Warning from a Muslim Studying Philosophy in College

The following is an e-mail that was sent to Ilmstitute:

“As-salamu Alaykum,

My name is ___________, I'm a muslima alhamdulillah. I've seen videos posted on Mr. Lipham's channel (and elsewhere on youtube) regarding Islam and Philosophy. I've found those videos quite intriguing, and appreciate that he spoke about this issue - especially since I am a master's student in philosophy.

Before coming across those videos, and especially after encountering them, I began to question whether pursuit of philosophy, especially philosophy of religion and metaphysics (this is my area of research)  was beneficial. I wanted to request to have a discussion on these issues, and the potential dangers (or otherwise, the potential futility) of pursuing philosophy as it relates to God and other matters of the unseen. Since I come from a philosophy background, these are some things with which I have personal experience, and I would like to share it with others so that it could be benefitted from in shaa Allah, and so that others may have a better understanding of why pursuit of education, or engagement in matters of philosophy, especially (but not only) as it relates to religion and metaphysics, should be avoided if possible.

If this is something Mr. Lipham would find beneficial, please let me know. I could write another email with the points I want to mention and send it over, in shaa Allah. If these are to be shared publicly, I would only request that my name (both first and last) as well as my email, be omitted.

BarakAllah Fikum”

I responded to her e-mail expressing that I would love to hear her thoughts and experiences. She replied with the following e-mail:

Thank you for the opportunity, jazakumullah khair

As I mentioned, I'm a master's student in philosophy. My research area is philosophy of religion and metaphysics - in other words, studying aspects of religion, such as the existence of God (whether God exists, arguments for and against God's existence, God’s attributes…), and matters of the unseen (like the nature of free will). I'd like to explain some of my experiences, what drew me to philosophy at the start, and why I ultimately came to the realization that it is not beneficial, and in fact, can be detrimental. This email drags on quite a bit, I apologize for that. Given the opportunity, I wanted to try to be comprehensive. Please keep in mind that I'm not an expert on all matters of philosophy, and I definitely only have minimal knowledge of Islam. If I make any mistakes, please excuse them and correct me.

I completed a Bachelor of Science degree alhamdulillah, but began taking some philosophy courses, mostly out of curiosity, and then out of interest. I liked philosophy because, well, I was using my intellect, my brain, and philosophy is enjoyable in that sense. I felt like I was good at it. I ended up completing a minor in philosophy, and pursuing a master’s degree in it.

At the start, my intention wasn't to distort the Aqeeda or Islam, but was (naively) to defend it in a way (even though I wasn’t fully practicing). In modern academia, we are often made to feel irrational for our religious beliefs. The mainstream "progressive", "rational" or "pro-science", "pro-facts" view is to disbelieve in God. People who believe in God can often feel their belief is unpopular in the academic realm, or looked down upon. It's not always outwardly spoken, people don't typically come out and say "oh you're foolish for believing in God", but there are other ways that this is insinuated. It's in the air, so to speak. Whether it is from the propagation of LGBT - "religion is backward, it doesn't give LGBT rights", or from the idea that science and religion are diametrically opposed "science is evolution and religion is not evolution, so science means not religion, DUH!". This can lead muslims (and maybe not only muslims), to feel the need to justify and rationalize their faith using standards that these same people would accept, or else to mold their beliefs to fit mainstream liberal and secular standards, so that they can be accepted in the general academic society. Writing this reminds me of the following Ayah of the Quran: "And when they are told, "Believe as others believe," they reply, "Will we believe as the fools believe?" Indeed, it is they who are fools, but they do not know." (2:13) -- may Allah guide us and protect us.

So, I think at least implicitly, I wanted to go into philosophy, and philosophy of religion more specifically, in part to rationalize God's existence (by western academic standards), and almost as a way to defend God. What I didn’t fully realize at the time was that we truly do not need to rationalize God's existence in a way that would be appealing to secularist, western standards, and most certainly, Allah does not need us to defend him, subhanAllah. He has made his signs abundantly clear already: “Those who have no knowledge say, “If only Allah would speak to us or a sign would come to us!” The same was said by those who came before. Their hearts are all alike. Indeed, We have made the signs clear for people of sure faith.” (2:118). I hope this helps to show that all the answers we need in regards to religion, the unseen, morality… can be found in what Allah has revealed to us and taught us through his Prophets and Messengers, and it should not be added to, abrogated, or distorted. Philosophy is unnecessary. I hope this also becomes clear throughout this email.

It also has its dangers: looking back, what ended up happening, even before I began the master’s program, was that aspects of my Aqeeda and of arkan ul-iman were starting to become... distorted, or bent -- without me even realizing. And I still don’t know which aspects are false and which aren’t. After hearing philosophical arguments regarding God, His attributes, His creation of the world, I began to incorporate beliefs about God that I wasn’t even aware might go against the Aqeeda. I didn't realize this partly because it just didn’t click, but mostly, I think, because I lacked actual knowledge of these things (and still do).

And that’s the thing with philosophy – it doesn’t give you knowledge. Philosophy can look “cool” from the outside or on the surface – and it did to me. The space where smart people talk and show others why it makes sense to believe in God. But philosophy at a distance is not philosophy in-depth. This may be a crude description, but basically, it’s a bunch of people, making things up to try to be rational and respond to each other, speculating about all sorts of things and then coming to conclusions based on these speculations. Speculation and knowledge are not the same. The former is often futile at best. Honestly, I can’t even begin to explain how far people take these arguments. The things they bring up… before my master’s I never imagined such arguments against God’s existence, or against His attributes. It’s not just “here you go simple argument for God’s existence” and that’s it, philosophers go really in-depth and can be very meticulous.

These things can cause a lot of doubts – and I don’t only mean doubts about whether God exists, but a whole other realm of doubt: doubt about the attributes, doubt about what they mean, doubt about how they should be understood. A lot of unanswered questions that lead you to want to fill in the gaps with things that might be completely false. I, of course, won’t go into detail about these arguments, but take my word, whoever this might reach, stay away from it or it might pick at your brain or even consume you. Even surface-level philosophy affected my Aqeeda, so imagine going in depth. The most important thing is “la ilaha illa Allah” – and this exact thing is being compromised. It’s not worth it.

You mentioned “ilm-ul-kalam” in some of your videos about philosophy. I still find it a bit difficult to precisely understand the difference between the two, but want to contribute some of my ideas based on some of the things I’ve learnt about philosophy. You mentioned that philosophy is rational inquiry – and yes, that’s the general idea. I want to add that philosophy is the rational inquiry regarding matters that cannot be verified empirically, through experiments or perceiving the world around us. Unlike science, it’s not really about studying the natural world (at least not contemporary philosophy – the two were kind of intertwined in ancient times). It’s about asking questions about fundamental issues, answering them through argumentation, thinking things through, and using what is called “a priori” reasoning. Rational inquiry, in and of itself, is not doomed to be bad. It’s about what you’re using it for and how far you go with it, I guess.

Ilm-ul-kalam, from what I understood, is kind of a sub-set of philosophy, and is the study of ideas that come from ancient Greek philosophy and incorporating them into Islam, and using them to describe or explain Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala and His attributes. There are two problems with this, from what I can tell: (1) incorporating ideas about Allah that are not within the Quran and Sunnah, and (2) the mere fact of trying to explain Allah’s attributes. Now we can ask whether, or where, we can find these two things within philosophy at large.

Both of these things can be found in some areas of modern philosophy. My area of research falls into modern (rather than ancient) philosophy. More specifically, it is analytical (rather than continental). Philosophy of religion and metaphysics definitely include both of the two issues I mentioned above. Although ideas from the ancients are not used (at least not explicitly, I’m not sure about the origin), attributes of God are spoken about– even attributes that we know and accept as muslims – to argue about whether God exists, or to undermine His attributes, or otherwise to explain them: “how this, why that, it can’t be this, it has to be that”. Let’s say that these don’t lead you to doubt Allah’s existence, it might lead you to doubt Allah’s attributes, or form false beliefs about Allah. You might find an intelligent response to those arguments, a logical response, but at what cost? At the cost of incorporating speculative, or false beliefs? We don’t know what is true of it, what is false of it. We don’t know what to reject. Plus, the whole idea of trying to explain Allah’s attributes in this way is not something we should be doing in the first place: we shouldn’t do “takyeef”. We can end up saying all sorts of things about God we have no proof of and no knowledge of, things based on speculation, and there are warnings about this in the Quran, I will point to a couple of verses:

O humanity! Eat from what is lawful and good on the earth and do not follow Satan’s footsteps. He is truly your sworn enemy (2:168). He only incites you to commit evil and indecency, and to claim against Allah what you do not know (2:169).

˹O Prophet!˺ If you were to obey most of those on earth, they would lead you away from Allah’s Way. They follow nothing but assumptions and do nothing but lie. (6:116)

So, definitely, we should be careful.

What about other areas of philosophy not related to religion or metaphysics? Well, under the analytical side, these could include: aesthetics, epistemology, moral philosophy, political philosophy, axiology, logic. I don’t know much about a lot of these areas, but will say that moral philosophy might not be the best either – people talk about theories regarding what determines right and wrong. We know as muslims that what is right and wrong comes from God. But going into this area, you will have to engage with arguments regarding other moral theories, unrelated to Allah’s commands. And while some may have truth to them, or be intuitive -  it might lead to some form of shirk or straying from the commands of Allah. As for the continental side of philosophy, I don’t know much about it either, but something like existentialism – the study of the purpose of life – that seems doubtful.

Does that mean we can’t use our intellect? Of course we can, but don’t use it in ways that will lead to those two problems, or shirk. When you get into philosophy it can become more difficult to tell where it should be used or where it shouldn’t, and that’s where I’m finding myself. I guess my general advice is to avoid philosophy, and if the reason someone likes the subject is that they enjoy thinking, figuring things out, and that kind of a thing, there are other ways to exercise this capacity in shaa Allah: pure or applied mathematics, and the like… there are other things that make use of similar skills.

Does that mean that belief in Allah, belief in the Prophet ﷺ, or belief in the Quran is (or has to be) irrational? Of course not. We can use our logic, our critical thinking skills to come to believe that Islam is true. But we don’t need to philosophize God for it to be rational to believe in Him – we don’t need to go into intricate arguments. The miracle of the Quran justifies that it is a revelation from Allah – the linguistic miracle, the scientific miracles, the preservation of the Quran. And once we accept that the Qur’an is a revelation from Allah, all the other beliefs follow in shaa Allah. There are also prophetic miracles, such as the splitting of the moon. There’s the intricacy of the Hadith Sciences… All of these make it rational to believe in Allah and to believe in the Quran. Islam is for everyone to understand. Anyone can be certain about the existence of God. It's not reserved for those who are smart enough (for lack of a better word) to engage in argumentation.

So how do we convince an atheist who doesn’t even believe in God that God exists in the first place? Well, same thing: the miracle of the Quran, and the miracles of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Maybe we can also use common-sense questions, like “where did we come from?” “did all this come out of nothing?” and “could evolution really be an answer to all that exists?” “could we have been sent without guidance?” – Ustadh Uthman Ibn Farooq from OMF does address these kinds of questions. He also uses his reason to speak about why the concept of the trinity doesn’t make sense. These are I guess somewhat philosophical (which is part of the reason why I don’t know the limits of where we should use the intellect), but I guess my point is, we don’t have to use terms, ideas, or concepts that are not found in the Quran and Sunnah, and we don’t have to take these questions to the extent philosophy takes them.

I hope this very long-winded email will be of use, and I hope what I said made sense – I’m still grappling with some of the ideas myself. I am now left with questions that I don’t have an answer to, and I don’t know if I should ask about them, or who to ask. I hope this shows that these things can linger, and I hope others will realize the danger of that. I hesitate to send this, because in doing so I’m advising people against doing what I myself am doing, but I at least hope others will benefit from my experience.

Alhamdulillah for Islam, and BaarakAllah fikum