Mitigating the Strife between Atheists and Islamists in the Arab World: Dissolving Supremacy of Principles within Socio-Historical Reality

Abstract

Western New Atheism is witnessing a resurgence in the Arab world which has provoked a strong Islamic counter-atheism reaction. The present essay seeks to: 1—briefly describe the cultural resurgence of both opposing camps, 2—illuminate a philosophical Qur’ānic approach to atheism, 3—present a peculiar defense of atheism by Muḥammad li-Mzūghī utilizing classical Arab-Islamic scholasticism and literature, 4—examine an attempt to counter atheism by utilizing modern philosophy as articulated by ʻAbd al-Jalīl al-Kūr, 5—expand the theoretical debate by highlighting the current social magnitude of the atheistic-Islamic strife, 6—reveal an inner camp schism between the higher and lower intellectual levels of both Islamic and atheistic camps, an inner camp rivalry, and a cross camp alliance, and finally, 7—propose some epistemic solutions that can reduce the magnitude of this socio-cosmological debate.

1. Introduction

It is common for atheism-faith debates to end in deadlock, which prevents a third option from emerging between the two opposing positions. Is a third option possible? The views articulated in this essay contemplate such a possibility from a philosophical point of view. Put differently, this essay takes an observer’s perspective on the atheistic-Islamic debate in the contemporary Arab world. Issuing a verdict in favor of either of the two sides of the debate is not the optimal choice in the current deliberation.1 The observer’s point of view is employed not due to pragmatic concerns about neutrality but, more importantly, because of epistemic considerations that value keeping the debate alive in a civil manner rather than concluding it prematurely. The atheistic-Islamic debate is embodied in its cultural history, current social movements, and personal attitudes toward religiosity. However, the central goal of this essay is not socially descriptive but philosophically prescriptive as it seeks to envision how the debate could be conducted rather than describe how Arab social actors currently engage in it. Admittedly, any justifiable prescriptive position must be rooted in some sort of descriptive reality. Just as an engineer is not content with the efficiency of a horse-drawn vehicle, and envisions an engine-drawn vehicle, the philosopher has a similar approach to the intellectual schemes, or machines, of social movements. Neither of the two vehicles exists descriptively in nature, but rather prescriptively in the realm of technological imagination first. Similarly, the existence or nonexistence of God are never straightforward descriptive positions but involve many prescriptive ideals, values, and designs for imagined cultures. In both cases, a physical engineer, or an intellectual engineer, i.e., a philosopher, are dealing with real issues, since potentials and ideals can also be actualized.

In order to formulate the possibility of a third option, the research plan will take several steps. First, the recent resurgence of atheistic-Islamic literature in the Arab world will be briefly described. Second, a novel hermeneutical Qur’ānic approach to atheism will be articulated. The atheistic-Islamic strife in the Arab world will be examined through the works of exemplary intellectuals such as li-Mzūghī and al-Kūr in the third and fourth sections. Fifth, the essay’s central problem, i.e., the social magnitude of the atheistic-Islamic strife, will be theoretically evaluated, which will include citing certain actual cases. Finally, the essay’s major contribution will be presented in the sixth section, where a resolution is proposed that offers alternatives to the Atheistic-Islamic mutual eradication.

2. Resurgence of the Atheistic-Islamic Debate in the Arab World

European atheism was introduced to the general readers of the Arab World2 through translations of Marx, Nietzsche, and a few others, beginning in the early twentieth century. The Egyptian mathematics professor and Moscow University graduate, Ismāʻīl Aḥmad Adham (1901–1940)3 became famous for his 1937 essay, written in Arabic, entitled “Why I am an Atheist”,4 which received a mature intellectual response from at least two influential Islamic thinkers.5 Arab academic readers of Western thought also learned about further arguments for atheism and agnosticism through translations of the major works of existentialism, of Bertrand Russell, and of general works in the history, sociology, and anthropology of religions. This provoked the excavation of traditions of atheism within the medieval Islamic tradition itself, as in ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī’s 1945 work, Min Tārīkh al-Ilḥād fī al-Islām [from the history of atheism in Islam].6 One of the revelations in this work indicates that atheism in Islamic traditions did not mean denial of the existence of God, but rather the denial of the prophethood of Muḥammad and all other prophets while still acknowledging the existence of God as, for example, in the Neoplatonist Hellenistic tradition. There is also another usage; Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) uses this term to signify heresy and deviancy, attributing it to some major creative Muslim figures when he says, “The atheists from the mystics on the path of Ibn ʻArabī, Ibn Sabʻīn, and others took the path of the Shīʻah atheists such as the authors of Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʻ [i.e., Epistles of the Brethren of Purity]”.7

After the decline of communist and leftist ideology in the Arab world and the rise of Islamic movements around the 1980s, atheism became confined to small academic circles of philosophy and humanities departments. This is seen, for example, in the works of the Egyptian English literature professor, Ramsīs ʻAwaḍ (1915–2018).8 Western New Atheism of the 21st century, however, has certainly transformed the Arabic intellectual scene via the circulation of various, translated videoclips and full lectures on the internet, social media, and mobile phones. The translation into Arabic of some major works, such as Dawkins’ The God Delusion,9 Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto,10 Ferry’s Man Made God,11 Carrier’s Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism,12 Eagleton’s Culture and the Death of God,13 Krauss’ A Universe from Nothing,14 Stenger’s God: The Failed Hypothesis,15 and Kurtz’s Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism,16 contributed to the revealing of a richer picture of the current vindication of atheism.17 Again, these translations motivated another wave of excavation of atheism in medieval Islamic heritage, as showcased in the Arabic work, Dīwān al-Zanādiqa: Kufriyyāt al-ʻArab [The Odes of the Heretics: Arabs’ Infidelities],18 as well as in the republication of the account of one of the medieval deniers of prophethood, i.e., philosopher Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (854–925).19 Most of these works are available for free download on many Arabic websites, which makes them highly accessible.

Another dimension of new atheism is that it started as a youth blogging movement promoted by the Arab atheist network, shabakat al-mulḥidīn al-ʻArab,20 and some YouTubers, such as the Egyptian Sherif Gaber (b. 1993).21 Translations and social media presentations, however, are unlikely to generate the deep growth of certain thoughts unless they are written and embraced by an intellectual representative of the culture. In this case, Muḥammad li-Mzūghī22 (b. 1961),23 a Tunisian professor at the Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies (PISAI) in Rome, published in 2014 the first comprehensive Arabic work on the topic, i.e., Taḥqīq mā lil-Ilḥād min Maqūlah, [lit. verifying what atheism has in terms of arguments].24

This resurgence of atheism in the Arab world has unsurprisingly provoked strong Islamic opposition from some social media clergymen, including the Egyptian medical doctor Haytham Ṭalʻat Surūr (b. 1981), the Jordanian pharmacology professor Iyād al-Qunaybī (b. 1975), the Egyptian Chair of the Surgery Department of ʻAyn Shams University, ʻAmr ʻAbd al-Munʻim Sharīf (b. 1950),25 and the Iraqi physics professor at Yarmok University, Muḥammad Bāsil al-Ṭāʼī (b. 1952).26 More importantly, some Arabian Gulf civil societies funded a specialized think tank to counter atheism under the name “Barheen Center for Treating Theological Crisis”.27 In February 2014, this organization founded its Barheen Journal to counter atheism, publishing more than thirty works to attack Darwinism, Materialism, and Scientism in general. Many of these works are by Anglo-Saxon opponents of New Atheism, such as Denton’s Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe28 or Antony Flew’s There Is a God.29 Parallel to the aforementioned think tank, Takween is another center that has launched many publications by several authors, particularly its leader, the computer scientist and Islamic scholar ʻAbd Allāh Ibn Ṣāliḥ ʻUjayrī.30 Furthermore, the Saudi preacher and graduate of the University of Leicester in social sciences, ʻAbd Allāh Ibn Saʻīd Shahrī,31 is another notable author in the same line who preaches in English and Arabic and has translated the short debate,32 “Is Atheism Irrational?”33

It is important to note that the Islamic response to New Atheism has not come from academic circles matriculated in humanities and social science in general; it has come from scholars with no background in philosophy, medieval or modern. However, the Moroccan high school philosophy teacher, ʻAbd al-Jalīl al-Kūr (b. 1968), is a notable exception in this regard with his Arabic work, (Why I Am Not an Atheist: On Faith’s Possibilities of Rational Justification).34 Before engaging with the atheistic-Islamic debates, it is important to consult the Qur’ān first, to see if there is a space for the third option.

3. A Qur’ānic Approach to Atheism

It is crucial to remind the reader that in English, the debate is partially framed by viewing atheism as the negation of theism, from the ancient Greek theos. In Arabic, the debate is conducted differently, since Arabic does not use descriptive terminology in this context, but rather a normative one. Hence, the debate is between ilḥād and īmān, that is literally between deviancy and faith. In other words, the debate has already been determined in a way where no sane person should choose deviancy, i.e., ilḥād. The Qur’ān is semantically sophisticated in that mulḥid, deviant, points to an antonym, multaḥid, an adamant follower of the goal. Verse 18:27 reads: “And recite what has been revealed to you of the Book of your Lord, there is none who can alter His words; and you shall not find any refuge [multaḥad] besides Him”. Arab atheists could have employed the English linguistic choice by using the terms rubūbiyyah and lā rubūbiyyah to literally match the descriptive English theism and atheism terms, but such usage is not prevalent. Thus, Arab atheists can be faulted here for the lack of semantic attentiveness even before the debate starts.

In this semantic line of thinking, if we consult the Qur’ān, one will find at least three surprises. First, rejection of Islam, or committing atheism or apostasy are tolerated expressions, or at least protected rights, in four Qur’ānic verses.35 Certainly, there is a Qur’ānic punishment in the hereafter for rejecting the truth knowingly and willfully, but there is no punishment in this world. These verses are 2:256 “Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold”; 18:029 “And say: The truth is from your Lord, so let him who please believe, and let him who please disbelieve; surely We have prepared for the oppressors a fire”; and 5:54 “O ye who believe! If any from among you turn back from his Faith [commit apostasy], soon will God produce [in your place] a people whom He will love as they will love Him”. The last verse advocates civilized dialogue with no violence, 16:125 “Call to the way of your Lord with wisdom and goodly exhortation, and have disputations with them [i.e., disbelievers] in the best manner”. This Qur’ānic treatment of disbelief is cautious, in that the proper promotion of faith should always come from the door of sincere acceptance; otherwise, compulsion would lead to deceit and hypocrisy, which would be counterproductive. When these verses are adduced in this manner, it is astonishing for many Western readers who are used to the media image of a bloody Qur’ān. There is not much space here to dispel this mythology,36 but the following Qur’ānic verse, 60:8–9, is conclusive; “God does not forbid you respecting those who have not made war against you on account of (your) religion, and have not driven you forth from your homes, that you show them kindness and deal with them justly; surely God loves the doers of justice. God only forbids you respecting those who made war upon you on account of (your) religion, and drove you forth from your homes and backed up (others) in your expulsion, that you make friends with them, and whoever makes friends with them, these are the unjust”. War in this case is not faith-based but rather based on legitimate worldly considerations, i.e., protection of rights such as property and freedom of consciousness. Significantly, the Qur’ānic attitude is deeper than mere pragmatic caution of promoting sincere acceptance of faith, as we shall see next.

Second, atheism is partially a pillar of the Islamic testimony. Entering into the fold of Islam is initiated by the testimony, i.e., shahādah which reads: Ashhadu an lā Ilāha Illā Allāh wa anna Muḥammadan Rasūl Allāh. This reads in English: “I recognize that there is no god other than the God, and that Muḥammad is the messenger of God”.37 What is crucial in this testimony is that asserting the existence of God must start by denying the existence of pseudo gods. Obviously, this testimony is an imaginative act of the mind, not the eye since there is no God to see when one declares the testimony. Quantitively, there are more pseudo gods than the one God, which means that the giver of testimony has to be engaged more with denying gods than asserting the one God.38 More importantly, witnessing the reference or application of the one God is extremely problematic, for the proper God cannot be less than what he ideally is, and this is an infinite pursuit. Accordingly, God, as a conception, cannot be an Arab idol, a jealous God of an ancient tribe, or a divine Christian son. Additionally, God, as an actor revealing rational, applicable, and merciful laws and morals, has to act accordingly in the ideal manner. If one observes the true God of the Qurʼān or his scriptures with instances of irrationality, inapplicability, and cruelty, then that image is either completely wrong or in need of further investigation or modification. As a result, the person giving the Islamic testimony has to reach a critical equilibrium whereby denying so many pseudo gods, i.e., paths of deviancy or ilḥād, is coupled with adjusting and readjusting what an ideal conception for God is, i.e., iltiḥād. This is an endless process that deals with the religions of others as well as with one’s own religion. Significantly, the rejection of so many pseudo gods also includes the many wrong conceptions of God that Islamic literature did or will propose.

Third, since the dialectical process of testimony involves a continuous rejection of what God cannot, as well as an assertion of what God ideally should be, this process cannot be fully grasped or finalized. So, atheism is not a protected right of infidels or skeptics, but a degree of atheism is a component of the daily practice of Islamic faith itself. This is stipulated in the Qur’ān wherein there is no adherence to the goal without examining the renewed deviancy. Embracing the Qur’ānic terminology, we may say: there is no iltiḥād without ilḥād. From the point of view of world religions, this position stands out,39 not due to the expected religious rejection of other religions, but for having the rejection built-in, even against inner Islamic assertions defining what God is. This is also revolutionary because it completely recasts the atheistic-Islamic strife, not as two opposites but as mutually necessary processes within the renewed conception of testimony. In other words, the atheistic literature and thinking become a sorely needed input for the Islamic path itself. The possibility of the third option for the atheism-faith debate is in line with this Qur’ānic interpretation of the Islamic testimony.

There is an expected reasonable objection here; when polytheism, which is much weaker than atheism, is repeatedly rejected in the Qur’ān and the Islamic testimony, then it is logically implied, a fortiori,40 that atheism is rejected. The third possibility, being outside the duality by definition, does not indicate that the Qur’ān supports or promotes atheism but that the dialectical nature of the testimony overlaps with a great deal of atheism.41 In this way, the Qur’ān does not accept the final conclusion of atheism that there is no God whatsoever, but still agrees with atheism on the point that there are unlimited irrational, unreal, and unjust conceptions of god that have to be rejected even if proposed by faithful ones. These conceptions could include those that are traditionally embraced by lay Muslims as well as Muslim jurists, theologians, and mystics. The following is one example of how Muslim theologians were proposing modifications to the Islamic testimony. Al-Ghazzali states “there is no deity but ALLĀH” is the Many’s declaration of Unity: that of the Few is “There is no he but HE”; the former is more general, but the latter is more particular, more comprehensive, more exact, and more apt to give him who declares it entrance in the pure and absolute Oneness and Onliness”.42 Along these lines, the medieval Syrian-Egyptian Jurist, al-ʻIzz Ibn ʻAbd al-Salām (c. 1181–1262) comments: “know that knowledge of God cannot be reached except by the inability of knowing him […] the inability to comprehend the knowledge of God is a recognition [i.e., a form of understanding]”.43

Based on this understanding, it is not only fanatical atheists who are misrepresenting their objections to Islam,44 but also popular and indoctrinated Muslims as well. According to a strict version of the Qur’ānic testimony, Muslims who are not practicing this form of dialectical testimony are themselves not satisfactorily Muslims, if not unconscious infidels. Arab Atheistic and Islamic opponents do not see the matter within this wider context, so let us present their version of the debate.

4. Li-Mzūghī’s Defense of Atheism

Li-Mzūghī provides his Arab readers with a wealth of arguments taken from Greek atomists, Stoics, Enlightenment philosophers, and modern atheists that criticized Hellenistic, Jewish, and Christian religious beliefs, and practices. This criticism includes the irrational, untruthful, inhumane, hypocritical, coercive, bloody, and war-mongering instances of Judeo-Christian scriptures and practices. He points out that this Western criticism of its own religious cultures can equally apply, with slight modification, to the practices and texts of Islamic historical experience and its sacred laws and theologies. What is surprising is his demonstration that atheism was pronounced in medieval Islamic literature itself! He does so by meticulously tracing rationalist, mystic, and orthodox refutations of medieval atheistic arguments to reveal that these attempts at refutation have not succeeded in full and that the atheistic arguments are still valid and convincing.

The following is an objection to an atheistic argument narrated by al-Fakhr al-Rāzī (1150–1210), but li-Mzūghī finds the atheistic argument still justifiable.45 The argument goes that unbelievers and sinners are promised severe punishment from God. But since God created them and already knew their conditions, he prevented them from fulfilling their moral obligation. Where is the supposed Godly wisdom in that? Even worse, if the goal of creation is to prove God’s mercy while humans are ordered to fulfill so many obligations, what is the purpose of testing the strength of their commitment using devils, desires, hardships, and ambiguities? Had God been merciful in the first place, he would have created humans and their world mercifully. This is one example of how li-Mzūghī conducts his atheistic strategy. The general conclusion that he defends leads to debunking the legitimacy of prophecy, monotheism, and religious ethics and its political order altogether. Believing in these creeds neither leads to human wellbeing46 nor prevents oppression.47

Atheism, here, is presented in classical Arabic terminology and argumentation style, and exemplified by case studies taken from Islamic law, theology, and mysticism. In this way, atheism becomes an organic Arab discourse that speaks to the Arabs directly, rather than through incomprehensible translations from European languages and its alien historical experience. This is not to say that cultures are better crystalized in a state of native purity, since the need for natural sciences, basic human rights, and global trade, as envisioned by Western modernity, is quite universal. Nevertheless, since Western influences on the Arab world after the 1800s brought political subjugation through colonial imperialism and brutal puppet dictators, economic exploitation by globalized capital, and marginalization of the native Arabic language and its literature, these Western cultural imports become problematic. Since the Arab public was harmed by a variety of Western influences, it became highly suspicious of Western cultural products. It is within this background that li-Mzūghī constructs his strong Arab atheistic native discourse.

Li-Mzūghī declares that his critique is directed at religion, i.e., all religions, not only its peripheries but its very foundation, God.48 So, what is wrong with religion is neither a lack of rationality, as the medieval Muʻtazilī Islamic path proposes, nor a lack of the spirit of religion, as many contemporary Islamic thinkers such as Arkūn (1928–2010) posit.49 Rather, the problem with religion is its very self and “its mythical foundations”.50 Central elements of atheism, for li-Mzūghī, are “denying the existence of god, providence, creation ex nihilo, eternity of the soul, and resurrection”.51

Why atheism? Li-Mzūghī relies heavily on the arguments of Voltaire (1694–1778) proposed in his Philosophical Dictionary of 1764,52 and attempts to draw parallels between the problems Voltaire points out in Judaism and Christianity and those found in the works of authoritative Islamic theologians such as al-Ashʻarī (874–936), al-Fakhr al-Rāzī (1150–1210), and Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328). Li-Mzūghī argues that atheism is justified because theology, the very discipline supposed to explain what God is, fails in its project.53 Muslim theologians are divided over a wide spectrum. On one side, literalists such as the Ḥanbalī jurists propose the likeness of God to things and humans, i.e., anthropomorphism. Many verses explicitly indicate these meanings such as 36:71 “We have created for them of Our hands the cattle”. According to this line of thinking, God is like a young man, with organs, extremities, and spatial positioning upward in the sky.54 Other Muslim scholars modified this problematic position by saying, God is rather a light, a clear circular ingot with color, taste, and smell.55 For a third group, God moves after being motionless and he resembles something of the world; otherwise, the world cannot indicate his existence.

On the other side, the Muʻtazlī and other rationalist Muslim theologians propose the total transcendence of God, resulting in his absolute unlikeness to the world. So, God is not part of the world, and before the world’s creation, He had neither attributes nor names.56 God was and still is in no-space. One needs to pause on this line of thinking; the problem with asserting absolute transcendence and a lack of all qualities and attributes in God is tantamount to describing an inexistent being with no traces. Such a divine being is inconceivable.57 The medieval Syrian poet, Abū al-ʻAlā’ al-Maʻarrī (973–1057), critically observes this persistent quandary:58

You told us he is a wise Creator *** We said true, we say the same

And then you claimed he is timeless *** And spaceless, so do we reiterate

This speech has a bad entailment *** That [if we accept it] we have no reason

Another rationalist school of the Ashʻarī theologians acknowledges the problem and proposes a middle way between transcendental interpretation and anthropomorphic literalists, where any Qurʻānic statement that clashes with reason, has to be interpreted so as to preserve the possible rational sense.59 This moderate position happens to be the dominant view of medieval Islamic scholasticism up to the 1980s when the American-backed Saudi regime extolled some of the fanatic views of Ibn Taymiyyah and his Wahhabi disciples. According to this movement, Ashʻarī theologians, who seek to interpret verses in their rational sense, and who constitute a majority in terms of Muslim scholastic education, should be executed!60 Li-Mzūghī reminds us that this is no different from a beacon of Catholic rationality, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). Aquinas argued against tolerating heretics and called for unrepentant heretics to be executed by the civil authorities in order to purify the world by their death.61

The literalist-rationalist theological debate in Islam has a parallel on the Christian side as well, as observed by Voltaire regarding God’s nature, His son, the trinity, and the virgin birth; Christian believers with opposing views suffered heinous persecution. Li-Mzūghī stresses that holy books are the source of atheism and that this is most evident in the Jewish Old Testament.62 From it, he gathers a list that he deems childish, disgusting, and inconceivable:63 e.g., Ezekiel ordered by God to bake bread with his feces,64 Jews crossing the Red Sea without wetting their feet, Joshua stopping the movement of the sun, blowing in the horn that destroyed the walls of Jericho, Shimshon defeating an entire army with a donkey’s jaw. Amazingly, these Voltairean critical remarks match almost identically a text written by the medieval Iraqi philosopher, Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (923–1023),65 as li-Mzūghī points out.

Worse than mythological stories is God becoming the patron of deceit. This is seen in Abraham beautifying his wife so the Pharaohs can give her gifts, Jacob betraying his father, David destroying Uriah of Palestine, and Solomon’s killing of his brother. One of the French Enlightenment philosophers concludes that: “Religion, united to avidity, rendered them deaf to the cries of nature; and, under the conduct of inhuman chiefs [Moses, Aron, and Joshua],66 they destroyed the Canaanitish nations with a barbarity”.67 Pascal (1623–1662) cynically asks; “Oh, Ibrahim’s God […] were you concerned with teaching the Hebrews going to the pit hole and forgot to teach them at the same time eternity of the soul and the punishment of the hereafter?”68

Problems in the Hebrew Bible make Muslims, as li-Mzūghī observers, subject to the same arsenal of critiques as when the Qur’ān mentions Abraham surviving fire, splitting of the sea for the Jews, and Jesus’ virgin birth and his resurrection of some dead people.69 Particularly, the Qur’ān repeats and modifies the Jewish story of punishing a fishing village for breaking the sabbath by turning them into monkeys. Li-Mzūghī asks why God ordered fish to appear only on Saturdays? Why were the fishermen asked not to make a living of that fish? And why the supposed creator of 150 billion galaxies, each of which contains a billion stars, was concerned with torturing these villagers?70 The theological response from al-Rāzī sanctions absurdity and irrationality: “It is not incumbent upon God to protect wellbeing [al-aṣlaḥ] neither in worldly life nor in the sacred one”.71

Additionally, li-Mzūghī reminds readers that historical instances of Jewish criminality are no different from the Christian ones. Christian sectarian wars and persecution of scientists, philosophers, and heretics are not due to misinterpreting Jesus’ words, but rather to following these very words; “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”72 and “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me”.73 Li-Mzūghī concludes: “The people of all religions are, with no exception, criminals”.74

The Qur’ān did narrate many biblical stories deemed mythological,75 but it is cautious on matters of personal and social rights, as in the many versions of the command 2:190: “Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for God loveth not transgressors”. Outside mythology, li-Mzūghī cannot level similar criticisms against the Qur’ān but finds problems in Islamic history. He affirms: “Muslims are no less monstrous than Jews and Christians in their ugly deeds against humanity”.76 He lists many gruesome cases narrated in the apostasy wars after the death of the Prophet. In addition, li-Mzūghī cites many contemporary lay Muslims who wish for the return of enslaved concubines as a solution for sexual needs.77 The most troubling instances are the Saudi-promoted and highly circulated legal opinions of Ibn Taymiyyah. A sample of these includes: “Killing a hypocrite is permissible even without asking for repentance”,78 and killing a group of heretics [zanādiqah] is permissible even if they pray the proper prayers. Li-Mzūghī finally moves to the mistreatment of some Arab Christians in Arabia, and how it resembles current Israeli policies against the Palestinians.79 He also cites how the second Khalifah ʻUmar (584–634) asked to double the tax on the Arabian Christians of Najran and extracted a promise from them not to Christianize their children.

Li-Mzūghī’s 455-page tome cannot be fairly examined and evaluated in this short section. In brief, he presents a reasonable critique of the absurd, mythological, and criminal instances in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He seems unaware, though, of a response to the mythological stories proffered by the Andalusian legal theorist of Granada, al-Shāṭibī (1320–1388). Al-Shāṭibī provides this argument in two steps; the first relativizes the understanding of religion to one’s linguistic and hermeneutical capacity,80 and the second relativizes the content of the Qur’ān to the mental and cultural horizon of its first recipients, i.e., people of seventh-century Arabia. Based on al-Shāṭibī’s linguistic capacity argument, “if we assume the existence of a novice in understanding Arabic, then he is a novice in understanding the sharīʻa. If he is at the intermediate level [in understanding Arabic], then he is at the intermediate level in understanding the sharīʻa. […] If he reaches the summit in understanding Arabic then that would be his case in understanding the sharīʻa”.81 The argument regarding the mental horizon of the illiterate and uneducated culture of Arabia states that “this noble sharīʻa is of the unlettered, because those who were its addressees were such. […] the sharīʻa with which the Unlettered Prophet (pbuh) was sent to the Arabs, in particular, and to others besides them, in general, would either be in a form that conformed with the meaning that was assigned to them with respect to their being unlettered or it would not be in that form. If it was in that form then this is the meaning of the term ummī—that is, it is attributed to an unlettered people. If it [i.e., sharīʻa] was not in this meaning [of being sent to the illiterate ones], it becomes necessary that it be in a form that was different from the one known to the Arabs, and they would not find it within themselves to know it. This goes against the facts in this case. It is, therefore, necessary that it be in a form that the Arabs knew. The Arabs, however, knew nothing more than what Allāh attributed to them with respect to being unlettered. The sharīʻa is, thus, of the unlettered”.82 Al-Shāṭibī adduced the second argument originally against interpreting the Qur’ān within the framework of Hellenistic natural sciences of the time. We can take the combination of al-Shāṭibī’s two arguments to mean that a Qur’ān sent to illiterate people, i.e., uneducated in the science of the day, must speak to their mythical background. Conversely, other recipients, with higher hermeneutical and scientific capacity, can arrive at a non-mythical understanding of the Qur’ān.83

Li-Mzūghī’s evaluation of Islamic history from a humanistic lens also has many applicable cases. However, he makes a foundational mistake by equating Islamic history and the Qur’ān. Islamic history is human, not divine, according to scholarly Islam; therefore, the Muslim’s experience is not religiously binding. Yet, some popular Islamic movements do find them binding. Admittedly, Arab-Islamic history involves many criminalities, but this was already observed and resisted by the classical Muslim opposition parties of the time, such as Khawārij, Shīʻah, Muʻtazilah, and various jurists and mystics. To the credit of an Islamic objection, this criminality does not match that of the Western medieval or modern histories. Medieval Islam, in Arab world regimes, has not presented an equivalent of the Crusades, ethnic or religious cleansing, or sectarian demarcations of their countries. As for modernity, li-Mzūghī is in a weak position, in which Soviet gulags, Chinese famines, and Cambodian genocides were partially conducted in the name of communist atheism. Moreover, non-communist secular regimes have no shortage of grand-scale crimes, including imperialism, slavery, or nuclear genocide. Enlightenment atheism, in its early days, had ample scientific and humanistic optimism, and could not have foreseen the horrors of colonialism, World Wars, and the Cold War, or the endemic fallibility of capitalism, communism, and fascism. If one cannot draw a direct line of causality between Voltaire’s Enlightenment and the French Reign of Terror and the consequent Napoleonic wars, then why is the same line to be drawn from the Prophet to Wahhabism? Li-Mzūghī simply reaffirms the enlightenment optimism that is now seen as troubling naivete.

5. Al-Kūr’s Islamic Counterattack against Atheism

Al-Kūr responds directly to the question that forms his book’s title, Why I Am Not An Atheist?, with a simple and realistic rationale: “[B]ecause I grew up in a Muslim family and society”.84 This also leads to the contrary, where atheists become as such because of the objective considerations of their “social upbringing”85 in secular and capitalistic nations. Atheism and faith are seen as the cultural zeitgeist of certain societies rather than as an ontological attitude regarding the nature of the cosmos, which is a reasonable analysis. Al-Kūr is partially aware of the sophisticated Qur’ānic considerations, presented in Section 2 above, in which the oneness of God, as stated in the testimony, is the enlightenment, i.e., the rejection of subjugation to anything other than the absolute ideals of fairness and correctness.86 He declares that atheists have the intellectual right to reject Islam and to express this rejection and that believers have the concomitant duty to intellectually respond to atheism,87 as indicated in verse 2:111 “produce your proof if you are truthful”.

Al-Kūr is also aware of li-Mzūghī as a highly visible Arab intellectual, and cites one of his other relevant Arabic works, Immanuel Kant: Religion within the Limits of Reason or The Incomplete Enlightenment,88 but does not refer to his major work discussed in the previous section. On several occasions, al-Kūr seeks to clarify that Kant’s argument about the inability of pure reason to prove God’s existence is not God’s fault, but rather, as Kant argued, is due to the incompleteness of human reason itself.89 Reason, according to Kant, cannot know things in themselves, noumena, but just as they appear to us, phenomena. This shifts the shortcoming from God to human reason. Unfortunately, al-Kūr’s engagement with atheism is not aligned with what li-Mzūghī articulated. This is typical of atheistic-Islamic strife, in which the two parties change the debate’s initial premises in order to shift the argument toward their favored conclusions.

One simple example is helpful in approaching the search for God. Al-Kūr asks how one could prove the existence of oil in some countries?90 The proper answer focuses on utilizing the most efficient techniques and the best global companies for extracting oil to provide evidence. But what if the excavations reveal that there is no oil in the region; would that be the final word on the matter? Could oil be discovered in the future by using new techniques that have not yet been invented? Al-Kūr is cognizant that God is not an empirical entity, and that no technological advancement can reveal Him, but he seeks to demonstrate that denying the existence of something, within the vicinity of the cosmos and beyond, is merely a blind assertion. If God is an ideal being, then rejecting that ideal is an unwarranted generalization.91 For him, atheists have no warrant for the path they take; they are mere believers in atheism,92 which is tantamount to elevating to self-deification their assertions regarding the nature of the cosmos.93

So far, al-Kūr reasonably responds to atheism, but he then engages in some sloppy sophistry. I will state and refute a few such cases. First, al-Kūr posits that God cannot be comprehended by the incomplete human, who, therefore, cannot judge His nonexistence.94 Similar reasoning, though, could conclude that such an incomplete human who rejects God would be equally unable to affirm His existence. Second, he adds, God is, by definition, a necessary being.95 Definitions, however, are connotational matters of convention, not denotational matters of reference. For example, ghosts are ghostly, but grasping the meaning, or connotation, of ghosts is not evidence of their existence! Third, al-Kūr remarks that God did not provide universally discernable evidence for Himself such as He did for the sun, because there would be no point in faith in Him if He were so evident.96 If that is true, then why does Islamic theology engage in rational and universal debates about God, when all that is possible is mere access by faith?97 Four, al-Kūr points out that the atheists’ problem of evil has no basis whatsoever because we cannot judge God’s grand scheme of things.98 If this is so, then we equally cannot infer wisdom and providence in that grand scheme of things. In each of these four examples, sophistry cuts both ways, and al-Kūr fails to build a case for God from such maneuvers.

More problematically, al-Kūr launches a larger attack derived from the dominance of postmodernism over the continental branch of philosophy. He observes that the new atheists, in their total rejection of God, establish their position by embracing rationality and science.99 Yet both rationality and science have witnessed, according to him, undeniable paradigm shifts in past decades. In al-Kūr’s understanding, the conception of rationality has changed, since modern logic now incorporates rhetorical informal thinking, in addition to formal mathematical thought.100 Moreover, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem proves that logic is not comprehensive: “every formal system includes at least one true statement that cannot be decided from within the system”.101 Al-Kūr’s observations here are correct, but do not lead to the conclusion that contemporary rationality has transformed itself into irrationality! Even worse, al-Kūr sees a paradigm shift102 through the lens of a postmodern rejection of scientific objectivity and realism altogether. “[W]e must submit that science is concerned with a process, founded in its origin, on continuously corrected errors (Gaston Bachelard). This assures that [science] is nothing but a chaotic accumulation of theories that do nothing but refute each other (Paul Feyerabend). There is no hope of confirmation that proves it as the truth […] (Karl Popper)”.103 In these few lines, citing three non-systemic philosophers would be sufficient, according to al-Kūr, to shake the foundations of the grand structures of physical, chemical, biological, and technological theories. In contrast, the planets still revolve according to physical theories, without changing their orbits because of the alleged paradigm shift!

Certainly, logic has progressed from classical to many-valued104 or non-classical systems, and physics has developed from classical Newtonian to relativistic Einsteinian and beyond, but in neither case can one draw the conclusion that objectivity has collapsed and “anything goes”. Computers still calculate using classical logic, and projectiles still move according to classical physics.105

Al-Kūr’s case against atheism includes a mixed bag of weak and reasonable arguments, but it certainly progresses beyond popular Islamic movements, and toward more informed debates. In a significant turn, he suggests an important pragmatic argument in support of faith: even if God were nonexistent, belief in God would help people to relieve the almost unbearable suffering of life.106 This position is poetically narrated by the Syrian Abū Tammām (804–845) in this line: “Wishes and if they were real, they would be the best wishes, otherwise we have lived by them a good time”.107 Apart from his sophistry and his misunderstanding of paradigm shifts, al-Kūr encourages atheists to embrace agnosticism as a less arrogant and more justifiable position. He posits a pragmatic justification for belief, which, according to him, is also less arrogant than atheism.108

6. The Social Magnitude of the Atheistic-Islamic Strife

The opposing arguments of li-Mzūghī and al-Kūr suggest that the atheistic-Islamic strife in the Arab world is both strong and likely to proliferate.109 Yet the most significant aspect of this debate disguises the fact that there is a great deal at stake110 beyond historical and metaphysical questions. Three examples suffice to put in perspective the magnitude of the threat that atheism poses to the Islamic camp. First, Hashemite and Alaouite Royal families in Jordan and Morocco justify their rule by their descent from the Hashemite Prophet of Islam, i.e., Muhammad, but more significantly the Saudi dynasty premises its rule on defending the Islamic creed and laws.111 In one case, the autocratic regime of Saudi Arabia declared that “all atheists are terrorists”.112 Second, all Arab countries derive, in various shapes, their family laws and some festivals’ calendar from Islamic laws and customs. Third, Arab traditions of masculinity, femininity, honor, and extended family roles are extremely similar across Arab Jewish, Arab Christian, and Arab Muslim communities, and are unlike Western and postmodern ways. In this context, Arab and Muslim countries “have entered the ‘most explicit and all-encompassing reservations’ to the Convention [i.e., The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)] based on their adherence to Islamic law” (Brandt and Kaplan 1995). These three arenas, political regimes, legal institutions, and social mores, could be threatened by Western atheism. Individuals, institutions, and states that base their existence on, or conduct their affairs with reference to, some form of theism would pay a great price because of the threat of atheism. The options available to such Muslim societies would be on the following scale: violently purging atheists, eradicating their media, forcing them to migrate elsewhere, or launching a cultural campaign to peacefully counter atheism. Due to these considerations, the possibility of offering asylum to atheists is being studied by some immigration authorities in Western countries.113

Conversely, there are many consequences of intellectually rejecting or legally banning atheism. This has far-reaching implications for the atheistic camp as exemplified here. First, for the artist who takes inspiration from atheism, the diversity of literary, audio, visual, and performative arts will be restricted or banned by those espousing the counter-atheistic position because of the presumed openness and licentiousness of atheism. For example, the Arabic work of art “that triggered the protests in Cairo, A Banquet of Seaweed, by the Syrian novelist Haidar Haidar, was first published in Beirut in 1983. […] These include one in which God is described as a failed artist”.114 Second, for the atheist who uses science to justify his or her path, some scientific facts, theories, and practices, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution or animal cloning, could be banned or criminalized. In the Moroccan case, for example, “students can complete high school and even university without a mention of Darwin. And the Gulf can be even more conservative, especially Saudi Arabia, where evolution can’t be found in many textbooks or, if mentioned, is treated as an unproven theory”.115 Finally, for the political atheist, who seeks to found a liberal or socialist secular political system, there will be a clash with popular Arab movements gathering their ideals from a divine dynasty, as is the case for shīʻah Muslims, or divine laws, as is the case for sunnī Muslims. Under Egypt’s western-backed military dictatorship, “the Committee on Religion of Egypt’s Council of Representatives discussed a bill that would make atheism a crime punishable under the Egyptian Penal Code”.116 Obviously, banning artistic, scientific, or political forms of atheism is untenable for atheists (Appendix A provides a brief justification for this tripartite classification of motivations for atheism). The options available to the Arab atheist, based on the aforementioned scenario, would include engaging in violent atheistic revolution, forming secret societies to peacefully subvert Islam, or migrating to a more tolerant liberal or communist country. Alternatively, the secular Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad suppressed the Syrian Revolution between 2011 and 2020, which led to the death of “593,000 people” (The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights 2020) and the displacement of millions more, allegedly in the name of “preserving Syria’s secular identity from the threat of [Islamic] extremism”, (Papkova 2010) and certainly to preserve his Alawite dynastic monopoly of power.117

Taking the atheistic-Islamic strife as it presents itself in the past six examples suggests a zero-sum game, in which the success of one side would necessarily entail the annihilation of the other. If we take seriously the atheistic-Islamic assessment of the matter as they present it for us, waging a full war on the other is a strong option. Yet, the question is why should there be a battle of this magnitude? Why are the stakes so high? Both atheist and Muslim intellectuals must clearly identify the fundamental positions of their adversaries that must be rejected; hence worth the fight, if at all. Failure to identify the basic points of contention leads to wasted intellectual effort as well as public agitation, if not violence. Fortunately, a careful analysis could yield a staggeringly different debate.

On the irreligious side, an Arab atheist might have a variety of objectional forms of Islam. We have many candidates and each one has formulated a distinguishable galaxy of ideas and practices. Which type of purported Islam an Arab atheist must reject?

• The Islam of the occasional Muslim in times of distress and personal need, but for whom religion plays no role in most other instances of his or her life?
• The popular, unscholarly Islam of seasonal festivals or magic, which attributes its alleged powers to one of the saints, awliyā’, or God’s names?
• The popular, unscholarly ideological Islamic movements that have legitimate grievances against their governments or invaders, but cannot formulate their demands rationally and empirically in a scholarly manner?
• The scholarly medieval Islamic teachings, as canonized in the legal, theological, and mystic doctrines?
• The scholarly, modern, and creative Islamic philosophies inspired by the Qur’ānic and prophetic examples, and by Islamic heritage in general?

Each of these distinguishable Islamic groups and trends cannot be lumped into one homogenous group as a naive atheist might presume118 (The logic underlying this hierarchy is articulated in Appendix B). As for the Islamic side, identifying the atheistic counterpart is even more confusing. There are many contenders for the form of atheism a Muslim must reject, each of which presents a fundamentally different set of ideas and practices. Again, which type of purported atheism a Muslim must reject?

• The atheism of the occasional atheist who angrily curses God or fate in times of personal crisis, failure of one’s life plans, or agitation from certain fanatic religious practices and for whom atheism plays no role in his or her life in all other instances?
• The popular, unscholarly atheism that uses popular music, artistic-literary inclinations, and youth movements as a counterculture or way of life?
• The popular, unscholarly ideological leftist and liberal political movements that harbor legitimate grievances against their societies and traditions, but cannot formulate them rationally and empirically in a scholarly manner?
• The scholarly classical atheistic teachings, as canonized by the philosophical doctrines of humanism, skepticism, materialism, and hedonism? or
• The scholarly modern and creative atheistic thinkers inspired by formal, natural, social, and human philosophical systems?119

Each of these distinguishable atheistic groups and trends cannot be categorized into one homogenous entity as a naive Muslim might imagine. Understanding the aforementioned typology of atheistic-Islamic varieties has far-reaching ramifications, as we shall see in the following section.

6.1. Rethinking the Atheistic-Islamic Mutual Eradication

When we align the five Islamic-atheistic types next to each other (

Table 1. The five Islamic-atheistic types.

A. Occasional atheist	I. Occasional Muslim
B. Unscholarly artistic or youth atheist	II. Unscholarly magic-inclined or seasonal Muslim
C. Unscholarly ideological leftist or liberal movement activist	III. Unscholarly ideological Islamic movement activist
D. Scholarly classical atheistic doctrine intellectual	IV. Scholarly medieval Islamic traditions intellectual
E. Scholarly up-to-date and creative atheistic philosopher	V. Scholarly up-to-date and creative Islamic philosopher

), there will be some surprising outcomes that can dissolve the seeming parallelism and integral unity of each camp.

In this alignment, we can detect the disintegration of the presumed unity of each camp, and at the same time discern the emergence of a potential cross-camp cooperation or alliance. First, an atheistic attack on magical practices of Muslims, such as exorcism, evil eye treatment, spell removal, and so forth, is meaningless when we learn that the other three Islamic candidates in the hierarchy, i.e., ideological, scholarly, and creative camps, reject these practices or consider them anti-Islamic. Conversely, an Islamic attack on the satanic, drug-consuming, and anarchist atheistic youth movement is pointless when we learn that the ideological, scholarly, and creative camps in the hierarchy of atheism reject these practices, and consider them disorderly or criminal under some legal considerations.120 These two examples indicate that higher intellectual considerations for embracing atheism or Islam do not agree on the emotive or trendy considerations of their camp compatriots.

Second, a rationalist, contractarian, and consequentialist ethicist from the atheistic camp could agree on several crucial issues with a rationalist, contractarian, and consequentialist ethicist from the Islamic camp. This can be seen in policy proposals such as restricting the marriageable age to 16 or 18, permitting abortion in the first trimester, or licensing polygamy in times of war and banning it in times of peace. Interestingly, based on scientific-atheistic grounds, physicist-philosopher Mario Bunge proffers an ethico-legal opinion to provide a temporary license for polygamy as well as polyandry in a certain context: “Polygamy and polyandry are unfair, hence immoral, in societies with normal sex ratios because they leave some people unmated. But where the sex ratio deviates considerably from the normal it might be prudent to allow for a temporary deviation from monogamy (Historical examples: Germany after the Thirty Years’ War and Paraguay after the war against the Triple Alliance)”.121 In other words, the atheistic-Islamic camps do not become binary opposites of total disagreement and absolute parallelism. This agreement or alliance can also be discerned in medium levels of hierarchy regarding the model of the contemporary welfare state that promotes equality in subsidizing universal healthcare, schooling, retirement and disability benefits, and equal access to mass transportation, communication, legislation, litigation, and work opportunities. Embracing the modern welfare state model could be a matter of consensus between the unscholarly ideological Islamic movements, i.e., Muslim brotherhood122, and unscholarly ideological leftist movements of the Arab communist or nationalist camps.

Third, within the same unscholarly political movements, there is an inner camp rivalry or animosity. The proxy wars in the Koreas123 and Vietnam, or the brutal military coup d’etats that took place in many countries in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe during the Cold War were not traditional religious wars. They were wars between liberal secular Western countries and atheistic communist countries which led to the death, oppression, and suffering of millions. Similarly, in the case of post-Arab-spring Egypt, the ultra-conservative Islamic movement known as Salafism is currently the archenemy of its religious compatriot, the Muslim brotherhood. Salafism is generally funded by the Saudi regime and hence it supported the violent military coup d’etat of General el-Sisi in 2013 and approved of his political agenda in its entirety, including killing and imprisoning thousands of Muslim brotherhood and other opposition members. Unsurprisingly, many figures of the leftist and liberal Egyptian democratic powers, e.g., ʻAmr Ḥamzāwī (b. 1967),124 support the Muslim brotherhood against the military coup d’etat.

The aforementioned analysis reveals that there is 1—an inner schism between the higher and lower intellectual levels of both the Islamic and the atheistic camps regarding magic or anarchy respectively; 2—an inner camp rivalry and animosity analogous to Cold War secular battles and the current case of salafi versus Muslim brotherhood; and 3—a possible cross camp alliance on matters such as the welfare state model, rejection of military dictatorship, or attitudes to marriageable age, polygamy, and abortion. What does this point to? And how do we understand the inner schism, inner rivalry, and cross-camp alliance?

6.2. The Fallacy of First Principle Supremacy

The atheistic-Islamic debate, in the exaggerated form presented in Section 5, commits what might be perceived as the fallacy of first principle imperialism. This fallacy can be formulated in the following claim:

Since human cultures involve many formal, natural, social, and humanistic forms of thinking and practices, every single item of these will necessarily be derived from one’s position regarding God or the cause of the cosmos.

This false claim assumes that human culture is something like a consistently precise mathematical system where every conclusion, large or small, direct or indirect, is necessarily derived from the first axiom, in our context the existence or nonexistence of God. Certainly, not all atheists or religionists go to this extreme, but this formulation seeks to reveal the deep intuition behind the ideological rivalry. This fallacy clashes head-on with the fact that human culture is hardly ever consistently axiomatic.125 A quick look at the spread of culture in space and time provides a strong refutation of first principle supremacy.

In terms of space, human culture is a semifluid mixture of influences, cooperating and conflicting across the personal, local, national, and global levels. Think of Arabica coffee from Yemen’s Mukha port (mokka) invading most parts of the globalized markets, and, conversely, North American tobacco addicting the majority of the Arab male population. Both scientific atheists and consequentialist Islamic jurists agree on banning smoking for its health problems, and many would probably welcome coffee. At the same time, both the anarchist-atheist and literalist-Islamic jurist might defend the permissiveness of smoking. Affirming or denying God, according to the last pair, does not necessarily help decide the case of permitting or banning smoking.

In terms of time, human culture involves evolution, devolution, and transformations of many sorts. For example, there is a line of evolution between Prophet Muḥammad in seventh-century Arabia and all of the following; 1—the Persian Islamic philosopher Avicenna, i.e., Ibn Sīnā, (970–1037) as a promoter of Arabized Aristotelian logic,126 2—the Levantine theologian Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) as a critic of Aristotelian logic, (Hallaq 1993) and 3—the Andalusian-Syrian mystic Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʻArabī (1165–1240) as a selective utilizer of logical and allegorical thinking.127 Which of the three philosophical, theological, or mystic attitudes towards logic can be directly traced to the Prophet? The proper historical answer is that all the three divergent intellectual attitudes evolved from the Islamic-Hellenistic zeitgeist but within different personal, scholarly, and social circumstances.

Since human cultures are semifluid in relation to space and evolutionary-devolutionary in relation to time, they cannot be viewed within the axiomatic confines of first principles. Surprisingly, religious theologians tend to fall into this fallacy as readily as many members of new atheism! Hence, both theism and atheism mutually suffer from a fixation with the omnipotent mythological power of the first principle.

There is certainly intellectual merit in investigating the cause for the universe’s beginning and end, and whether this cause is a conscious, powerful, knowledgeable, and merciful being or not. Undeniably, this sort of intellectual pursuit is the fountainhead of a great amount of literary, artistic, ideological, religious, and philosophical thought. Thus far, answering these grand cosmological questions is somewhat open-ended, and escapes the purview of any one doctrine or generation. Consequently, insisting on the existence of causal strings controlling everything in life by answering these open-ended questions is rather absurd.

6.3. The Fallacy of Intentional Supremacy

Another fallacy committed in the atheistic-Islamic strife exacerbates the situation. This one can be formulated in the following claim:

Faithful human adoption of certain principles, e.g., atheism or theism, necessarily leads to thoughts and practices that agree with these principles and never lead to their opposite.

Let us examine this claim. Presumably, being an atheist entails rejection of God and traditional religions, and hence their laws and morality in entirety. Yet, atheists have received some rights, such as being raised by their families, educated in their societies, and possibly supported through employment and health care by their nations. In these cases, the atheist, considering his duties, must pay back by supporting his parents, respecting the norms of his culture, and paying taxes to his nation. Clearly, many of these activities will intersect with many religious norms and laws. This points to the fact that atheists do not create the cultures they are in from a vacuum, but rather make the best of what exists socially and morally. In other words, starting from atheistic intentions can never generate purely atheistic outcomes, but would have to eventually accept a considerable amount of religious culture and society. More significantly, an atheist who seeks to liberate humanity from oppressive aristocracy and religious clergy can end up enslaving people, as in the case of Stalin,128 as well as North Korea’s eternal leader. Atheistic intentions are not immune to such inversions and can lead to the opposite of what is envisaged.

Conversely, being Islamic entails acceptance of God and the traditions of Islam, hence the Islamic metaphysical outlook and laws. However, no up-to-date scholarly Muslim is willing to accept that the cosmos was created in six days but takes the Qur’ānic verse (7:54) as a metaphorical usage for gradual creation, or an appropriate communication to the minds of simple Arabians of the time. Additionally, babies were traditionally delivered by female midwives throughout Muslim history. With the spread of modern medicine in the contemporary Arab world, however, nearly all urban women, veiled or not, now deliver babies with the help of male gynecologists. Women that never show even their hair to unrelated males are now completely exposed to a male doctor in the name of necessity, ḍarūrah, of protecting the mother’s health and that of her child. This necessity is permissible in Islamic law. Thus, the conclusion is that a Muslim does not create reality in all its aspects, but rather makes the best of it scientifically and legally. In other words, intending to follow a religious tenant would not necessarily lead to religious outcomes, but would eventually accept a substantial amount of scientific materialism and ethical pragmatism. Still, more significantly, a faithful Muslim who seeks to liberate humanity from idolatry and tribalism could end up enslaving humanity to a certain tribe, as done in the time of the Umayyad empire (661–750) by an imperial Muslim king using his favored theology (Nagel 2000, pp. 37–38). Islamic intentions are not immune to such inversions and can lead to the opposite of what is envisaged.

In the face of the perceived mutual atheistic-Islamic strife analyzed in Section 5, and in light of the two fallacies, first principle and intentional supremacy, committed by hardcore atheists and Muslims, we can see more commonalities between the two camps than generally presumed. In order to examine a mitigatory solution, let us go back to the maximal clash points: 1—the atheistic threat to Muslims’ political regimes and their legal institutions and way of life, and 2—the Islamic threat to atheistic applications of the arts, sciences, and secular political movements.

6.4. Mitigating the Atheistic Threat to Islam

The perceived atheistic threat to Muslim’s way of life and legal institutions is overblown and simplistic. Outside of tyrannical regimes, laws and social customs are complex mixtures derived largely from popular culture, public welfare, elite interests, and international conditions. Adultery, for example, is illegal for members of the military in both liberal America129 and very conservative Saudi Arabia.130 In contrast, some forms of prostitution are legal in both the liberal Netherlands and theocratic Iran.131 A sexually repressed Arab atheist has every right to demand satisfaction of sexual instincts, and yet the leading atheist state of the 20th century banned prostitution from a strong socio-ethical rationale. “The Soviet Russian government, like most other governments, regarded prostitution as a social evil. Unlike most other governments, however, it was not content to allow prostitution to exist in the long term. Viewing prostitution as a product of economic necessity that impelled women to become prostitutes, the government posited the possibility of eliminating prostitution by eradicating its social causes” (Quigley 1991–1992, p. 1199). Banning adultery, in the American and Saudi cases, or permitting prostitution, as in the Iranian and Dutch cases, was not a direct consequence of any particular position regarding the existence of God, but rather an outcome of the aforementioned social dynamics of law-making. Assuming first principles supremacy is generally erroneous.

What applies to the social dynamics of law-making applies, a fortiori, to the overblown threat to the Islamic way of life. Although unhealthy American fast-food restaurants are invading the Arab world, in a home party, feast, or wedding no one would dare serve fries and burgers in place of Iraqi kabobs, Moroccan tagine, or Jordanian mansaf. But what about family relations and the threat of atheistic women rebelling against the religious patriarchal social order? This is a significant possibility, but changes in gender roles are irrelevant to theism-atheism principles. The expansion of women’s rights in the Arab world is generally due to social and biotechnological factors, including: 1—compulsory schooling since the 1950s led to the increasing education of Arab women, 2—massive urbanization in Rabat, Cairo, Baghdad, and their sister cities since the 1960s has been associated with increasing professional roles for women, 3—the general acceptance of contraceptive methods led to a decline in birth rates, which provided new opportunities for women, and 4—higher income levels in some Arab circles allowed increases in tourism and travel, particularly internationally. Combining all of these factors makes possible modern women, such as Souad Abderrahim (b. 1964) the current mayor of Tunisia’s capital, and the Jordanian Rima Khalaf (b. 1953), former Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). Without these factors, even in liberal America, women would remain in almost pre-modern conditions of abject poverty, low education, and little if any healthcare (Thorbecke 2019). Certainly, Arab women’s professional skills, leadership positions, and income levels are lower than that of Arab men on many indicators (World Economic Forum 2020, p. 9), but atheism is not a magic solution for the gender gap. Whatever the conclusion of atheist-Islamic strife is, women’s status will be determined mostly by other social and biotechnological factors. And the sublime realm of Arabic cuisine would probably remain secure. Along the same lines, “Denmark and Sweden, which are probably the least religious countries in the world, and possibly in the history of the world” (Zuckerman 2010, p. 2), still embrace the Christian cross on their flags. These are further confirmations of the inability of first principles to automatically control all aspects of human culture.

6.5. Mitigating the Islamic Threat to Atheism

The Islamic threat to atheism is also ill-conceived. Let us examine the reaction to science first. Needless to say, mathematics and medicine have been sanctioned by Muslim conservative circles since the Middle Ages (al-Gazzālī 2001). Additionally, modern physics, chemistry, biology, and their technological applications are universally taught in schools and universities, in shiʻah and sunni institutions alike from Iraq to Morocco. The thorny topic is, unsurprisingly, human evolutionary biology. According to our typology in Section 4, occasional and magic-inclined Muslims, as well as unscholarly ideological members of Salafism, oppose Darwinian evolution, either because it clashes with the literal Qur’ānic description of Adam’s creation or because the ape ancestry seems derogatory or belittling to the presumed human distinctiveness. However, many contemporary followers of medieval Islamic scholarship accept the general framework of evolutionary theory, such as the Lebanese-Ottoman theologian, Ḥusayn Muḥammad al-Jisr132 (1845–1909),133 and the Egyptian Qur’ānic studies professor, ʻAbd al-Ṣabūr Shāhīn (1929–2010).134 This is also true of a great number of contemporary Muslim scholars, such as the Algerian cosmologist and science popularizer Nidhal Guessoum (b. 1960)135 and the Iraqi dentist and social media preacher Ahmed Khairi Alomari (b. 1970).136 Followers of the Muslim brotherhood are split on the matter and subject to change as soon as their intellectual leadership changes. An example of this is the intellectual transformation that took place in the 1980s regarding the approval of democracy and women’s political participation, as promoted by one of their scholarly jurists, Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī (b. 1926).

Still, this does not answer why the dominant Islamic culture in the Arab world is against evolutionary theory. The answer is probably seen in the sociology of knowledge: 1—literacy in the Arab world has been advancing only gradually from the majority illiterate society at the end of WWII, 2—most of the emerging higher education post-WWII concentrated on commercial, administrative, and technology curricula without building a science-informed worldview, which has been left to the departments of Islamic studies, 3—Islamic studies education, in turn, is generally controlled by the secular Arab military or royal governments that paradoxically seek popular legitimacy by overbidding on conservative religiosity,137 and finally 4—all Arab countries have been created post-WWI and WWII by colonial powers and still, without exception, exhibit a lack of sovereignty regarding their macro-educational and political decisions. Being post-colonial satellite states generally prevents the Arab countries from generating their own sovereign and creative elite, since their brightest brains migrate elsewhere,138 and most of their mobilizing civil society leaders are silenced, imprisoned, or killed. In short, Islamic theism is not the obstacle to the acceptance of evolutionary biology and scientific culture in general, but rather this can be attributed to weak schooling, unbalanced higher education, conservative tactics by secular Arab dictatorships, and an inability to generate a functioning Arab scholarly and social elite in the post-colonial satellite states era. As soon as these obstacles are overcome, a better science-based culture could take hold within the Arab-Islamic culture. This process would be similar to the change in Catholicism when “Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans in 1950”.139

What about the atheistic stance that secular liberal and leftist political movements demand? There is still spacious common ground that the current Islamic ideological movement could concede to both the secular groups without embracing atheism. Note first, though, that the ultra-conservative Salafi groups, such as the al-Nour party in Egypt and the Madkhali movement in Libya and Yemen, are mainly proxy groups of Western-backed Saudi Arabia and UAE.140 Consequently, these Salafi groups were adamant in denying any common ground with liberal and leftist political movements during the Arab Spring. Their intentions were clearly revealed in their willingness to cooperate with, and even praise, their secular royal and military patrons, but not the secular or Islamic rivals of their patrons! So, let us exclude these hijacked political movements from the equation for the moment.

Conversely, mainstream Islamists would accept the following from liberalism: 1—the necessity of renovating and critiquing outdated issues in medieval Islamic heritage, 2—submitting to the mechanism of a democratic parliamentary system, and 3—accepting the freedom to sin, if done privately, and without harming others. Moreover, the Islamists would agree with the leftist agenda on many issues; 1—the primacy of state-led economic development as a path for modernity, 2—the just distribution of resources to provide educational, medical, housing, and employment opportunities to all citizens regardless of religion, race, sect, or gender, and 3—achieving the cooperative unity of all Arab countries through some form of regional or confederate unity.141 Achieving many of the central goals of Arab liberals and leftists would come, though, with certain objections to liberal policy, including: 1—public and media permissiveness, 2—capitalistic monopolies and wholesale takeover of national assets by global corporations, and 3—granting sovereignty to Western hegemony. Mainstream Islamists would also reject leftist calls for: 1—embracing totalitarian communist governments, 2—banning public worship and establishing an atheistic creed, and 3—surrendering Arab sovereignty to international communism. In this sense, Islamists in the Arab world can be seen as a centrist power between liberal and communist Arabs. However, the symbolic polarization of religion that Arab dictators exploit places them in the center between warring secular and religious sides, a tactic that secures and extends their rule.

The final clash point in the atheistic-Islamic strife centers on the arts, and admittedly the common ground here becomes narrower than the one in science and politics. The situation is certainly dire due to the historical deterioration of Arab civilization. In this context, the sociology of art could be revealing. The middle and upper classes are usually the patrons and consumers of architecture, music, fashion, and artistic entertainment. This was the case with Muslim Abbasside and Andalusian elites who encouraged castle building, female dance, and art, including the well-recorded and still taught poetry of wine love, khamriyyāt, and homosexual love, ghilmāniyyāt. Al-Jāḥiẓ (776–869), an Iraqi Islamic theologian and one of the founders of Arabic rhetoric, recorded such aspects of luxurious Muslim life in a literary piece, which brings into focus the competition between Arabs’ sexual love for girls or boys (Jahiz 1980). The Egyptian Islamic jurist and literary scholar, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (c. 1445–1505), is another astounding example for his embrace of erotic arts and literature (Al-Suyūṭī 1994, 2001).142 However, the gradual decline of Arab resourcefulness and urban centers after the Mongol invasion (1258), the Spanish Reconquista (1492), the European rounding of the Cape of Good Hope (1488), the discovery of the New World (1492), and Ottoman domination (1516),143 altogether marginalized the role of the Arab world in the world trade system and their own sovereignty. This resulted in most Arabs living farming and pastoral lives up until the late Ottoman period. Then colonial globalization and the discovery of oil led to rapid post-WWII urbanization. In these recent changes, Arab upper classes are sometimes seen as Western puppets and, therefore, not as the rightful cultural leaders of the Arab middle and lower classes. Hence, most upper-class artistic choices are religiously vilified as a harmful Western sensibility. Current Muslim artists do not exhibit the same licentious inclinations as their medieval Andalusian and Abbasid predecessors. The growth of internally loyal and more civic-minded Arab upper and middle classes, who would patronize and consume local art, would probably change that situation.

7. Conclusions

The atheistic-Islamic strife is a particularly volatile issue when viewed in the context of compatibility with the current globalized modern world. The analysis articulated above reveals a narrow common ground in the near future between the two camps with regard to licentious arts, but a wider common ground in terms of modern politics and science. Since Qur’ānic theism rejected polytheistic idolatry, the Jewish embodiment of God, and the Christian trinitarian traditions, up-to-date Qur’ānic theism must have an equal chance of rejecting the instances of irrationality, inapplicability, and cruelty that medieval Islamic traditions have incorporated in their laws, theologies, or mysticism. Debating atheism, as partially explicated by li-Mzūghī and al-Kūr, is a badly needed exercise in order to perform the Islamic testimony itself, and to renew the meaning of the proper higher ideal, in light of endlessly proliferating pseudo gods of the Islamic self or the Western other. Furthermore, significant results of analyzing the atheistic-Islamic strife reveal: 1—an inner camp schism between the higher and lower intellectual levels of both the Islamic and the atheistic camps, an inner camp rivalry, and cross camp alliance, 2—the dissolving of the fallacies of first principles and intentional supremacy committed by hardcore atheists and doctrinaire Muslims in favor of the primacy of socio-historical factors that shape laws, politics, and ways of life, 3—the intrinsic and mutual dependence between theism and atheism in both philosophical and Qur’ānic contexts. Atheism would not exist if theism did not exist, for they are antonyms, both linguistically and epistemically. Finally, 4—neither atheism nor faith is a magic solution for human and social development. The Arab world is prevented from entering modernity for other reasons, both internal and external.

This essay sought to rationalize a framework for the atheist-Islamist debate, and thus to lower the socio-political conflict that can and does accompany such an ideological debate. One potential objection might be that this mitigation cannot succeed by way of a constructed philosophical argument, but only through a political-constitutional decision to refrain from enforcing religious belief, and social acceptance of religious/non-religious difference. But this is not necessarily how historical reform works. In many historical instances, e.g., the English Renaissance or the French Encyclopédistes, imagination, aspiration, and philosophizing came first, and legal and political reform followed after the public was convinced. There is certainly the possibility of legal and political reform happening first, as in United Nations mass vaccination campaigns targeting illiterate villagers. This essay stresses the first approach, in which intellectual mitigation has priority, first because the matter pertains to religious and irreligious identity in its relation to personal imagination, and, second, because importing the foreign legal-political framework of Western secularism will likely be seen as another wave of the incessant colonial tide washing over its Arab-Islamic colonized subjects. Contrary to the current Western media image, the ideological clash in the Arab world is not between an avant-garde atheist minority and a backward religious majority, but rather between subjugated native and conservative majorities and secular royal and military authoritarian regimes appointed by the West.144

Another possible objection might be that this mitigation will not fully materialize any time soon. I am aware of the limitations of philosophical proposals: most intellectuals do not possess the powers of state leadership or of the UN Secretary-General. Let us take the example of calls for nuclear disarmament in the 1950s in the Russell–Einstein Manifesto (Russell 2003). Did the authors believe that since the USA and the USSR would never heed such calls, their disarmament argument should not have been made? On the contrary, they did propose it out of scholarly responsibility. In our case, even if the third possibility between atheists and Islamists might not immediately materialize, it will sow the seeds of possibility. Concluding with ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī’s 1945 comment on Abū Bakr al-Rāzī’s tenth-century atheism is timely; al-Rāzī is “one of the most courageous thinkers that humanity has known in its entire history. One cannot be but full of admiration with this free atmosphere that Islam allowed in that age, which points to the fertility and maturity that Islamic reason did reach in that age. Will such atmosphere be achieved another time in our Arab civilization that we hope to create?”145