but to transcend it. The divine purpose of diversity is not hostility but mutual recognition, not domination but relational understanding, not isolation but moral encounter.
Thus, the Quran does not deny that humans possess biological instincts of in-group favouritism. Rather, it exposes these instincts and calls humanity to rise above them through moral consciousness and reason. It demands the transformation of tribal “Othering” into “Mutual Recognition.” The ethical significance is profound: pluralism is not merely the tolerance of difference; it is the active spiritual practice of recognizing the dignity, humanity, and moral agency of the other.
The Quran further elevates diversity to the status of a cosmic miracle. It declares that human variation is not a defect but a divine sign: “And among His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the diversity of your languages and your colours” (30:22). Here, linguistic and racial plurality are not treated as obstacles to unity, but as evidence of divine creativity. The Quran’s language is striking: diversity is not described as a “problem” to be solved but as an “ayah”—a sign pointing toward God. This resonates strongly with modern cultural neuroscience, which shows that human brains are shaped by environments, traditions, and social learning. Neural pathways are influenced by cultural experiences, language patterns, educational structures, and collective rituals. Therefore, difference is not deviation; it is the natural outcome of human development in diverse historical contexts. The Quranic worldview, remarkably, anticipates this by presenting plurality as a sacred phenomenon rather than a theological threat.
Perhaps the most explicit and decisive embrace of pluralism is found in Quran 5:48: “For each of you We have appointed a law and a way. Had God willed, He would have made you one nation; but He tests you in what He has given you. So compete with one another in good deeds (fastabiqul-khayrat).” This verse dismantles the theological foundation of exclusivism. If God had intended a single religious uniformity, it would have been effortless. Yet diversity exists because it serves a divine moral purpose. The Quran does not merely tolerate diversity—it gives it a reason, a direction, and an ethical meaning. It transforms religious plurality into an arena of moral competition. The real competition is not over supremacy of identity but over excellence of virtue.
This is where the Quran provides the ultimate solution to what may be called the “Reinforcement Trap.” Human reward circuitry naturally reinforces what supports group pride and identity certainty. The dopamine system can reward tribal superiority, creating pleasure in self-righteousness and hostility toward outsiders. But Quran 5:48 redirects that same reward impulse away from ego and toward ethical achievement. Instead of using neurobiology to reward tribal arrogance, the Quran instructs human beings to seek moral pleasure in compassion, justice, service, and goodness. In this framework, pluralism is not a passive coexistence but a dynamic ethical race: communities are challenged to demonstrate the beauty of their faith not through hostility but through humanitarian excellence.
The Quran further expands pluralism into a moral philosophy by declaring that God’s trial is based on what each individual and community has been endowed with: “He tests you in what He has given you” (5:48). This principle destroys the arrogance of religious monopoly because it makes moral accountability contextual and capacity-based. The Quran does not judge human beings as identical machines. It recognizes that people are shaped by their circumstances, opportunities, social environments, and inherited histories. Therefore, divine judgment is not a crude collective verdict based on labels, but a morally intelligent evaluation based on what each soul was given and what it did with that trust. This vision is deeply coherent with modern ethical psychology, which recognizes that human responsibility must be understood within the framework of context, developmental influences, and environmental shaping.
Thus, the Quranic vision calls humanity away from reactive ignorance (jahl) toward conscious moral striving (mujahadah). Diversity is not a problem to eliminate but a divine architecture meant to cultivate humility, justice, and compassionate competition in good works. A truly Quranic civilization does not fear pluralism; it sees it as the very arena where ethical greatness is tested. It does not seek to erase difference; it seeks to purify human reaction to difference.
Perhaps the clearest interreligious embrace is found in Quran 5:69, which affirms that salvation and divine acceptance are tied to faith in God, the Last Day, and righteous deeds—not communal labels: those who believe, those who follow Judaism, the Sabians, and the Christians are included within divine moral recognition. This verse stands as a radical declaration against sectarian monopoly, insisting that God’s moral gate is wider than human religious pride. Similarly, Quran 4:123–124 rejects inherited privilege and identity arrogance by declaring that reward is based on moral action and ethical striving, whether performed by male or female. Such verses undermine supremacist theology and establish a form of ethical universalism grounded in divine justice.
The Quran also provides a practical charter for coexistence, demonstrating that pluralism is not merely a spiritual idea but a social obligation. In Quran 22:40, the Quran recognizes monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques as places where God is remembered. By explicitly listing multiple worship spaces, the Quran legitimizes religious plurality as part of sacred human civilization. The implication is profound: protecting worship spaces is not merely tolerance; it is a moral responsibility and a civilizational duty. The Quran thereby places the defence of religious diversity within the framework of justice. It teaches that the existence of multiple sacred spaces is not an insult to divine unity but part of the human story that God permits and values.
Likewise, the Quran commands cooperation in goodness and justice: “Cooperate with one another in righteousness and piety, and do not cooperate in sin and aggression” (5:2). This verse provides an ethical foundation for interreligious solidarity. It does not restrict cooperation to members of one community; it establishes a universal moral principle: collaboration must be based on goodness, not identity. It encourages a world where different religious groups can stand together for justice, peace, humanitarian service, and the protection of the oppressed. In the Quranic worldview, the moral worth of an alliance is measured not by its tribal loyalty but by its ethical content.
Moreover, Quran 5:8 provides one of the most powerful justice principles ever articulated in sacred literature: believers are commanded to uphold justice even toward those they dislike. Justice is not optional, and it is not conditional upon emotional comfort. The Quran recognizes that human emotions are unstable and often shaped by fear, memory, anger, and trauma. Yet it demands that ethical reason must override reactive hatred. This resonates strongly with modern neuroscience and moral psychology, which show that human beings often fall into revenge-based cognition when emotionally triggered. Societies collapse when anger becomes law and when vengeance replaces justice. The Quran, therefore, offers a civilizational remedy: it commands justice as a spiritual discipline that restrains biological impulses of retaliation.
At this point, the Quran’s pluralistic framework reaches its institutional and historical climax in Quran 57:25, a verse that powerfully connects revelation, justice, and civilizational order. The Quran declares: “We sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and We sent down with them the Scripture and the Balance, so that mankind may uphold justice.” (57:25). This verse reveals that the purpose of divine revelation is not sectarian triumph but the establishment of justice as the foundation of civilization. God sent scripture and moral guidance, but also sent “the Balance,” which symbolizes ethical equilibrium, fairness, and moral measurement. In other words, revelation is meant to cultivate a world where truth is weighed not by tribal passion but by moral proportion. Thus, pluralism in the Quran is not a sentimental invitation to coexistence without accountability. It is a justice-centred project that demands social responsibility. Diversity becomes meaningful only when guided by the Balance of justice. Without justice, pluralism becomes hypocrisy, and coexistence becomes merely the silence of the oppressed.
This is why Quran 57:25 stands as a decisive civilizational manifesto: The Quranic vision of pluralism is not based on the erasure of differences, but on the establishment of justice as the common ground where all communities can coexist with dignity. The Quran does not demand that humanity become uniform; it demands that humanity become fair. It does not demand ideological sameness; it demands moral balance.
When this Quranic message is placed alongside modern cognitive science, its depth becomes even more astonishing. Neuroscience shows that human beings are neurologically wired to reward their own worldview, to become emotionally attached to their in-group identity, and to perceive outsiders as threats. Yet the Quran anticipates this danger and offers a divine remedy. Quran 6:108 acknowledges the neurobiological reality of “adornment,” Quran 49:13 assigns diversity a purpose of mutual knowing, Quran 30:22 calls difference a divine sign, Quran 5:48 commands ethical competition rather than sectarian rivalry, and Quran 57:25 establishes justice as the very reason revelation was sent. Together, these verses form a coherent system: biology explains human bias, revelation disciplines it, and justice becomes the universal ethical anchor.
Therefore, the Quran offers not only a theology of pluralism but a neuro-ethical framework for global coexistence. It does not deny human nature; it confronts it. It does not romanticize diversity; it assigns it responsibility. It does not treat difference as a threat; it treats it as a divine test of moral maturity. The Quran’s pluralistic civilization is not built on the fragile foundation of mere tolerance but on the strong foundation of justice, humility, cooperation, and moral striving.
The Quran’s vision is clear: diversity is not a divine mistake but a divine design, and the human brain’s tendency to find its own deeds “appealing” is not an excuse for hatred but a call to humility. The Quran warns against insulting others because it understands the psychology of defensive identity. It commands mutual knowing because it seeks to overcome tribal fear. It celebrates languages and colours as divine signs because it sees plurality as sacred. It redirects religious rivalry into a competition of virtue because it wants the dopamine reward system to serve goodness rather than ego.
Indeed, a further and deeply urgent dimension of this Quranic neuro-ethical charter is the Quran’s implicit condemnation of the reckless culture of religious sensationalism promoted by many contemporary Muslim tele-evangelists. In the name of “defending Islam,” they routinely violate the Quran’s own sacred discipline of speech and replace it with ridicule, provocation, and sectarian humiliation of Jews and Christians—thereby betraying the very scripture they claim to uphold. What is presented as “da‘wah” (invitation to the path of God) is often nothing but a media-driven industry of outrage, engineered to harvest applause, social dominance, and ideological pleasure. From a neuroscientific perspective, such preaching is not merely unethical; it is cognitively and biologically manipulative, because it exploits the brain’s reward circuitry by turning contempt into a source of dopamine reinforcement, training audiences to feel moral superiority through insult rather than spiritual maturity through wisdom. The Quran commands that invitation must be governed by intellectual wisdom, emotional restraint, and ethical persuasion: “Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in the best manner” (16:125). Yet many tele-evangelists argue in the worst manner, intentionally activating the amygdala-driven fear response in their audiences, converting religious identity into a threat-based tribal reflex rather than a God-centred moral consciousness. The Quran further insists that engagement with the People of the Book must be conducted through a language of shared divine truth: “Do not argue with the People of the Book except in the best way… and say: Our God and your God is One” (29:46). This is a profound neuro-ethical principle, because the affirmation of a shared God de-escalates intergroup hostility by reducing “otherness” and weakening the psychological mechanisms of dehumanisation. Likewise, the Quran calls toward civilizational common ground— “Come to a word common between us and you” (3:64)—yet these preachers systematically destroy common ground, replacing it with verbal aggression that triggers predictable retaliatory cognition. Modern social neuroscience demonstrates that humiliation activates the same neural pain pathways as physical injury, producing reactive anger, revenge impulses, and escalating cycles of hostility. The Quran anticipates this psychological law by warning believers that even if provocation is encountered, restraint and patience are mandatory: “You will surely hear much abuse… but if you remain patient and conscious of God, that is of great resolve” (3:186). But instead of restraining hostility, many tele-evangelists monetise provocation itself, manufacturing insults as a performance strategy. Such behaviour directly violates the Quran’s explicit conflict-prevention directive: insulting the sacred symbols of others will inevitably trigger them to insult God in return, out of reactive ignorance and emotional defence (6:108). Thus, these media clerics are not merely committing a moral error; they are committing a scientifically predictable act of social sabotage—weaponising neurobiology, amplifying tribal dopamine-rewarded hatred, and pushing societies into a spiral of retaliatory hostility that the Quran explicitly sought to prevent.
A truly Quranic civilization, therefore, does not fear pluralism; it embraces it as the very arena where justice, compassion, and moral greatness are tested (5:48; 49:13). It understands that human beings may differ in religious paths and legal traditions (5:48), cultural expressions and communal identities (49:13), languages and colours (30:22), and even in their historical destinies (10:99; 11:118), yet they must unite in the pursuit of justice, righteousness, and shared human dignity (4:135; 5:8; 16:90, 17:70). The Quran insists that cooperation in goodness is a divine command (5:2), that no community holds monopoly over divine grace (22:17; 5:69), and that moral worth is based on righteousness rather than inherited labels (49:13; 4:123–124). In this way, pluralism becomes not a compromise but a sacred responsibility (5:48; 22:40), and diversity becomes not a source of division but the very field where humanity proves its worth before God through ethical striving, justice, and mercy (57:25; 21:107).
The Path Forward
Understanding this shared neurological vulnerability has both descriptive and prescriptive power. It explains why religious and cultural diversity persists, why intergroup conflicts over symbolic issues are so intense, and why cross-cultural agreement is so difficult to achieve.
But it also provides an ethical foundation: if we recognize that "we" (whether divine will or evolutionary process) have made each people's deeds appealing to them, we must approach others with humility rather than triumphalism.
Everyone walks through life in a subjectively "beautiful" reality constructed by neurochemistry, culture, and evolution. We all experience the same dopamine loops, the same defensive triggers, the same tribal instincts. Recognizing these shared constraints—seeing the neural machinery behind our certainties—allows us to move from unreflective tribal reactivity to conscious, empathetic engagement.
The verse functions as both observation and intervention. By acknowledging that all people's deeds are made appealing to them through universal mechanisms, it invites us to recognize that our moral convictions, however profound, are not transparent windows into truth but products of biology operating within culture.
This recognition— ‘neuro-humility’—might be the only scientifically grounded path to genuine pluralism. Not a weak relativism that pretends all views are equally valid, but a strong humility that acknowledges we're all subject to the same biological constraints and therefore must approach difference with curiosity rather than contempt.
In our increasingly diverse, interconnected world, humanity's survival may depend on learning to see past the biologically generated "beauty" of our own certainties, recognizing that others experience identical neural adorning of their divergent paths. Only through this scientifically informed humility can we hope to build pluralistic communities capable of peaceful coexistence amid irreconcilable differences.
The Quranic verse offers a path forward: understand neuroscience, cultivate humility, respect others' sacred symbols, and work consciously to rewire your reward systems toward empathy and inclusion. Your brain makes your deeds appealing to you—but it can learn to find peace appealing too.
Appendix of the Quranic Citations
(Excerpted from: The Qur’an. Translated by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
3:64: “Say, ‘People of the Book, let us come to a common word between us and you: that we shall worship none but God, that we shall associate nothing with Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside God.’
3:186: “You are sure to hear much that is hurtful from those who were given the Scripture before you and from those who associate others with God. If you are steadfast and mindful of God, that is the best course.”
4:123–124: “It will not be according to your hopes or those of the People of the Book: anyone who does wrong will be requited for it and will find no one to protect or help him against God; anyone, man or woman, who does good deeds and is a believer, will enter Paradise and will not be wronged by as much as the dip in a date stone.”
4:135: “You who believe, uphold justice and bear witness to God, even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or your close relatives. Whether the person is rich or poor, God can best take care of both. Refrain from following your own desire, so that you can act justly—if you distort or neglect justice, God is fully aware of what you do.”
5:2: “Help one another in goodness and provision, and do not help one another in sin and aggression. Be mindful of God, for God is severe in punishment.”
5:8: “You who believe, be steadfast in your devotion to God and bear witness impartially: do not let hatred of others lead you away from justice. Be just, for that is closer to awareness of God. Be mindful of God; God is well aware of all that you do.”
5:48: “We have assigned a law and a path to each of you. If God had so willed, He would have made you one community, but He wanted to test you through that which He has given you, so race to do good: you will all return to God and He will make clear to you the matters you differed about.”
5:69: “For the [Muslim] believers, the Jews, the Sabians, and the Christians—those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good deeds—there is no fear: they will not grieve.”
6:108: “[Believers], do not revile those they call on besides God in case they, in their hostility and ignorance, revile God. To each community We have made their own actions seem alluring, but in the end they will return to their Lord and He will inform them of all they did.”
10:99: “Had your Lord willed, all the people on earth would have believed. So can you [Prophet] compel people to believe?”
11:118: “If your Lord had pleased, He would have made all people a single community, but they continue to have their differences.”
16:90: “God commands justice, doing good, and generosity towards relatives and He forbids what is shameful, blameworthy, and oppressive. He teaches you, so that you may take heed.”
16:125: “[Prophet], call [people] to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good teaching. Argue with them in the most courteous way, for your Lord knows best who has strayed from His way and who is rightly guided.”
17:70: “We have honoured the children of Adam and carried them by land and sea; We have provided good things for their sustenance and exalted them above many of Our creatures.”
21:107: “It was only as a mercy to the worlds that We sent you [Prophet].”
22:17: “As for the believers, the Jews, the Sabians, the Christians, the Magians, and the polytheists, God will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection. God is witness to all things.”
22:40: “If God did not drive some people back by means of others, monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, where God’s name is much mentioned, would have been pulled down. God will certainly help those who help His cause—God is truly powerful and mighty.”
29:46: “[Believers], do not argue with the People of the Book unless it is in the politest way—except for those of them who do evil. Say, ‘We believe in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to you; our God and your God is one; and we are devoted to Him.’”
30:22: “Another of His signs is the creation of the heavens and earth, and the diversity of your languages and colours. There truly are signs in this for those who know.”
49:13: “People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should get to know one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware.”
57:25: “We sent Our messengers with clear signs, the Scripture and the Balance, so that people could uphold justice: We also sent iron, with its mighty power and many uses for mankind, so that God could know who would help Him and His messengers, though they cannot see Him. God is truly powerful and mighty.”
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V.A. Mohamad Ashrof is an independent Indian scholar specializing in Islamic humanism. With a deep commitment to advancing Quranic hermeneutics that prioritize human well-being, peace, and progress, his work aims to foster a just society, encourage critical thinking, and promote inclusive discourse and peaceful coexistence. He is dedicated to creating pathways for meaningful social change and intellectual growth through his scholarship.
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