an-epistemic-defeater-for-islamic-belief

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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.” 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 10 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 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 17 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 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 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 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 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 so exceeds these limits Given what else God has said about his plans and purposes, Muslims 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 Tafsīr Ibn 'Abbās Trans Guezzou, Mokrane Great Commentaries on the Holy Qur'an 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/‫الماكرين‬-‫خير‬-‫والله‬-‫تعالى‬-‫قوله‬-‫معنى‬ Translated by Abdullah Almutairi, 2006 Accessed 29 August 2015 V (MBD) 27 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, Bristol, England: The Book Foundation, 2003 (MQ) 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 (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 New York: F Ungar Publishing Company 1955 (AEL) McNabb, Tyler Dalton "Warranted Religion: Answering Objections to Alvin Plantinga's 28 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 30 1Notes 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/ See 3:31 For more on the Five Pillars, see Ali The Religion of Islam 99-101, 263-442 and Saeed Islamic Thought See 4:82 and 10:38 as examples of such an invitation For the original quote, see al-Ghazālī The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali 25–26) 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 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 235237) attempts to address this sort of objection 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: 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