An Epistemic Defeater for Islamic Belief?
Forthcoming in (Routledge) International Journal of Philosophy and Theology
Erik Baldwin, University of Notre Dame, 100 Malloy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556
Tyler Dalton McNabb, School of Humanities, University of Glasgow, 1 University
Gardens, Room 205, Glasgow G12 8QQ
Abstract: Following Baldwin (2015, 2010) and McNabb (2014), we aim to further
develop and evaluate the prospects of a uniquely Islamic extension of the
Standard Aquinas/Calvin model. One obstacle is that certain Qur’anic passages
such as Surah 8:43-44 apparently suggest that Muslims have reason to think that
Allah might be deceiving them. Consistent with perfect/maximally good being
theology, Allah would allow such deceptions only if doing so leads to a greater
good, so such passages do not necessarily give Muslims reason to doubt Allah’s
goodness. Yet the possibility of deception of the faithful threatens to provide a
subjective defeater for the (epistemic) reliability of their cognitive faculties.
(“Even if Allah can be morally good while deceiving, how do you know you aren't
being deceived for a greater good on a more macro level, such as about the nature
of the Qur’an?”) Similar in structure to Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument
Against Naturalism (EAAN), this defeater threatens to undermine all of a
Muslims warrant claims. We consider and evaluate the reply that there are other
Qur’anic passages and/or additional conceptual resources in the Islamic tradition
that provide grounds for thinking that God's faithfulness or truthfulness is more
centrally and securely embedded in a Muslim's noetic structure than such doubts.
Specifically, we will argue that under certain conditions, there exists a subjective
defeater for some Muslims that, unlike McNabb's approach, isn't based off of the
proper function condition but Plantinga's truth aimed condition.
Keywords: Plantinga, Islam, EAAN, Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism,
Defeater.
In his 2014 paper “Warranted Religion: Answering Objections to Alvin Plantinga's
Epistemology”, Tyler McNabb draws a distinction between those religions that can use
Plantinga's epistemology and those that can't by arguing that only religions that
ultimately have an intentional, conscious, and intelligent designer can account for
Plantinga's proper function condition. If McNabb is right, a further question could arise
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on whether any more elimination could take place within the Abrahamic monotheistic
traditions in regard to which of these religions could or couldn't account for the
preconditions that make Plantinga's epistemology intelligible. It is well noted that
Plantinga has spent much of his work devoted to arguing that proper functionalism fits
well within the framework of Christian belief, but what is interesting as of late is Erik
Baldwin's work which argues that proper functionalism fits very well (to some perhaps
even better) within the framework of Islamic belief. (PEW 19-41) This paper will mainly
engage with the second of these suggestions. We will presuppose that the reader is at least
somewhat familiar with Plantinga's proper functionalism.1
Following Baldwin (RDTP, PEW) and McNabb (WR), we aim to further develop
and evaluate the prospects of a uniquely Islamic extension of the Standard
Aquinas/Calvin model. Specifically, we will determine whether and if so under what
conditions there is a subjective defeater for some Muslims that, unlike McNabb's
approach, isn't based off of the proper function condition but Plantinga's truth aimed
condition. Thus, our argument will be more akin to Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument
Against Naturalism (EAAN) than his Argument From Proper Function (KG). We assume
that the reader has a basic familiarity with this argument. And we shall presuppose that
Muslims who may be subject to the defeater we develop in this paper are “reflective
Muslims.” Defined by Zain Ali, a reflective Muslim is as “a person of Islamic faith who
has come to acknowledge that people of other religious and non-religious traditions are as
educated and concerned with seeking truth and avoiding error as they themselves are.”
(FPRM 3) As Ali notes, reflective Muslims are seriously engaged in addressing questions
that arise in contemporary philosophy of religion, such as Plantinga’s account of warrant,
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his religious epistemology more generally, as well as the prospects of other religious
traditions taking up something like Plantinga’s religious epistemology. It is just these
Muslims who are in a position to be aware of the sorts of considerations that underlie the
defeater we develop in this paper. First, we provide a brief introduction to Islam in order
to give the reader who has little or no background to Islam a framework to read our
argument in. Secondly, we briefly reiterate Baldwin's work on Islamic belief and
Plantinga's proper function condition in order to show how Islam fits within a Plantingian
framework. Thirdly, we will turn to establishing our argument that there exists a
subjective defeater for some reflective Muslims who take the Qur’an as the literal and
inspired Word of God. Fourthly, we will engage criticism of the proposed defeater with
possible responses that a reflective Muslim could give. We will conclude that for some
Muslims, the suggested responses will be unsuccessful and thus, our thesis stands (at
least for these Muslims).
I. Islam 101
Islam teaches that humans are all born Muslims. However, due to sin, there exists a need
to correct human thinking about the nature of God and about how humans should act.
Islam teaches that God has given this correction by giving people prophets. Islam
explicitly endorses that the general story of the Old Testament is a fallible record of God
giving humans such prophets. In addition to this, Islam also endorses that this calling
back to God also includes the raising up of Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet to the world.
Though these people of the book (that is Jews and Christians) are seen as once having
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God’s Word in pure form (that is through having the Law and the Gospel), through time
and different disputes, the Word has now become corrupted (2:75-79). Such corruption
has perverted the faith of Islam or what is true Abrahamic monotheism.
In part, Islamic theology differs substantially with both Jewish and Christian
theologies with respect to each theology’s view of the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In
Judaism, Jesus at best was a good faithful rabbi who had followers who badly
misunderstood him. In regard to Islam however, Jesus was a prophet, the messiah (alMaseeh), who was born of a virgin and anointed the blind so that they could see, whom
God raised up to bring back His people from sin.
If Judaism has too low of a view of Jesus, Christianity has too high a view of him.
Nowhere can this be seen more than in regard to the nature of Jesus. Though Christianity
endorses monotheism, it also teaches that as the second person of the Trinity, Jesus has
both a divine and a human nature. Furthermore, it is in his human nature that Jesus
suffered on the cross the consequences of the world’s sins. In addition to this, Christianity
teaches that this act of love pleased God to the point where God justified and vindicated
Christ by raising him from the dead. Islam denies all of this: Jesus was created (3:59), not
God in the flesh (19:34-35), he was merely a messenger from God (4:171), he did not die
a cursed death (4:157), and he was not raised from the dead but taken bodily into heaven
(3:55). In fact, Islam teaches that Jesus will come back condemning those who
worshipped him. (4:156-159)
Thus for Islam, the major sects of the Abrahamic religions have clearly gone
astray from God’s original intention. This being the case, God needed to restore the truth
about Himself and about how His followers should act. Islam teaches that in God’s
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timing, God sent the Prophet Muhammad (circa 570-632) to the world. From his
encounters with the angel Gabriel, Muhammad was reportedly given the Qur’an, which
was used to make the needed corrections to contemporary Jewish and Christian
theologies. The pure faith of Islam can be summarized by Surah 112 which states, “Say:
He is Allah, He is one! Allah, the Eternally Besought of all! He begetteth not, nor was He
begotten. And there is none comparable unto Him.” 2
The Qur’an endorses most of the traditional attributes of God that both Judaism
and Christianity endorse. In Islam, these attributes are considered the 99 names of God.
The merciful, the loving one, the creator, the all-knowing, the all-powerful, the forgiver,
and the judge are all names or attributes attributed to God.
There are however, some differences between the conception of God in the Jewish
and Christian scriptures and in the Qur’an. In Old and New Testaments, God makes man
in His image and it is presumed that He has created man’s faculties to produce true
beliefs that reflect the world around him. In Islam however, though God is still truth and
though God still commands humans to be truthful, we are also told that God did not make
man in His image and we are also told that He is the greatest deceiver or schemer. (3:54)
Moreover, the New Testament portrays God as a God who loves sinners, even those who
habitually oppose Him. In fact, He loves His enemies so much that He died a cursed
death for them. (John 3:16 and Galatians 3:12-13) In contrast, however, the Qur’an
teaches that God does not love the sinner as much as He can and in fact, it never once
even affirms His love for them in any way. In addition to this, we learn that God’s love
isn’t unconditional and it is based upon human efforts and performances.3
It is worth mentioning however, that just because God doesn’t love sinners (at
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least in the same sort of way as the God of the New Testament does), it doesn’t follow
that He isn’t merciful toward them. The Qur’an many times offers over and over again
for sinners to stop doing what they are doing and to get right with Him. Islamic theology
offers a path to God through the five pillars of Islam. These pillars go as follows:
(1) The Confession: In order to become a Muslim, one must say the following:
There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God.
(2) Prayer: In Islam, Muslims are commanded to pray five times a day (dawn,
noon, afternoon, evening, and night).
(3) Alms Giving: Muslims are commanded to give out of their own income.
(4) Fasting: Muslims are commanded to fast during the month of Ramadan.
(5) The Pilgrimage: Muslims are commanded to make a journey to Mecca and
walk around the Kaaba seven times.4
Though there seems to be obvious similarities between the Old and New Testament
conception of God with the Islamic conception of God, there does seem to be some
significant differences as well. Having now established both commonalities and
dissimilarities between Islam and Christianity, we will begin our engagement with Islam
and Plantinga’s proper function condition.
II. Islam and Proper Function
It is important to first note that according to Islamic theology humans are endowed with a
cognitive faculty or process called qalb, which, like the sensus divinitatis, is a faculty of
spiritual perception the proper function of which is to naturally produce belief in Allah.
On the nature and function of qalb, Mohamed Yasien writes, “Through the organ of the
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heart, its faculty of intellect, and the guidance of revelation, man is able to attain all
levels of perception, even the knowledge of God in a direct and immediate way.” (F p.
97) He writes that untainted or original human nature, or fitrah, is such that everyone is
naturally inclined towards goodness and towards belief in the oneness (tawhid) of God,
and it is the social environment that causes an individual’s qalb to malfunction or
otherwise deviate from this state. (F) This natural correspondence between human nature
and Islam is the reason why in Muslim theology all humans are born Muslims. Baldwin
points out that just as in the Plantingian Christian story, belief in God can be overcome by
external factors. In fact, Baldwin has argued that according to Islamic philosophy, Allah’s
design plan for human faculties is to produce doubts. (PEW 29-31) The doubts are meant
to lead subjects to reflect on their justificatory status of their belief in Islam. The hope is
that upon reflecting on one’s justificatory status, one will accept the invitation of the
Qur’an and test it.5 And since Allah has provided sufficient light through the Qur’an and
through creation, the individual who seeks further evidence for Islam will eventually
overcome these doubts and come to have robust knowledge of God and His Prophet.
Baldwin thinks the early al-Ghazālī offers a good summary of this view when states, “It
was about this light that Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, ‘God created the creatures
in darkness, and then sprinkled upon them some of His light.’” From that light must be
sought an intuitive understanding of things Divine. That light at certain times gushes
from the spring of Divine generosity.” (PEW 30)6
Baldwin's points can also be seen as consistent with the experience that the
Prophet Muhammad himself went through. In one particular instance, Muhammad was
unsure how to interpret a Messenger coming to him. He lacked confidence that this
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Messenger intended good for him. Nonetheless, we are told that Muhammad was
encouraged by his wife’s reasons for why he should trust the Messenger; this in turn led
to a deeper relationship between Allah and His Prophet. (SAB 3)
If Baldwin is right, it would follow that unlike in the Christian story, the design
plan according to Allah’s will, isn’t such that (reflective) Muslims won’t have any doubts
about the truth of Islamic belief or that those doubts can be overcome without making use
of arguments or propositional evidence at some point or other. That is, warranted Islamic
belief involves having what we might call genuine or robust knowledge, a degree of
knowledge which requires that a Muslim be able to give an answer for how he/she knows
that God exists and/or that Quran is trust worthy.7 This of course doesn’t mean that the
Muslim can’t account for the preconditions that make Plantinga’s theory of warrant
intelligible; rather, unlike the Christian, the Muslim just couldn’t endorse that he/she
could be warranted in his/her belief, apart from any propositional evidence or argument.8
Thus, though certain metalevel requirements are required for Islamic belief to ultimately
be warranted, Islamic belief is nonetheless compatible with proper functionalism
simpliciter. Having established the continuity and discontinuity that exists within Islam
and Plantinga's proper function condition, we will move on to our discussion of Islam and
Plantinga's truth aimed condition.
III. Islam, the Truth Aimed Condition, and Undercutting Defeaters
As briefly mentioned above, several verses in the Qur’an state that God is a
deceiver/schemer or even the greatest deceiver/schemer. The Arabic word for
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deceiver/schemer, makr, can be found in the following relevant verses:9
Surah 3:54 And they (the disbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed (against
them): and Allah is the best of schemers.
Surah 7:99 Are they then secure from Allah's scheme? None deemeth himself
secure from Allah's scheme save folk that perish.
Surah 8:30 And when those who disbelieve plot against thee (O Muhammad) to
wound thee fatally, or to kill thee or to drive thee forth; they plot, but Allah (also)
plotteth; and Allah is the best of plotters.
Surah 13:42 And when We cause mankind to taste of mercy after some adversity
which had afflicted them, behold! they have some plot against Our revelations.
Say: Allah is more swift in plotting. Lo! Our messengers write down that which
ye plot.
According to Lane’s Lexicon, makr is used to express deceit, guile, or circumvention
(LAE 256). Similarly, Hans Wehr Dictionary defines makr and variations of it in the
following way (DMA 917):
Makara u (makr) to deceive, delude, cheat, dupe, gull, double-cross…10
Makr cunning, craftiness, slyness, wiliness, double-dealing, deception, trickery
Makra ruse, artifice, stratagem, wile, trick, ruse, dodge
Makkar and makur cunning, sly, crafty, wily, crafty person, imposter, swindler
Maker makara sly, cunning, wily.
It is obvious that makr carries strong negative connotations. A member of the Council of
Senior Scholars and the former head of the Saudi Supreme Court, Sheik Saleh AlFawzan, seems to grant that it carries negative connotations as he states in his
commentary the following:
This cunning added to God Almighty and ascribed to him is not like the
cunning of creatures, because the cunning of creatures is blameworthy,
and the cunning added to the Almighty God is praised, because the
cunning of creatures means deception and misinformation, and the
delivery of harm to those who do not deserve it, and the cunning of God
Almighty it good; as it is delivered to those who deserve punishment, so it
is justice and mercy. (MBD)
If it seems more plausible than not to translate makr as a word describing
deception/scheming, it would seem that the Qur’an endorses that God is the greatest
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deceiver/schemer. If this is so, there seems to be a major problem with the Muslim who
endorses the Qur’an as part of their epistemology. For how would the Muslim know that
God is not deceiving or scheming him in regard to the very nature of the inspiration of
the Qur’an? Why couldn’t God be deceiving the faithful Muslim? Notice, the question
does not pertain to whether a good God could deceive and still be just. We are granting
that such actions could be seen as compatible with Perfect Being theology. The question
is strictly epistemic in nature.
Perhaps the faithful Muslim might respond to this question, by saying that in the
context of these verses, God is only deceiving His enemies and these texts don’t give us
any reason to believe that God would also deceive the faithful. Furthermore, one might
add that God only deceives those who deserve it and who have attempted to deceive God.
Now, it does seem right that, generally speaking, the context of such verses do reflect
unbelievers and God deceiving them as a response to their evil actions. However, there is
a case in the Qur’an where God directly deceives the most faithful Muhammad in order
for a greater good to be actualized. Surah 8:43-44 states,
When Allah showed them unto thee (O Muhammad) in thy dream as few
in number, and if He had shown them to thee as many, ye (Muslims)
would have faltered and would have quarreled over the affair. But Allah
saved (you). Lo! He knoweth what is in the breasts (of men). And when
He made you (Muslims), when ye met (them), see them with your eyes as
few, and lessened you in their eyes, (it was) that Allah might conclude a
thing that must be done. Unto Allah all things are brought back.
Here we have a counterfactual case. If the Muslims would have known that there were
many, they would have fought against each other and would have quarreled about the
situation. However, if the Muslims were to see that the enemy was small in number,
everything would go smoothly and successfully. Thus, God directly deceives Muhammad
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in order to actualize a certain good that He wanted.
If God boasts of being the best deceiver and we know from the Qur’an that God
puts this into practice by deceiving the faithful Muslim (so long as there is a greater good
to be actualized), how would the faithful Muslim know that God isn’t deceiving him
about the Qur’an being the inspired word of God? Perhaps there is something that we
can’t grasp about why God would need to do such a thing, but merely not being able to
grasp what greater good could be actualized doesn’t entail that God wouldn’t be
deceiving the faithful about the inspired nature of the Qur’an. Let us turn what has been
articulated thus far into an argument. Let (GD) stand for God is the greatest deceiver and
let (GDF) stand for God deceives faithful believers only in order to actualize a greater
good.
(1) Given GD and GDF, God could be deceiving faithful Muslims by not aiming
their cognitive faculties successfully toward producing true beliefs for a
greater good.
(2) Upon seeing that (1) could be the case, if a Muslim lacks a justified reason for
thinking God is not deceiving him, the Muslim should see that the probability
that his faculties are reliable (R) is inscrutable.
(3) If a Muslim sees that the probability for R is inscrutable, then he has a
defeater for trusting his faculties.
(4) If the Muslim has a defeater for R, then he has an undercutting defeater for his
belief that the Qur’an is the inspired Word of Allah.
(5) If one has a defeater for their belief, it cannot be warranted.
(6) The Muslim who comes to see that (1) could be the case and lacks a justified
reason for thinking that God is not deceiving him has a defeater for his belief
that the Qur’an is the inspired Word of Allah and that belief cannot be
warranted.
As we have argued, we think (1) could be made plausible by the discussed Surahs. It
would seem that if this can be established, the controversial premise would be (2). In
what follows, we will articulate and then critically evaluate robust responses to our
argument.
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IV. Reply
Are Muslims subject to a subjective defeater for Islamic belief, as we have argued? One
might object that there are conceptual resources internal to an Islamic worldview such
that Muslims either do not acquire this (propositional) defeater on account of having
another belief(s) or on account being in a mental state (such as having an experience or a
propositional attitude, or perhaps some reasonable doxastic commitment) that serves to
render Islamic belief insusceptible to defeat in the way we described. Alternatively,
Muslims may concede that while one may initially acquire the defeater in question the
defeater is defeasible. On this strategy, typical Muslims are able, perhaps only with some
degree of effort, either form a new belief or have a new experience that would undermine
or defeat our proposed defeater to Islamic belief. Let us consider each in turn.
According to the first strategy, our purported defeater arises only because the
relevant passages haven’t been correctly interpreted, which suggests that the defeater may
be easily avoided by a correct reading. We do our best to develop a response of this sort
below. For sake of argument we assume that our objector accepts that our discussion of
the English meaning of makr is correct.11
In order to support the contention that our purported defeater rests on a faulty
interpretation of Surah 8:43-44, a reflective Muslim may make use of tafsīr, or Qur’anic
exegsis, defined as “a literary activity whose function is the clarification of the
theological, grammatical, semantic and historical aspects of scripture.” (QE 12) Note that
tafsīr commentators make various assumptions about the nature of the Qur’an, namely,
12
that it is divine revelation, meaningful, coherent, and designed, and that these
assumptions must be respected when clarifying and explaining the meaning of the text.
Interpretive glosses of the Qur’an are lexical (concerning the meaning of words) and
contextual (concerning the historical circumstances in which the words were used). In
order to correctly interpret the Qur’an one must pay careful attention to the historical
context and the circumstances of the textual revelation, using philological methods to
uncover the meanings of perhaps strange or unusual words and the historical context and
circumstances of their revelation. (QE 7, 9) Tafsīr commentators, relying on citations of
reliable authorities, the most authoritative of which are the sayings of the prophet and
reports of his saying and deeds by his companions (Sunna and Hadith), provide materials
that may enable reflective Muslims to show that the purported defeater does not serve as
an actual defeater for Muslims who have read and understood the text correctly. One who
employs this strategy will claim that our reading of the relevant texts, particularly Surah
8:43-44, are misguided.
Seyyid Qutb’s commentary on Surah 8 sheds light on how Muslims might
understand and interpret these passages. Focusing on God’s sovereignty regarding the
combatants in the battle of Badr, Qutb writes:
… It was God who brought them both to their positions by the hill, in
order to accomplish a certain purpose of His own. Indeed, had they made
prior arrangements to meet, they would not have taken their positions so
close to each other and they would not have arrived there at the same time,
as they actually did. God reminds the Muslim community of all this so that
they always remember how God can accomplish any purpose He may
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have at any point in time. “[Remember the day] when you were at the near
end of the valley and they were at the farthest end, with the caravan down
below you. If you had made prior arrangements to meet there, you would
have differed on the exact timing and location. But it was all brought
about so that God might accomplish something He willed to be done.”
(Verse 42) Behind such an unplanned meeting there was certainly a
purpose which God made the Muslim community the means to achieve.
Moreover, He arranged all the circumstances that helped its
accomplishment. What is this matter for the accomplishment of which
God arranged all the necessary circumstances? It is the one which He
describes in these terms: “So that anyone who was destined to perish
might perish in clear evidence of the truth and anyone destined to live
might live in clear evidence of the truth.” (Verse 42) (SQ 151-152)
Qutb continues:
… Part of God’s planning for the battle was that His Messenger should see
the unbelievers in his dream as small in number, having no real strength.
He told his companions of this and it gave them encouragement. Here
God’s Messenger is told the reason for this vision. Had God shown him a
large force, it would have demoralized his Companions, who were no
more than a small group of believers who joined him on an expedition,
neither expecting a battle nor prepared.” (SQ 154)
Here Qutb shows why Muslims do not have to take God’s planning for the battle of Badr
to be an epistemic injustice. Note that he gives no indication that Muslims have reason to
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think that, for all they know, God would deceive them wholesale about all manner of
things. Rather, he contends that Muslims can be confident that if God were to make
things appear other than they are on some occasions, any such deception would be
justified on account of being in accordance with God’s plan. Muslims can be confident
that such deception will lead to some good end. God willing, that plan will be made
known, enabling Muslims to see both the reasons God had for his plan and that those
reasons were good ones. Thus Muslims can remain confident that most of their beliefs
about most things are true and amount to knowledge. And so Qutb writes:
It was an aspect of God’s grace that He, knowing the weakness of the
Muslim group in that particular situation, showed the unbelievers to His
Messenger as small in number, whereas they were truly a much larger
force. That dream had true significance. Their numerical strength was of
little consequence, as their minds were for one. This would have weakened
them and caused them to be in dispute over whether to fight or to avoid a
confrontation. Such a dispute is the worst thing to happen to an army on
the verge of meeting an enemy force: “But this God has spared you. He
has full knowledge of what is in people’s hearts.” (Verse 43)” (SQ 154155)
He continues:
When the two hosts actually met face to face, that which the Prophet saw
in his true dream was repeated, but it was this time by actual eyesight and
by both sides. This was again part of God’s elaborate planning of which
the believers are reminded in this review of the battle and its events:
15
“When you actually met, He made them appear few in your eyes, just as
He made you appear as a small band in their eyes, so that God might
accomplish something He willed to be done. To God shall all things
return.” (Verse 44) This particular aspect of God’s scheme encouraged
both parties to go to war. The believers saw their enemies as a small force
because they were looking at them from the viewpoint of real strength,
while the unbelievers considered the believers to be of little consequence,
because they judged them only by appearances. With the two facts shaping
the way each party looked at the other, the purpose of God’s planning was
accomplished and His will was done. (SQ 155)
Similarly, Muhammad Asad, another tafsīr commentator, writes:
… at the time of the actual encounter the Muslims could no longer be in
doubt as to the great number of the enemy force, the phrase “He made
them appear as few in your eyes” has obviously a metaphorical meaning:
it implies that, by that time, the Prophet’s followers were so full of
courage that the enemy appeared insignificant to them. The Quraysh, on
the other hand, were so conscious of their own power and numerical
superiority that the Muslims appeared but of little account to them – a
mistake which ultimately cost them the battle and a great number of lives.
(MQ 279 fn. 49)
Furthermore, Ibn ‘Abbās highlights the reasons for which God gave Muhammad a
misleading dream. He writes:
(When Allah showed them unto thee) O Muhammad (in your dream) on
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the Day of Badr, (as few in number, and if He had shown them to thee as
many, ye (Muslims) would have faltered) you would have been fearful
(and would have quarreled over the affair) over the question of war. (But
Allah saved (you)) He decreed otherwise. (Lo! He knoweth what is in the
breasts (of men)) what is in people’s hearts. (And when he made you
(Muslims), when ye met (them)) on the Day of Badr (see them with your
eyes as few) such that He emboldened you vis-à-vis them, (and lessened
you in their eyes) such that they were emboldened vis-à-vis you, ((it was)
that Allah might conclude a thing) so that Allah might give victory and the
spoils of war to the Prophet (pbuh) and his Companions and bring about
death and defeat for Abu Jahl and his host (that must be done) that has to
be. (Unto Allah all things) the end results of things (are brought back) in
the Hereafter. (MQ 233)
There are, then, various ways to read the Qur’an that would not lead Muslims to acquire
the defeater in question. Armed with these tafsīr commentaries, reflective Muslims may
conclude that they do not acquire the purported defeater. Note that the argument rests on
appeals to authorities and evidential grounds that may not carry much weight to those
outside of the Muslim community. But the argument doesn’t ask that non-Muslims take
these reports to be true. Rather, so the argument goes, it is enough that it be reasonable
for reflective Muslims to accept them to be true. If a particular reflective Muslim is aware
of these tafsīr and makes use of them as we’ve suggested, then the purported defeater
need not arise. And if a particular reflective Muslim isn’t aware of these readings and
does acquire the defeater we’ve developed, he or she may assuage their doubts and rebut
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the defeater by turning to tafsīr commentaries. Either way, so the argument goes, Islamic
belief is not self-defeating in the way that Naturalism is for the Naturalist.
A related strategy is to consider the purported defeater in the context of other
elements of Islamic belief. There are other Qur’anic passages and/or additional
conceptual resources in the Islamic tradition that provide sufficient grounds for thinking
that God's faithfulness or truthfulness is more centrally and securely embedded in a
Muslim's noetic structure than are whatever epistemic doubts that may arise from reading
Surah 8:43-44. A reflective Muslim might argue that according to the principle of Islamic
jurisprudence, ijma, defined by Hisham M. Ramadan as “collective reasoning … whereby
the learned scholars of Islam and/or community of Muslims of a particular era come to
agreement on an issue”, it would be impossible for all Muslims to be deceived about an
issue. (UIL 17)12 Ramadan notes that political divisions, great distances, and
circumstances have separated Muslim populations about many matters and that for this
reason there has been no recorded ijma following the death of Muhammad and that “the
recorded ijma of the Sahaba [the prophet and his companions] constitute the only ijmabased source of law that is universally recognized [by all Muslims].” (UIL 18) Similarly,
Abdullah Saeed writes that there is no consensus “except on the fundamentals of Islam,
such as the unity of God, the prophethood of Muhammad, the five daily prayers, the
Qur’an as the word of God, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca.” (IL 49) The upshot of this
is that for typical Muslims, even if made aware of the defeater in our paper, the notion
that the Qur’an might be deceptive is a virtual non-starter, inconsistent with the very
roots of the Islamic faith. In short, having read and understood Surah 8:43-44 in context,
a Muslim will concede that since God deceived or sent Muhammad a misleading dream
18
about the battle of Badr, Muhammad was epistemically mislead by a ‘false dream’ but
only about a particular thing on a particular occasion and for a particular reason. A
reflective Muslim may concede that God might do this sort of thing to any faithful
Muslim – even his or herself. But they will not be inclined to accept the view that, for all
they know, God deceived Muhammad about the entirety of the Qur’an thereby deceiving
all Muslims about God’s revelation to humanity. Universally held views regarding the
nature and character of the Qur’an and the manner by which it was revealed to
Muhammad preclude a typical Muslim from taking this to be epistemically possible. A
Muslim may reasonably conclude that lacking sufficient reason to doubt the veracity of
the content of the Qur’an, the content of the testimony of Muhammad and his
companions, and the transmission of this body of testimony, there is no sufficient reason
for thinking that God could deceive the entire Muslim community about the contents of
the Qur’an. (By way of analogy, a typical faithful Christian, having read or seen The Da
Vinci Code, might concede that it is logically possible that a historian could supply
historical evidence in support of the theory that Emperor Constantine compiled the Bible,
that the council of Nicaea voted on the divinity of Jesus, that Jesus married Mary
Magdalene, of royal blood, and had children with her, and that all of this information has
been secretly persevered and communicated using hidden symbols in Michelangelo’s The
Last Supper. But no faithful Christian could take this possibility at all seriously, as this
scenario would be epistemically possible only if a great many central background beliefs
and doctrines of Christianity are assumed to be false. Similarly, given the many central
and background beliefs about the how the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad, typical
faithful Muslims won’t likely take the defeater all that seriously.)
19
Suppose, however, that a faithful and reflective Muslim does acquire the
purported defeater. One who acquires the defeater in the subjective sense will have
antecedently believed that if Islam is true, then God sometimes deceives even believers
but only if he has a good reason for doing so. The believer will also remember that God
will never deceive or instill doubt in the faithful without making possible the resolution
of that doubt. However, a Muslim in the grip of the defeater in question has reason to
doubt whether that antecedent belief as well as the consequent of the above conditional
are true and hence has grounds to doubt the truth of the conditional. If the defeater in
question is propositional in nature, and if it actually defeats Islamic belief in the way
we’ve argued, then a Muslim cannot lean on propositions that are true only if Islamic
belief is true in order to resolve it. Trying directly to defeat the propositional defeater
with another proposition while in the grip of the above defeater is viciously epistemically
circular and won’t work. The Muslim who acquires the subjective defeater must take
another way out.
Reflective Muslims who have read Michael Bergmann on the distinction between
actual and believed defeaters may have another way out. Bergmann maintains that all
defeaters are either actual or believed defeaters. According to Bergmann, “to have a
believed defeater for your belief B is to believe that your belief B is defeated.” (JWA 161)
Believed defeaters are “things believed to be mental state defeaters” and mental state
defeaters are "mental states of a person, S, that cause a justified belief of S to become
unjustified.” (JWA 161, 155) In contrast, propositional defeaters needn’t be believed for
them to do their defeating work. Michael Sudduth writes that propositional defeaters are
“conditions external to the perspective of the cognizer that prevent an overall justified
20
true belief from counting as knowledge.” (DE 2015) Mental state defeaters are
“conditions internal to the perspective of the cognizer (such as experiences, beliefs,
withholdings) that cancel, reduce or even prevent justification.” (DE 2015) To have a
subjective defeater for Islamic belief, then, is to believe one has good reasons or evidence
for thinking that since Islamic belief is self-refuting or that the grounds on which Islamic
belief was based are doubtful or otherwise untrustworthy it is epistemically inappropriate
to hold. (JWA 163)
But note that believed defeaters can be misleading; one who falsely believes that
some reason R or evidence E defeats B acquires a misleading believed defeater for B.
The reflective Muslim in the grip of doubts raised by Surah 8:43-44 may mistakenly
think that there is no way to avoid acquiring the defeater in question. Such a person may
not have read the commentators on the Qur’an or may not have understood them.
Moreover, even if a reflective Muslim was aware of them, it could be the case that the
reflective Muslim finds such interpretations wanting compared to the suggested
interpretation. This of course would bring the authority of the relevant tafsīr into
question. In the grips of such doubt, reading the above commentators’ interpretations of
the Surah won’t be of much help. And, as argued above, if the defeater in question is
propositional in nature, question-begging propositional defeater-defeaters won’t help. But
there are other mental states that may be of use here, including experiences and
propositional attitudes. (JWA 155) Having a new experience or having formed a new
propositional attitude, one’s doubts about Islamic belief may be undermined or overcome.
And so a Muslim may come to understand that God may sometimes deceive Muslims
without thereby having a reason to think that their cognitive faculties are generally
21
unreliable. To provide further motivation for this way of dealing with the purported
defeater, let us consider a case that is relevantly similar to the one we read in Surah 8:4344.
A squad of soldiers is faced with overwhelming odds of being overrun and
reinforcements cannot possibly arrive in time to help. The General knows that the
soldiers have a chance of survival but only if they (falsely) believe that help is on the
way. So he tells the CO on the ground that reinforcements will arrive soon and to fight on
with all they have. And so they fight, their hopes renewed. Holding the line, the enemy
retreats and the battle is won. But the promised reinforcements never arrive. The CO and
the soldiers on the ground have cause to think that they were deceived and question the
General’s truthfulness. Once safe behind friendly lines, the General goes so far as to tell
them that he knew that reinforcements were never going to arrive but that they could hold
the line only if he told them they were coming. Taken back, they wonder, “Can we trust
anything the General tells us?” – they get a full defeater for the reliability of testimony
from the CO. After having time to come down from the excitement of battle, they come
to see that their skeptical worries were far overblown: they were deceived, yes, but about
a very specific thing and only for a very good reason. They came to see that the deception
really was necessary for their survival. They see why the General deceived them in their
case and come to recognize that they don't have sufficient reasons or evidence to think
that the General would deceive them about just any old thing after all. The CO and the
soldiers under command realize that deception in course of battle while sometimes
necessary would occur only under certain conditions. They have reason to believe what
their superior officers have to say, or at the very least reason to act on the supposition that
22
what they say is true. This case is relevantly analogous to the Surah 8:43-44 case in
various obvious ways. So we should judge both cases equally. Thus Surah 8:43-44 need
not give reflective Muslims sufficient reason to doubt the entirety of the Qur’an or the
basic elements of Islamic belief. Note that neither Muhammad nor those under his
command took God’s known deception to indicate that God might deceive them about
anything whatsoever. That is not the upshot of their experience. Rather, they experienced
God graciously delivering them from a battle. There is no indication whatsoever that
Muhammad and the other soldiers at the battle of Badr acquired a defeater for Islamic
belief. A fortiori, contemporary Muslims, called to emulate Muhammad and his
companions, have a strong motivation to cultivate a propositional attitude of faith and
trust in God and to overcome these doubts – and one way to do that is to read the Qur’an
carefully and reflectively in light of tafsīr commentaries. And in those cases in which a
reflective Muslim does acquire a defeater, taking a step back to think and contemplate all
of one’s lived experiences – including experiences of God and his faithfulness in their
lives – can serve to appropriately deal with that defeater.
There are some problems with this strategy, however. A Muslim, after thinking
carefully about the above case, may recognize that there are important disanalogous
factors. First, the General doesn't consistently make it a habit of boasting that he is the
best deceiver as Allah does. Second, the General didn't cause cognitive malfunction,
rather he simply lied. This seems to be more problematic when we are thinking about
reading proper functionalism within an Islamic framework.
Regarding the first point, we think there is a relevant and strong disanalogy here.
But by changing certain features of the story it may be possible to strengthen the analogy
23
in the requisite way. Making additional changes to the case would address the second
point as well. Instead of lying, the General could order the CO on the ground to put a
special chemical in the drinking water that makes the soldiers falsely believe that
reinforcements are on the way. Or the General could zap the CO and the soldiers with
some sort of ray (from an orbital satellite or drone) that causes them to believe that
reinforcements are on the way. Such cases avoid all lies and false testimony; the General
merely causes the soldiers to believe something false in order that the battle will go well
for them. Once more, after the battle, and once the CO and the soldiers find out about
those tactics, they might worry that someone might misuse or abuse such technology for
nefarious purposes. And they may be more or less skeptical about the General’s orders in
the future, especially on reflection of the habitual boasting of the General regarding how
great of a deceiver he is. And it may be that some of them even acquire a defeater
analogous to the one we’ve developed in this paper. But must that be so? For all that, if
there is a strong bond of trust between the soldiers and the General, and if the General has
led them to many victories, then many of them may reasonably take their shared history
and experiences (along with other propositions and evidence believed) to provide good
reason to think that the General is generally trustworthy. Similarly, Muslims may admit
that God might deceive a faithful Muslim about various things for particular reasons but
they need not thereby think that, for all they know, God is deceiving them right now
about some important thing, nor need they be worried that God could be deceiving them
about the entirety of Qur’anic revelation. Thus a reflective Muslim may concede that God
does sometimes deceive even faithful Muslims by not aiming their cognitive faculties
successfully toward producing true beliefs for a greater good but maintain that they do
24
have a justified reason for thinking God is not deceiving him about the truth of Qur’anic
revelation. If this strategy is successful, then a Muslim may reasonably conclude that
there are limits on the sorts of things that God would deceive faithful Muslims about,
thereby putting constraints on the sorts of things a Muslim might have (reasonable)
doubts about. Although it is logically and even metaphysical possible that God could
deceive faithful Muslims about the truth of Qur’an, that God would actually do so
exceeds these limits. Given what else God has said about his plans and purposes,
Muslims do have reason to think that God would not so deceive them. In short, the view
that the Qur’an is true is very central to Islamic belief and trumps the possibility that God
is deceiving them about the truth of Qur’an. Consider, for example, Surah 2:2-5:
This is the book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear
Allah; who believe in the Unseen, are steadfast in prayer, and spend out of
what we have provided for them; and who believe in the Revelation sent
to thee, and sent before thy time, and (in their hearts) have the assurance
of the Hereafter. They are on true guidance from their Lord, and it is these
who will prosper.13
In keeping with the propositional contents of this passage, Muslims will think that the
following proposition is true: (T) God says that the Qur’an is trustworthy and that
Muslims can be assured that it is true. Consider now the following counter-argument to
our main argument.
(T) God says that the Qur’an is trustworthy and that Muslims can be assured that it is
true.
(1) Given GD and GDF, God could be deceiving faithful Muslims by not aiming their
25
cognitive faculties successfully toward producing true beliefs for a greater good.
(2) Upon seeing that (1) could be the case, then if a Muslim lacks a justified reason
for thinking God is not so deceiving him, he should see that the probability that
his faculties are reliable (R) is inscrutable.
(3) But if a Muslim sees that (1) is true and has a justified reason for thinking that
God is not deceiving him about such things (suppose, for instance, that (T) is
justified for him or her), then it doesn’t follow that he should see that the
probability that his faculties are reliable (R) is inscrutable.
(4) It is reasonable to suppose that some (reflective) Muslims see that (1) could be
true and has a justified reason for thinking that God is not deceiving him or her
about certain things, including (T).
(5) Thus, it doesn’t follow that if a (reflective) Muslim sees that (1) is the case that he
or she should see that the probability that his faculties are reliable (R) is
inscrutable or has a reason to think that (T) is unwarranted.
Apparently, if at least one of the various strategies for dealing with the purported
defeater at issue in this paper is successful, then a Muslim could be justified in thinking
that T is true even if (1) is true. Consequently, there is reason to think that (4) is true for
some Muslim or other and thus reason to think that this counter-argument is sound.
However, if these various strategies aren't successful, it would follow from (2) that those
Muslims who find themselves in this position, would in fact, have a defeater for their
belief in Islam. Note also that if T is false and the Qur’an is not in fact revelation from
God, the argument would be unsound and thus Islamic belief would not be warranted for
the Muslim.
26
V. Conclusion
We have argued that Surah 8:43-44 apparently suggests that Muslims have reason to
think that Allah might be deceiving them. We saw how the possibility of deception of the
faithful threatens to provide even faithful Muslims with a subjective defeater for the
(epistemic) reliability of their cognitive faculties. Similar in structure to Alvin Plantinga’s
EAAN argument, this defeater threatens to undermine all of a Muslims warrant claims.
Reflective Muslims may respond to this potential defeater by consulting tafsīr
commentaries and by appealing to propositional evidence and/or experiential grounds for
thinking that God is trustworthy and that the Qur’an is true. Ultimately, these strategies
would be successful only if both the Qur’an is in fact true and a reflective Muslim has
sufficient reason to trust that these sources of evidence are veridical. And there may be
reasons to doubt both the tafsīr commentaries as well as the veracity of the Qur’anic
revelation. This goes to show that there is a subjective defeater for some Muslims based
on Plantinga's truth aimed condition.
References
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Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2008.
Abdul-Raof, Hussein. Schools of Qur'anic Exegesis: Genesis and Development. Culture
and Civilization in the Middle East. Ed. Netton, Ian Richard. London and New York:
Routledge, 2010. (QE)
Al-Fawzan, S. S. The Meaning of ‘Allah is the Best Deceiver’ and the Interpretation of
Surah 8:30. http://ar.islamway.net/fatwa/5229/‫م ع نى‬-‫ق ول ه‬-‫ت عال ى‬-‫و هللا‬-‫خ ير‬-‫ال ماك ري ن‬
Translated by Abdullah Almutairi, 2006. Accessed 29 August 2015. V (MBD)
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Al-Ghazali. The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali. Trans. Watt, Montgomery. London:
George Allen, 1963.
Ali, Mualuna Muhammad. The Religion of Islam: A Comprehensive Discussion of the
Sources, Principles, and Practices of Islam. Columbus: Amaddiyya Anjuman Isha’at
Islam, 1990.
Ali, Zain. Faith, Philosophy, and the Reflective Muslim. Palgrave MacMillan, 2013.
(FPRM)
Asad, Muhammad. The Message of the Qur'an: The Full Account of the Revealed Arabic
Text Accompanied by Parallel Translation. Translated by Muhammad Asad. Vol. 2,
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Baldwin, Erik. Fully Informed Reasonable Disagreement and Tradition Based
Perspectivalism. Studies in Philosophical Theology. Vol. 56: Peeters-Leuven,
(forthcoming 2015). (RDTP)
Baldwin, Erik. "On the Prospects of an Islamic Externalist Account of Warrant." Classic
Issues in Islamic Philosophy and Theology Today. Eds. Tymieniecka, A-T and Nazif
Muhtaroglu. Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialouge. Dordrecht:
Springer, 2010: 19-44. (PEW)
Beilby, James K. Epistemology as Theology: An Evaluation of Alvin Plantinga's
Religious Epistemology. Burlington: Ashgate, 2006.
Bergmann, Michael. Justification without Awareness. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006. (JWA)
Black, Deborah. "Certitude, Justification, and the Principles of Knowledge in Avicenna's
Epistemology." In Interpreting Avicenna, edited by Peter Adamson. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Boyce, Kenneth, and Alvin Plantinga. "Proper Functionalism." In The Continuum
Companion to Epistemology, edited by Andrew Cullison. London: Continuum, 2012.
Christian, Rose Ann. "Plantinga, Epistemic Permissiveness, and Metaphysical Pluralism."
Religious Studies 28, no. 4 (1992): 553-73.
Dawud, Book 35, Hadith 4240: Narrated AbuMalik al-Ash'ari,
http://www.quranexplorer.com/Hadith/English/Index.html Accessed 29 August 2015.
Lane, W., & and Lane-Poole, S. Arabic-English Lexicon: Volume 7. New York: F. Ungar
Publishing Company. 1955. (AEL)
McNabb, Tyler Dalton. "Warranted Religion: Answering Objections to Alvin Plantinga's
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Epistemology." Religious Studies, 2014. doi:10.1017/S003441251400033X. (WR)
Mohammed, M. P. English translation of Holy Quran. http://www.sacredtexts.com/isl/pick/ Accessed 29 August 2015.
Translation of the Meanings of Sahih Al-Bukhara. Translated by Muhammad Muhsin.
Vol. 1, Beirut: Darussalam Press, 1985. (SAB)
Plantinga, Alvin. "Introduction: The Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism." In
Naturalism Defeated?, edited by James Beilby. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002.
(EAAN)
Plantinga, Alvin, and Michael Tooley. Knowledge of God. Malden: Blackwell, 2008.
(KG)
Qutb, Sayyid. The Shade of the Qur'an. Translated by Adil Salahi. Vol. VII Surah 8,
England and Qatar: The Islamic Foundation and Islamonline.net, 2003/1424 AH. (SQ)
Ramadan, Hisham M. Understanding Islamic Law: From Classical to Contemporary.
Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2006. (UIL)
Saeed, Abdullah. Islamic Thought: An Introduction. Routledge, 2006. (IT)
Sudduth, Michael Czapkay. "Defeaters in Epistemology." http://www.iep.utm.edu/epdefea/. 2015. Accessed August 29, 2015. (DE)
Turkman, Erkan, and Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī. The Essence of Rumi's Masnevi, Including His
Life and Works. Konya: Enis Booksellers, 1992.
Yasien, Mohamed. Fitrah: The Islamic Conception of Human Nature. London: Ta-Ha
Publishers, Ltd., 1996. (F)
Yasien, M. Ibn Taymiyyah’s View on Fitrah (The Islamic Concept of Human Nature).
2015. http://islamicstudies.islammessage.com/ResearchPaper.aspx?aid=630 Accessed 29
August 2015.
Wehr, H. & and Cowan, J. M. A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Spoken Language Services. 1976. (DMA)
Erik Baldwin received his Ph.D. at Purdue University. His dissertation draws on the work
of Alasdair MacIntyre and aims to show that there are genuine instances of fully informed
reasonable disagreement about what to believe and why in an evidential situation. He
currently works as a Visiting Assistant Professor (Adjunct) at the University of Notre
Dame. His published work primarily covers topics in philosophy of religion,
epistemology, and comparative and cross-cultural philosophy (with an emphasis on
29
Buddhist and Islamic philosophy). His dissertation, substantially revised, will appear as
Fully Informed Reasonable Disagreement and Tradition Based Perspectivalism volume
56 in Studies in Philosophical Theology, Peeters-Leuven.
Tyler Dalton McNabb (expected PhD 2016) has published several articles on Plantinga's
epistemology, including the article, 'Warranted religion: answering objections to Alvin
Plantinga's epistemology,' where he first defends and then interacts with Plantinga's
epistemology as it relates to the Advaita Vedanta tradition. Currently, Tyler is also a Tutor
at the University of Glasgow.
Notes
For a summation of Plantinga’s proper functionalism see Boyce and Plantinga (2012, pp. 124-140).
Note that unless otherwise noted all of the Qur’an verses that follow are from Mohammed Marmaduke
Pickthall, English translation of Holy Quran taken from http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/
3
See 3:31.
4
For more on the Five Pillars, see Ali The Religion of Islam 99-101, 263-442 and Saeed Islamic Thought 3.
5
See 4:82 and 10:38 as examples of such an invitation.
6
For the original quote, see al-Ghazālī The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali 25–26).
7
See Baldwin "On the Prospects of an Islamic Externalist Account of Warrant” and Black "Certitude,
Justification, and the Principles of Knowledge in Avicenna's Epistemology" 137-141. It is important to note
that according to Baldwin, “The Mu’tazila maintain that such knowledge [robust knowledge that comes
about as the result of meeting certain metalevel requirements] is necessary if one is to be a true Muslim.
Ahl al-Sunna maintains that while one is a true Muslim, to lack such knowledge is a sin. In either case,
second-order awareness is necessary for an Islamic theory of knowledge of God.” (Baldwin 38) There are
complications, however. For Ibn Sina and al-Ghazālī, awareness of the existence of one’s self as a thinking
thing is immediate and epistemically basic. On the basis of reflection one can know that all created things,
being contingent things, are metaphysically dependent on the existence of a necessarily existing God.
Hence, on the basis of reflection on one’s own contingent existence and upon the experience of a God
recognized to be necessarily existent, one can come to see that the existence of God is as obvious as the
existence of one’s own self. Having attained such a position, one no longer has need of the evidence or
arguments that enabled one to come to that realization; for such a one, belief in God will be basic, no longer
dependent on evidence or argument. (This is similar to having used a ladder to reach the roof one no longer
has need of the ladder simply to be on the roof.) Further complicating matters is that according to some
Muslims, including Sufi mystics, God’s existence can be as obvious as the existence of one’s own self can
without the mediation of reflection and argumentation. As Rumi writes, “When the soul has been united
with God, to speak of Soul (God) is to speak of this soul, and to speak of this soul means to speak of that
Soul.” (The Essence of Rumi's Masnevi 347) For all that, whenever doubts arise about the existence of God
arise (and doubts will arise so that one’s faith may be made stronger, given that no one has perfected faith
in this life), Muslims can and should dispense with them appropriately which, according to Islam, requires
relying on evidence and argument in some way or other at some stage.
8
In regard to the Pandora's Box literature (McNabb “Warranted Religion”, Beilby Epistemology as
Theology, Tien “Warranted Neo-Confucian Belief”, and Rose "Plantinga, Epistemic Permissiveness, and
Metaphysical Pluralism"), some might see that Islam's metalevel requirement disqualifies Islam from being
a serious religion that can use Plantinga's epistemology to be warranted in the same way that Christian
belief can be warranted. Baldwin (PEW 235-237) attempts to address this sort of objection.
9
Both the verses and lexicon definitions were brought to our attention by Sahab, ‘Allah the Best Deceiver,’
last modified September 18, 2013, last accessed October 27, 2014,
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Allah_the_Best_Deceiver.
10
Arabic letters and words are not repeated.
11
Note, however, that some versions of the Qur’an translate “makr” in the relevant Qur’anic passages
differently. For instance, The Sahih International version translates them as follows:
1
2
30
Surah 3:54 And the disbelievers planned, but Allah planned. And Allah is the best of planners.
Surah 7:99 Then did they feel secure from the plan of Allah? But no one feels secure from the plan of Allah
except the losing people.
Surah 8:30 And [remember, O Muhammad], when those who disbelieved plotted against you to restrain
you or kill you or evict you [from Makkah]. But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of
planners.
Surah 13:42 And those before them had plotted, but to Allah belongs the plan entirely. He knows what
every soul earns, and the disbelievers will know for whom is the final home.
12
Note that the principle of ijma is rooted in sayings of Muhammad recorded in the Hadith. For instance,
“The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: Allah has protected you from three things: that your Prophet
should not invoke a curse on you and should all perish, that those who follow what is false should not
prevail over those who follow the truth, and that you should not all agree in an error.” (Dawud, Book 35,
Hadith 4240)
13
This translation is by Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
31