I am sorry for the late reply. I am thankful for your compliments which I am sure I don’t deserve.

God indeed is one and the only. What attributes does he possess is a question only He Himself can properly answer. We learn from the Qur’an that He has no needs, therefore He is not likely to get upset if we dodn’t thank Him. However, thank Him we must, because that is His right. When we know that He has given us all that we possess without deserving anything, it is but natural that we thank Him. If we behave inappropriately, He is likely to punish us, because He is fair. If He doesn’t do so, He will let the attitude of the obedient people go waste. Moreover the unsrupulous performers can’t blame Him for their poor behaviour and the consequent punishment because they were properly equipped and adequately informed to act well. If yone will have an excuse to present, it will be properly heard and compassionately treated.

Now then, where does the question of narcissism arise? Whatever God does or promises He will do in the future is based on His attributes of justice, wisdom, compassion etc. It is a mistake to assume that God is like us. He is not. We need to concern ourselves with our attitude and performance and not worry about why He does this our doesn’t do that. There are many things about Him we may not be able to fully comprehend in this life because of our limitations. In all such matters, we need to assume positive things about Him.

It is not a good idea for a son to assume that his parents did good things for him because of their own needs and desires. Having knowledge of the fact that they were kind to him, he should pay them back in the same or better way.

Khalid Zaheer

Since you provided a reference from the Quran, i had to look into the issue again and analyze the viewpoint that existence of God is more a moral issue than an intellectual one. We agreed (though with slight differences in description and detail) that morality and intellect both are part and parcel of search for God. However, in last two days, i came to realize few weaknesses in my viewpoint.

If intellect is the most important thing, then God might have given all the evidences from the scientific facts. However, God has addressed our conscience is well. I thought it was a result i.e. a byproduct. I thought it was like God provided us first with the evidences from the material world with a scientific focus and after that addressed the conscience. But, God has made direct address to the conscience at several places in isolation in the Quran.

Even when God has hinted us towards scientific facts, God has chosen the details with which we were familiar at that time and with which ordinary people are familiar even today. Therefore, in a subtle way, the emphasis is on morality in observing those facts that have been pointed out. Since these scientific facts are observable/learnable and appreciable by even ordinary man; therefore, it is not the intellectual use of reason which has been recommended as only the common sense knowledge has been given to which readers/recipients are used to and familiar with. The real emphasis is on morality in such a way of study. In seeking truth, one will indeed go about doing some research and choose a method for it. But, what is truly recommended is the fact that we remain moral in our pursuit of truth.

Furthermore, it is morality which will instill and start a thinking process towards finding answers to life, its existence, its purpose, its meaning etc. Even an intellectual genius can use all the intelligence to produce scientific theories, inventions, concepts and breakthroughs without seeking the true meaning of his existence, nature, destiny, purpose etc if he was immoral in his pursuit of truth. Therefore, morality is needed to instill a morally guided unbiased search for answers and these answers are provided within us (soul), material dispensation (Aafaq-o-Anfas) and our intellect. Being moral is in everyone’s control, but being an intellectual genius, it is not in everyone’s control. That is why, only commonly observable and appreciable facts have been provided by Quran for Itmam-e-Hujjat on direct recipients of Prophets in this world and on all others for the life hereafter.

However, I would like to bring your attention to another fact that the verse you quoted is concerned with polytheism. I think polytheism is almost altogether a morality issue. It is because a polytheist believes in creation, creator, he being creature etc. Whereas, an atheist by not believing in any structure, philosophy or comprehensive doctrine and creation concept, is morally more genuine than a polytheist provided he is an atheist by way of having not received the true message of God or having not understood it completely and only partially or incorrectly and only God knows about the exact status of his knowledge and genuine ignorance and we are no one to speculate in individual cases. Do you think that existence of one and true God is a moral issue for both Atheists and Polytheists in an equal way or is polytheism more a case of immorality than atheism?

In the end, I must say that one of the good things I have developed is to give away the weak arguments, weak reasoning, weak concepts and replace them with better explanations even right at the time of dialogue and not even wait for a minute to accept my mistake if it gets clear to me. I owe for this good trait to Javed Ahmed Ghamidi Sahab. I have learnt 6 years in Madarsa. I learnt many good things there, but, never learnt a lesson so beautiful to be able to read with genuine unbiasness.

Convincing is a part of conveying any message. What God stopped Prophet Mohammed PBUH was “to force your ideas” and not to become SAD if they do not BELIEVE.

other wise to convince with HIKMA is recommended and it was practised by Prophet Mohammed PBUH and his SAHABIS. You just read the history.

Peace.. Safi

I am not saying it is one way or the other. It is a bit of both. Brother Ali, with all due respect, you need to improve your argument. It has some fallacies.

Your example is neutral to a religious paradigm. A cheater shopkeeper might be a Muslim or a non-Muslim. An honest counterparty can be a Muslim or a non-Muslim as well. By inductive arguments, i just referred to the weak arguments that require support of other slightly stronger arguments to support the conclusion. Deductive arguments alone suffice and do not need any inductive argument to support the same conclusion. Deductive and inductive do not just mean primary and secondary sources of knowledge. Even when they mean that as in limited usage, they are confined to a human paradigm and humans do not know everything. God knows everything, that is why, every argument for Him would be deductive (in a sense that it is reality itself and alone can suffice). Therefore, when we use God’s arguments as from Holy Quran, we are using the deductive arguments.

Coming back to your post, Morality needs to be looked in absolute sense and in a model where there are no constraints, circumstances and choices that we need to make without absolute knowledge.

Kant said that compassion does not define morality as compassion is volatile and not consistent. Morality needs to be universal and absolute. He said that morality of an action can not also be judged by way of consequences. If we speak truth, we can not base it on the premise of getting a better consequence for it. It is due to the fact that an adverse consequence would alter our action too in this kind of explanation.

He said what defines morality is that “what we want the others to do to us”. It is also akin to the Golden principle of Christianity. We want to speak truth because we want others to do to us the same, we do not want to kill because we do not want others to kill us.

Differentiating between right and wrong is the fundamental common attribute all humans share. Not all have same beauty, strength, effective body organs, talent, money etc. But, we all can differentiate between right and wrong. Please, make a difference between action and the ability to differentiate between right and wrong i.e. identifying the correct moral behavior than actually conducting it through action. Please make it separate the difference of circumstances and the constraints of choice. When you do that, you will see that differentiating between right and wrong is the universal feature we share.

I have given a criticism on his explanation too in my post earlier (Comment # 6). It gives us the logical discussion of existence of God and life hereafter. Please read that.

Deductive and inductive reasoning have different meanings in logic, science, statistics and philosophy. It also has a relative meaning. If i ignore literature review, i would be doing an inductive study, but for others, it would be deductive. However, i always want meaningful discussion than just looking at the construction of arguments we make. It was not a criticism at all. I thought it was an effort for a better explanation added to your article.

Issue of believing in the existence of God requires morality in the intellectual pursuits. In everything we do, we require honesty to seek the truth like the existence of God which is not as evident a truth as matters we directly observe and experience, but it is still a truth and we can appreciate it through honest research. So, it requires both honesty (an issue of morality) and some reasoning (an intellectual issue as the matter has to be believed in by looking at related arguments and not as explicitly observable as day and night). However, to make your point clear, you mean to say that we do not require rocket science or knowing the complexity of planetary sciences, physics etc to prove and appreciate the existence of God. God’s existence is provable by common sense and observable “related but not direct” experiences and facts. The above mentioned sciences just answer “how” and do not at all (if all or any one of them is or will be proven to be true) contradict the answer to “why” which religion provides.

I think it sometimes slips our minds that the best guidance is God’s guidance in the Qur’an. Indeed, I have found there is not a single situation in life where the Qur’anic guidance does not apply. As an exercise, please allow me the opportunity to assess your statement below in light of Qur’anic guidance:

“I think our endeavour should be to try to help non-believers to come close to our belief. In the process we may sometimes decide that we cannot convince some people because their attitude doesn’t motivate us to invite them.”

The first part of your statement, “to help non-believers come to close to our belief” is indeed supported by the following Qur’anic verse,

Abdel Haleem 41:33 “Who speaks better than someone who calls people to God, does what is right and says, ‘I am one of those devoted to God?’…”

Indeed, it is our responsibility to call people to God not only through the Qur’anic message, but also by our own actions and affirmation as stated in the above verse. Calling people to God through preaching, but without actually living by the Qur’an would be ineffective and hypocritical. It requires both. This in fact is the key problem with Muslims around the world today; we do not LIVE by the Qur’an.

Now, let’s take a look at the second part of your statement, “In the process we may sometimes decide that we cannot convince some people because their attitude doesn’t motivate us to invite them.”

While I think your intentions are noble, the underlying assumption is that it is our job to ‘convince’ people of the Truth. But the Qur’an frames our responsibility in perspective; it is not our job to convince non-believers of the truth, our job is only to convey the message. It is God who guides whom He wills. Consider the following Qur’anic verses (Abdel Haleem):

42:48 “We have not sent you (Prophet) to be their guardian: your ONLY duty is to deliver the message…”

64:12 “…If you turn away, remember that Our Messenger’s duty is ONLY to make plain his message.”

5:92 “…if you pay no heed, bear in mind that the SOLE duty of Our Messenger is to deliver the message clearly.”

5:99 “The Messenger’s duty is ONLY to deliver the message: God knows what you reveal and what you conceal.”

16:35 “…Are the messengers obliged to do anything other than deliver (their message) clearly?”

If the Messengers were the best example of people, then should we do anything different? Indeed, the ‘convincing’ is God’s part, not ours. Consider the following Qur’anic verses (Abdel Haleem),

14:4 “…But still God leaves whoever He will to stray, and guides whoever He will: He is the Almighty, the All Wise.”

16:37 “Though you (Prophet) may be eager to guide them, God does not guide those who misguide (others), nor will they have anyone to help them.”

This is why I think entering into debates with non-believers or people of other scriptures is a waste of time – for debate automatically imply ‘convincing’ – which as we seen above, is not supported by the guidance of the Qur’an. The prophets after all never engaged in theological debates with non-believers. They simply proclaimed the message – it is for God to decide who will take His message to heart.

Peace. Imran

Thanks for a strong criticism on my article. It is only through critical examination that we can improve ourselves. I would however like to mention two things.

It is neither true that deductive reasoning is superior to inductive reasoning nor the other way round. Both have their significance and the Qur’an has employed both. It employs deductive reasoning when it invites the attention of the reader towards design in our universe to marvel at God’s attributes; it resorts to inductive reasoning when it refers to the individual’s experience of getting responses to his prayers. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that while deductive logic invites the attention of the individual to think about the reality of our life, inductive reasoning strengthens the conclusions reached through it. But for some people it could be simply deductive reasoning that might turn out to be decisive.

The claim that the question of God is a moral question is not mine. God has made it Himself: While talking about the basic moral principles good Muslims must follow, the Qur’an mentions the obligation of looking after old parents as the second most significant. The most important one is to worship none other than Allah. (17:)What was the point in demanding worship of someone whose identity was to be discovered intellectually alone in a way that if someone wasn’t able to find Him, he wouldn’t carry any moral blame? To worship God alone precludes the fact that He is known. And if He is not known to someone, he will soon discover Him, if he uses his intellect morally correctly. Moral correctness of the intellect is the key in the quest for God.

Khalid Zaheer