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
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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.
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A
regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher
on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.
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
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