Doubt and Submission: Why Evil is a Minor Problem for Islam

Doubt and Submission: Why Evil is a Minor Problem for Islam Taner Edis E very religion recognizes doubts about their gods. Muslim preachers and televangelists have railed against religious laxity no less than their Christian counterparts. Theologians have speculated about the character defects of atheists real or imagined, in order to add color to how they imagine the population of hell. Muslim empires were home to skeptics who doubted religion, whom we would have forgotten if not for denunciations by the more orthodox. Crone, Islam. Acknowledging doubt is one thing, tolerating it is another. Muslim populations have a reputation for being inhospitable to nonbelief; indeed, they have been notably resistant to the increasing secularity that has accompanied modernization. As a rule, levels of Muslim religiosity compare to devoutly Christian countries, rather than secularized post-industrial populations. Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive, 19-45. There is no widespread literature of doubt in a Muslim context, and much of what exists has an air of forbidden underground writings. When compared to post-Christian countries, Muslim atheism is both socially rare and very limited in intellectual output. The most easily accessible Muslim atheist literature has been produced by ex-Muslims in Western countries. For example, Rizvi, The Atheist Muslim; Warraq, Leaving Islam. Moreover, philosophical atheism remains a distinctly Christian enterprise. Atheists who actively reject the gods, rather than just lack interest in religion, typically reside in Western countries. They draw on currents of doubt originating in ancient Greek philosophy, medieval Christian theology, and the European Enlightenment. Philosophical arguments for atheism proceed along stereotyped lines, starting by criticizing the traditional proofs of god. Having made a case for “negative atheism,” atheists then go on the offensive by claiming inconsistencies within theism. Their centerpiece for “positive atheism” is invariably the problem of evil. Martin, Atheism. Our world seems too oversupplied with suffering to have been created by a benevolent god. While it might seem that the problem of evil makes the theistic god vanish in a puff of logic, much of its plausibility derives from Western Christian habits of thought. Christians have sought salvation from sin and death. This focus on salvation invites the question of why the alleged divine creation should be so immensely corrupted by sin and suffering. Theologians start inventing theodicies, deflecting divine responsibility onto the imperfections of finite humans. Maybe all our troubles are because of free will. Maybe the evils in life take on meaning in the context of a grand design and are compensated for by their role in this greater drama. Maybe seemingly gratuitous suffering is necessary to forge souls of the finest quality. Maybe. But if the theodicies on offer come across as a bunch of made-up excuses, doubts about theism can only grow. Intellectually-inclined Christians have also called on the Greek philosophical tradition to patch up excuses for their god. Evil, for example, might be a mere deprivation, a metaphysical deficit, an inevitable consequence of being finite and removed from the divine. Instead of a cosmic micromanager god, there might be a less personal form of divinity that passively emanates inferior realities without partaking in moral responsibility. Ultimate justice may be very different from flawed human concepts of justice. As the god of the philosophers becomes more of an impersonal, abstract metaphysical principle, it becomes more feasible to disentangle divinity from human concerns such as suffering and injustice. Such a god also becomes less plausible as an agent of salvation, but philosophers can still hope for a workable compromise. There is an interesting symmetry between the familiar arguments for theism and atheism. Theists emphasize metaphysical intuitions such as a nonphysical cause underlying the universe, and atheists adopt a strategy of deflating such intuitions. Atheists highlight intuitions about evil not sitting well with an omni-everything god, and theists try to deflate intuitions about evil. Eventually, arguments concerning evil and god end up mired in the stalemate typical of the philosophy of religion. A Christian theist who concedes the force of an argument from suffering needs only to take that as inspiration to fashion an even more baroque theodicy. And an atheist who encounters a shiny new variation on an age-old theodicy will just pull out the trusty old box of debunking tools. The game continues, where both sides can score points but can never win. In such an environment, stepping outside the customary philosophical debate about evil and the Christian god can be helpful. Islam offers an austere monotheistic belief with a well-developed intellectual tradition that includes reflection about suffering. Medieval Muslim philosophers also combined trust in revelation with Greek forms of metaphysical speculation. And yet, orthodox Muslim varieties of religiosity have also come to harbor a deep skepticism about the uses of philosophy. Muslims have confronted the problem of evil, but Islam has gone in a different direction than Christianity. Therefore, taking account of Muslim views may provide a valuable perspective on today’s sterile philosophical debates. One reason to pay attention to Islam is that according to Shabbir Akhtar, one of the few analytic philosophers who is also a conservative Muslim, Islamic intellectual life has never inspired any serious form of atheism. Christians obsess about the problem of evil, which produces doubt. In contrast, Akhtar observes, “Islamic thought does not concede as fundamental the problem of evil (and the associated problem of the overwhelming amount of suffering it causes) in a universe created and ruled by an omnipotent God. No Muslim thinker or educated layman has identified theodicy as a project worthy of elaborate consideration.” Akhtar, The Quran and the Secular Mind, 82. A major theistic religion such as Islam having considered and rejected the problem of evil as a serious difficulty should cast doubt on some of the more common forms of philosophical atheism. This is not to say that any god is real: there are many reasons for doubt, such as the implausibility of any form of supernatural agency within a broadly scientific understanding of the world. But the problem of evil has, perhaps, carried too much weight within atheistic philosophy. The presence of suffering provides an immediate, everyday motivation for doubting god. Even without entering metaphysical thickets, atheists can point to the injustices of earthly life to get others to start questioning their faith. Nonetheless, there is also a premodern quality about arguments from evil: they depend too much on prescientific metaphysical intuitions and observations made from the armchair. If the problem of evil diminishes in intensity outside of a Christian culture and historical context, nonbelievers may then have an opportunity to treat the problem of evil as a weaker argument and develop a more fully modern form of atheism. God and Evil in Early Muslim History The Qur’an is among our earliest artifacts from the history of Islam. Unfortunately, we know very little about its context. Although there is evidence of some editing, it seems the Qur’an was considered sacred and preserved reasonably well. But the Qur’an is also an often opaque text that is something of a mess. The orthodox Muslim sacred history that helps believers interpret the words of their god comes from centuries after the alleged events. Modern historians can do little but trust the sacred history and paraphrase it or face the debris of fragmentary historical traditions that are late and were originally deployed in an environment of religious controversy. Edis, Islam Evolving, 39–44. The question about what the earliest believers in what became Islam thought about their god and evil is, therefore, hard to answer. Human suffering combined with steadfast trust in god, which may lead to unexpected, even miraculous, rewards, is a theme in many Qur’anic stories. The sacred text acknowledges that injustice and human disregard for divine truth is common in earthly existence but promises that god will set everything right through the fires of hell and the rewards of paradise. There is little, however, in the Qur’an that explains how a perfect god created a world that is so abundant in its injustices. Muslim scholars have always faced questions about suffering and the divine order; they have typically referred to a handful of possibly relevant verses and presented what have become standard interpretations. For example, 4 The Women 78 instructs the reader that “… if some good comes their way they say ‘it is from God;’ and if it is evil that befalls them, they say: ‘It is indeed from you.’ Say to them: ‘Everything is from God.’” Quotations from the Qur’an are from the Ahmed Ali translation, Al-Qur’an. But then, 4 The Women 79 continues, “What comes to you of good is verily from God; and what comes to you of ill is from your own self.” The result is a muddle. Muslim scholars, if they emphasize 4 The Women 78, see an affirmation of their god’s complete sovereignty: ultimately everything, whether humans see it as good or evil, is due to the divine will. But if scholars want to emphasize human responsibility instead, the next verse gives them an opportunity. Other verses, such as 42 Consultation 30, “Whatever misfortune befalls you is a consequence of your deeds; yet He forgives much,” support the association of suffering with freely willed misbehavior. But then, when 113 The Rising Day 1–2 tells the reader to “Say: ‘I seek refuge with the Lord of rising day, from the evil of what He has created,’” we once again have a god who creates what humans perceive as evil as well as good. Indeed, the Qur’an can appear very predestinarian. 7 The Wall Between Heaven and Hell 178–179 speaks of those whom god leads astray and “the jinns and human beings ... destined for Hell.” 76 Time 29–30 has “whosoever desires may take the way to his Lord. But you will not desire except as God wills,” echoed in 81 The Folding Up 28–29. 10 Jonah 99 states “If your Lord had willed, all the people on earth would have come to believe, one and all.” J.L. Mackie’s argument that god could have actualized a possible world where humans would always do good of their free will might not have been out of place in the Qur’an. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, 164–176. Over the centuries, many Muslim thinkers have tried to interpret and harmonize such verses to create a coherent doctrine about evil and the theistic god. Most scholars defend one of the established orthodoxies and present their views as settled and authoritative. But there is room for disagreement. For secular outsiders, there is too little evidence about the earliest periods of Islam to provide context to the statements in the Qur’an. In all likelihood, the prophetic sermons the early Muslims collected and endorsed as divine revelation do not reflect any definite view on god and evil. Systematic theology of any sort is not a concern of the Qur’an. Muslim views on evil became more interesting when competing forms of religious authority appeared on the stage. Historically, the primary custodians of Islam have been a class of religious scholars, similar to the rabbis of Judaism, who focus on sacred texts. The scholars preserve and interpret the Qur’an and the accepted traditions and cultivate an associated body of religiously legitimated laws. But periodically, the religious scholars have faced competition from others who have claimed religious expertise. Some caliphs wanted tighter control over religious power and asserted that their role as Commander of the Faithful allowed them to determine truth in religion. Charismatic figures who claimed to descend from Muhammad claimed leadership and religious inspiration. Mystical teachers supported their claims of contact with the divine with their alleged supernatural powers. And later in history, leaders of Muslim states influenced religion through bureaucratizing religious scholarship and turning the previously independent class of religious scholars into salaried functionaries. In the early Muslim empires, the new Arab ruling class found themselves in charge of vast territories with established bureaucracies intertwined with older religious structures of authority. The new Muslim elites adopted much of the intellectual infrastructure of the older empires, including the science and philosophy of antiquity. Elite learning gave rise to a set of religious experts who were closer to imperial courts, in contrast to the stratum of scholars and lawyers based in local communities. Such experts included theologians and philosophers who attempted to integrate the Muslim revelation with the Greek tradition of metaphysical speculation. These thinkers were interested in doctrinal coherence and philosophical scope and were influenced by long-established debates within Eastern varieties of Christianity. Imperial success meant that the revelation represented by Islam was superior to its older rivals. No doubt Islam would also be a superior player in the metaphysical games favored by the educated elites who continued Greek philosophical practices. The Mutazilites, an early faction among those who wanted to integrate philosophy with Islam, are especially interesting. They were at their peak in the ninth century ce, three hundred years after the death of Muhammad, when they enjoyed political as well as intellectual influence. The Mutazilites have become the symbols of rationalism in Muslim intellectual history. Even today, the orthodox condemn the Mutazilites for subordinating revelation to alien philosophical notions dreamed up by mere human reason. Reformers who hope to recover a rational faith by clearing away ossified institutions look back to the Mutazilites as a path not taken and an approach that might be revived. Martin, Woodward, and Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam; Edis, An Illusion of Harmony, 35–46. The Mutazilites were uncomfortable with those aspects of popular belief that appeared crude from the perspective of the metaphysical theism derived from philosophy. Anthropomorphic descriptions of god in the Qur’an and sacred traditions, for example, were not acceptable. The Mutazilites, like many Muslim philosophers to follow, thought of such passages as metaphors or devices to reach the ignorant masses. An elite educated in philosophy, however, could be privy to the truths granted to speculative reason. The Mutazilites brought their rationalist sensibilities to bear on the question of god and evil as well. They insisted that god had to be completely just, bearing no responsibility for the injustices of the world. This led Mutazilites to emphasize free will, opening the familiar can of worms about reconciling divine sovereignty and human freedom. The descriptions of classical Muslim schools of philosophy and their positions on God, evil, and free will in this chapter are mostly derived from Leaman, An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy; Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam; and Winter, “Islam and the Problem of Evil.” Philosophers in Muslim lands have continued to work on related problems for centuries, producing some very sophisticated moves in the metaphysical game. Muslim philosophers have been drawn to forms of occasionalism, where the fate of the particles that make up the material world are completely dependent on the divine will in every instant. In such a framework, finding room for human responsibility and making sense of evil presents no end of exciting puzzles to solve. Some options Muslim philosophers explored can still seem fresh from a Western Christian perspective. For example, the Maturidi faction of Muslim philosophers, rivals of the Mutazilites, produced an ingenious argument concerning god and suffering. The imperfections in creation, in the Maturidi view, signify that a personal god with unlimited freedom is in charge. After all, Greek philosophical theism tends toward making the world of change and contingency emanate from the deeper divine realities out of necessity. In contrast, the true god’s complete freedom and sovereignty is demonstrated by the flaws in creation, which are part of a beauty and purpose beyond mere human welfare. An impersonal metaphysical principle would necessarily have given rise to the best of all possible worlds, and therefore the evil in creation indicates the free-willed choice of an unconstrained god. Such metaphysical games are all well and good, but theological views often have political affinities. Mutazilite and similar attempts to inject rationalism into religious doctrine inspired opposition from the more rabbinical class of religious scholars who preferred more straightforward interpretations of sacred texts. The Qur’an has anthropomorphisms. It has statements that god creates everything, including evil. In verses such as 16 The Bees 9, it says that “If He willed He could guide you all to the right way,” and yet the Qur’an also portrays a world full of nonbelievers who will end up burning in hell. Most religious scholars have been inclined to accept such statements at face value, without rationalizing them away. A philosophical challenge that refuses to simply accept revelation puts finite human reason ahead of divine revelation. More important, it is also a challenge to the authority of the religious scholars. The Asharite school of theology responded to the Mutazilites by adopting a view closer to the rabbinical scholars than the imperial elites. Asharites emphasized divine power rather than divine justice, declared that human standards could never judge god, and denied that there were any moral facts independent of the will of god that could constrain god. In effect, they rejected theodicy as a legitimate theological enterprise: the believer should begin by submitting rather than by questioning the purposes of god. If there were anthropomorphisms in the sacred texts, well, so there were, and we should not presume that any philosophical footwork will help us understand their full meaning. The faithful just have to take the texts as they are. Our world is imperfect: it is abundant with suffering and people destined for the eternal fire. Believers just have to accept that. God is the source and ground of all moral judgment, not a creature that is subject to moral approval or condemnation. The dispute between the Mutazilites and the Asharites became a struggle between imperial officials and the more organic community-based scholars for control over the true religion. Mutazilites, rooted in the imperial bureaucracy and the caliphate, tried to use their doctrines to strengthen central power. The rationalists even instituted an inquisition, persecuting those of the more independent scholars who resisted. Today, some of the flashpoints in the early Sunni Muslim confrontation to define orthodoxy seem odd. For example, a central point of contention was whether the Qur’an was created. The Mutazilites affirmed that the Qur’an was direct divine speech, but they also thought that reason dictated that the Qur’an was secondary to god and a creation by god. The Asharites and the scholars intensified the sacred nature of the text, declaring that the Qur’an was eternal and uncreated. The early Muslims, therefore, showed themselves to be as capable as Christians of violently quarreling over details of theology. Still, this conflict would be little but a historical curiosity, except that it influenced the future status of philosophical theology in Sunni Islam. The Mutazilites lost. Among today’s religious scholars, the Mutazilites are mostly remembered as oppressors of the pious guardians of the true religion. The rationalists tried to adulterate revelation with foreign influences, but the faithful scholars preserved the truth. And those who opposed the persecuting rationalists, mostly community-based scholars who had adopted Asharite views, are remembered as forerunners of what became orthodoxy for Sunni Muslims, about ninety percent of Muslims today. The Classical Consensus Histories of Muslim philosophy and theology often concentrate on the earlier period, when there was more variety in the ideas in play. In the later, mature form of Sunni Muslim civilization, an orthodoxy crystallized that allowed less scope for philosophical exploration. This is the established faith that conservatives favor, while reformers insist that Islam needs an intellectual reawakening and an injection of rationalism. The figure of Al-Ghazali towers over these histories. A widely acclaimed scholar and philosopher, Al-Ghazali affirmed Sunni orthodoxy. He wrote the famous Incoherence of the Philosophers to argue against the influence of the Greek philosophical tradition and, at the end of his career, gave up conventional intellectual endeavors in favor of Sufi mystical contemplation. He argued that reflecting on the beauty and order of creation, especially as a devotional act of mystical engagement with the divine, suggested that we lived in the best of all possible worlds. There were apparent imperfections in creation, but through a deepening of piety and religious knowledge, the believer would come to see that apparent flaws served a greater divine glory. For example, god was the ultimate healer and provider. Such positive aspects of god required that sickness and deprivation should exist so that god could provide the remedy. The figure of Imam Ghazali still serves as a heroic symbol for conservatives and an obstacle for reformers. Al-Ghazali, however, was not a singular thinker. His criticism of philosophy, in the context of his time, is cogent. It also expresses long-standing concerns among religious scholars. The Greek philosophical tradition could conceive of reason as a quasi-mystical faculty cultivated by an elite, bypassing popular superstitions but acting like a source of revelation in its own right. When Al-Ghazali favored a more established variety of revelation and looked toward mystical contact with the divine, he did not take as radically different a path from philosophy as modern secular morality tales suppose. The crystallization of orthodoxy owes more to the institutions of religious scholarship. Medieval Islam settled into a pattern of political instability, divided between competing imperial centers and disrupted by invasions. But the religious scholars became an even more entrenched social class, enjoying an education with common themes in similar madrassas. They took on similar social roles in a widespread geography, regardless of imperial boundaries. Sufi movements challenged the position of the scholars, but soon settled into an accommodation where the mystics injected more magic and fervor into Islam while accepting orthodoxy and affirming the scholars’ custodianship of religious law. Bulliet, Islam: The View From the Edge. Brown, Religion and State. While Al-Ghazali and the Asharites were influential, their influence partly derived from how their views fit the self-understanding of the religious scholars. The institutionalization of Sunni intellectual life also gave force to the classifications and hierarchies of different branches of knowledge that Muslim scholars liked to produce. Bakar, Classification of Knowledge. Bakar, Islamic Civilisation, 86-108. The highest forms of knowledge were expressed through the religious sciences, especially those disciplines exercised by those scholars who needed to interpret the sacred texts and generate rulings on practical matters. The codified knowledge required to determine the reliability of religious traditions, for example, was very important. A scholar had to line up proof-texts in an acceptable manner, especially if there were legal implications. In contrast, while the Muslim version of theology was included among the religious sciences, it only enjoyed a secondary status. Unlike Christians, Muslims never elevated theology to the rank of the Queen of the Sciences: it was useful enough to paper over apparent contradictions in doctrines and crank out the occasional listless theodicy, but none of this was central to Sunni Muslim piety. The scholars also recognized other forms of knowledge, ranked below the religious sciences. They gathered many of these under the heading of the “foreign sciences,” which included philosophy, medicine, astrology and so forth inherited from antiquity. While some more rigid scholars would occasionally express concerns about the foreign sciences, Muslims generally made full use of practices that promised practical benefits. The medicine in Muslim empires, for example, was among the best of its day, certainly better than what was available to the Western Christian barbarians. Premodern science was different from the explosively growing modern sciences we are familiar with today. Progress in the sciences Muslims embraced, such as medicine, was slow, and medicine always remained a collection of superstitions and magical practices as well as innovative surgical techniques and valuable public health measures. Nonetheless, the image of medieval Muslim science as a stagnating enterprise that mostly preserved Greek knowledge is misleading. Muslim empires continued to develop the premodern sciences and made good use of applied knowledge. Edis, An Illusion of Harmony, 33–53. Orthodoxy treated philosophy as a suspicious, sometimes dangerous foreign science. After all, philosophy had no clear practical use, and harbored a danger of illegitimately bypassing revelation. The Mutazilite experience and Al-Ghazali’s reservations had resulted in an enduring suspicion of Greek metaphysical speculation. And yet, philosophy was almost exclusively theistic and promised sophistication rather than any erosion of piety. Therefore, the philosophical tradition was transmitted through sparse networks of scholars who happened to be personally interested, rather than being part of the mainstream in the madrassa system. Once again, the more marginal intellectual status of philosophy meant that theodicy, like other attempts to smooth over difficulties in fundamental religious doctrines, was not a noticeable preoccupation of Muslim intellectual life. When Muslim intellectuals such as Shabbir Akhtar observe that the problem of evil has not been a major concern for Islam, part of the reason must be looking back toward the classical consensus. No doubt their picture of a stable, confident faith that both represented the most sophisticated scholarship and rendered religious doubt unthinkable is an idealization. Nonetheless, it is an ideal that has some historical substance. Classical Islam sustained an intellectual environment where doubts about god were never serious, and defensive enterprises such as theodicy were not very interesting. None of this means that worries about earthly injustice vanished. Among ordinary believers, however, injustice was primarily a practical problem. A very common response was resignation; the world was, after all, a place of testing, and justice could only be expected in the afterlife. A more rebellious option could be to join a heterodox religious movement. Indeed, Muslim history has no shortage of religious strife, often pitting the urban orthodoxies of Muslim empires against heterodox movements that found a social base among the oppressed and in the hinterlands. And yet, none of this prompted widespread doubts about a divine order in the universe. Among the very few who belonged to the educated elite, concerns about evil did not leave behind a record of doubts about god. The accepted reasons to think that Islam represented the truth did not include any expectation of worldly perfection, so meditations on suffering and injustice were not likely to prompt nonbelief. Some related metaphysical problems, such as how occasionalism made it difficult to recognize natural causality, continued to attract attention. Centuries after Al-Ghazali, Muslims were still exploring ingenious and novel devices to reconcile an unconstrained divine will with human agency and natural causes. Demir, Osmanlılar’da Bilimsel Düşüncenin Yapısı, 30. Theodicy, however, did not go much beyond familiar options such as justice in the afterlife or a mysterious god best approached by taking on the discipline of a Sufi brotherhood. Muslims constructed an intellectual world where reasons to think that god was real and that he had revealed himself to his prophets were overwhelming. Evil was at most a minor problem, and injustice was a strong motivation for piety rather than doubt. Classical Islam, then, at least in its ideal form as imagined by its modern defenders, showed little interest in the problem of evil. Suffering could prompt doubts about local religious forms, but not god. In the end, the evils of the world were problems to be approached through a more rigorous religious life. A pious person continually strived to shape their self according to religious virtues. A religious expert could point out that suffering could be a device for god to refine the believer: breaking a person of dependences on worldly things, demanding absolute trust. But such an observation was not primarily a theodicy, not even an argument. It was mainly a signpost to what a believer really had to do to achieve peace: refine themselves and confront their own imperfections through a life of devotion. Modern Doubts Eventually, the classical Muslim consensus was disrupted by Western colonial powers. The distant barbarians invented a new way of doing science, linked it to growing technological prowess, and set off to plunder the world. Industrial civilization overwhelmed Muslim resistance in both commercial and military spheres. Many Muslim intellectuals reacted at first by demanding a more rigid orthodoxy and a reinvigorated piety. Clearly, Muslims had gone lax in their faith, which had led to believers being overrun by those with an inferior religion. As Muslims continued to face defeat after defeat, increasing numbers among the elites began to wonder if the settled ways of their religion were part of the problem. More serious reforms were needed. There was no doubting Western superiority in worldly knowledge. So Muslim empires that retained some independence invariably started westernization programs. Militaries had to be overhauled, and a newly organized officer corps required training in the newer weaponry, techniques, and knowledge underlying Western power. There had to be new institutions of learning, better means of communication, a reformed bureaucracy, and a stronger state. Edis, An Illusion of Harmony, 53–65. Through all this change, most Muslim elites insisted that their religion was perfect. The faithful had to master the new knowledge, which was so effective in producing worldly power. But in spiritual matters, the Christians were clearly inferior. Therefore, while Muslims had to import the science and technology of the West, they also had to be vigilant against pollution by foreign religion, morality, and culture. It was not, however, so easy to separate science from culture. Among Muslims engaged in learning from the technical prowess of the barbarians, many also developed an interest in Western philosophy, literature, and political thought. Some came to think that culture and science were inseparable and that modernity had to be adopted as a whole package. After all, Muslims could not hope to catch up just by borrowing some knowledge and adopting a few institutions. The new knowledge continually changed and improved. In order not to fall behind again, Muslims needed to participate in creating progress. They needed to adopt the modern outlook of free criticism and constructed novelty, in culture, religion, and philosophy as well as practical knowledge. Most of the westernizers thought of themselves as purifying Islam. Revelation would shine bright once again, once Muslims stopped confusing the accumulated layers of traditional practice with the true faith. The religious scholars had become a reactionary, parasitical class who defended their narrow interests over those of the community of the faithful. Religion needed reform. Some extreme westernizers went so far as to question religion itself. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in the Ottoman Empire, a small minority among elites educated in the modern fashion developed an interest in materialism. Western intellectual life had been shaken by Darwinian evolution and the higher criticism of Christian scriptures. Some European materialists argued that modern science, not just the age-old metaphysical concerns, cast doubt on religious beliefs. A few Muslims intrigued by this new philosophy passed around partial translations of books such as Ludwig Büchner’s famous Force and Matter. Büchner, Force and Matter. Materialism went beyond anticlericalism. It provided a way to criticize powerful interests without adopting a rival religion like Christianity and without reviving older philosophies to which Islam appeared immune. Intellectuals in Muslim lands could hope to leap ahead and directly join the currents of modernity. Edis and BouJaoude, “Rejecting Materialism: Responses to Modern Science in the Muslim Middle East.” Typically, the small number of intellectuals toying with materialism did not court trouble by publicly declaring nonbelief. And yet, they are perhaps the strongest example of religious doubt at the beginnings of Muslim modernization efforts. Notably, while they implicitly made god redundant, they did not attempt to revive the philosophical tradition as a rival to revelation. Their interest in speculative metaphysics and the argument from evil was superficial. Materialism, always somewhat underground, was quickly suppressed by the authorities. A few religious scholars wrote denunciations of materialism as a dangerous foreign influence, but their writings do little but recite classical apologetic talking points and insist on the authority of the sacred texts. Nonetheless, materialism and similar secular philosophies left their mark on educated military officers and bureaucrats. The first successful Muslim war against Western colonial powers resulted in the Republic of Turkey. The Turkish republicans embarked on a radical experiment in westernization, including an attempt to subordinate Sunni Islam to a secular nationalism. As European empires fell apart after the Second World War, nationalist elites took power in newly independent Muslim states. None secularized as rapidly as Turkey had once attempted, but they all brought the religious scholars under tighter state control and tried to introduce a distance between Islam and worldly affairs. In the middle of the twentieth century, religious laxity and even doubt became common among Muslims with a modern education and a professional occupation. This doubt rarely manifested in outright atheism, and atheists rarely publicly declared themselves. Nonetheless, an increasing number of cultural Muslims found social spaces in which they could ignore the demands of religion. Indifference to religion avoids confrontation: it does not foreground arguments such as the problem of evil. Even so, suffering and injustice were important considerations for many secular Muslims. This interest in injustice was clearest among Marxists. Indeed, for many decades, varieties of left-wing social thought found a significant following among intellectuals in Muslim countries. Rodinson, Marxism and the Muslim World. Atheism came closest to having a noticeable social presence when religious doubts joined with leftist politics. Marxists confronted injustice and oppression both by colonial masters and traditional elites. Marxism promised a path to modern freedom and prosperity but without Western capitalist rapacity. Moreover, Marxists thought they had a compelling scientific explanation for much of the suffering in Muslim lands. And that knowledge came with the prospect of doing something to remedy injustices. Left-wing politics made more traditional forms of religious resignation to suffering look implausible, irrelevant, or even complicit. Some leftists were drawn toward nonbelief because atheism appeared to be part of the standard socialist package. For many, moving beyond traditional religion was just part of the human progress promised by modernity. Full-blown Marxist atheists in Muslim countries were always few in number. Still, within the left-wing intellectual environment much of the social stigma of nonbelief melted away. Beyond intellectuals, members of oppressed heterodox religious groups could also be drawn toward leftist politics. In Turkey, for example, leftist views found their broadest constituency among adherents of the heterodox Alevi sect. Marxists also tried to attract members of the urban working class in newly industrializing Muslim countries, who were often disengaged from traditional religious structures of authority. In the middle of the twentieth century, Marxist and other socialist political movements developed some mass appeal among Muslims. Left-wing leaders downplayed any criticism of religion and quickly found that the atheist associations of leftist politics were a liability. But their attempts to organize political opposition were noticeable enough to worry both nationalist elites and religious conservatives. Left-wing political movements typically attracted repression. The most extreme example was Indonesia, where the national communist party had a mass base and was threatening to acquire influence, even power. Indonesian communists were hardly fire-breathing atheists. But in the 1960s, Indonesian conservatives, with the support and encouragement of the United States, massacred hundreds of thousands of communists. Many religious conservatives, such as students in religious schools, hunted down their local “atheists” and slaughtered them. Pringle, Understanding Islam in Indonesia, 80–84. The combination of repression and, later, the collapse of the Soviet Union, eliminated Marxism as a political force among Muslims. In the 1970s, opposition to the corrupt postcolonial elites running Muslim countries began to take the form of political Islam. Islamists were eager to denounce the injustices associated with the Western form of modernity; they sought a religiously authentic, doctrinally orthodox path to prosperity. They succeeded. In just a few decades, Islamists made peace with the ruling elites, became devout capitalists, and came to rule many Muslim countries. Religious nationalists who promise a pious modernity remain a major political force in most of the Muslim world. Edis, Islam Evolving. A Golden Age of Muslim Atheism Curiously, the ascendance of political Islam has coincided with increased nonbelief in Muslim populations. Religious scholars have always denounced atheists, but this has usually been a notional nonbelief, a symbolic extreme of religious indifference rather than a discernible social reality. Today, social scientists are better able to survey Muslim societies and find a small but growing number of people who describe themselves as atheists. Data derived from sources such as World Values Surveys have usually found levels of atheism to be below 1%. More noticeable are those who identify as non-religious. Their numbers have usually been close to 15% in non-Arab countries such as Turkey and Indonesia and less than 10% in Arab countries. Schielke, “The Islamic World,” 647–648. More recently, however, nonbelief among Muslims has increased. Even atheism appears to be climbing above 1%. BBC News, “The Arab world in seven charts: Are Arabs turning their backs on religion?.” Haberler.com, “Konda'nın Raporuna Göre, Son 10 Yılda Dindar Sayısı Azaldı, Ateist Sayısı Arttı.” Conservative commentators have expressed worries about losing young people to deism and atheism, even among students in religious schools. The reasons for this slight increase in nonbelief are not known. One possibility is that the dominance of political Islam has meant that political opposition can turn into religious opposition. For some ex-Muslims, corruption and injustice have become associated with religion to the degree that they do not just adopt a more liberal religiosity but move away from Islam. Another possible factor is the internet. Until recently, Muslim societies have put enormous pressure on everyone to show public conformity and have not allowed many spaces for private nonbelief. The internet has provided such spaces. The availability of easily and anonymously accessible online sources of information has also given many young Muslims access to arguments for nonbelief. Similarly, social media and online discussion groups have allowed many doubting Muslims to safely pose questions and explore heretical thoughts. Most of the reasons doubters bring up when questioning Islam concern absurdities and moral difficulties with the sacred texts and the restrictions associated with traditional Muslim social morality. When developing such concerns into a reason to doubt the existence of god, Muslim atheists often reach for versions of the problem of evil. Whitaker, Arabs Without God. Part of the reason for this revival of interest in god and evil is that doubters in Muslim populations do not reinvent the wheel. The availability of information online means that Muslims who speak Western languages have access to the Western atheist online presence. Arguments popular among Christian atheists, such as the problem of evil, therefore, percolate into Muslim populations as well. It is difficult, however, to attribute the resonance of arguments from evil among Muslim nonbelievers entirely to the internet. Concern about reconciling a benevolent god with injustice is a very natural extension of moral criticisms of traditional religious beliefs, which would likely have been expressed even without Western influence. The internet has also benefitted Muslim apologists. Religious scholars have traditionally answered questions from believers and used questions as an occasion to develop rulings. The online environment has been very suitable for popular websites and YouTube channels that focus on answering questions from believers. Moreover, a newer, flashier style of apologetics adopted by star preachers and televangelists has also become popular. This newer style is similar to its conservative Christian counterparts in being as much a part of the world of commerce and media as religion. Muslim apologists, naturally, have had to respond to questions about evil and their god. Their first impulse has been to reach for some superficial but traditional theodicies. A typical example is Tzortis, The Divine Reality. For example, our world is supposed to be a place of testing so that souls can demonstrate their merit or lack of it. The afterlife will compensate for all injustices. Others say that god has reasons for allowing evil that we cannot fathom; nonetheless, we have abundant reason to believe and trust in god, so we should not admit worldly injustice as a motivation for doubt. On some sites more rooted in traditional religious scholarship, the writers insist that god is ultimately responsible for evils as well as good and hint at Asharite-style rejection of the legitimacy of theodicy. For example, My Religion Islam, “Both Good and Evil Are from Allah.” There is a potential, then, of ancient Muslim debates about god and evil becoming revitalized to a degree not seen since the time of the Mutazilites. Moreover, if it develops and acquires more intellectual depth, the present discussion will also incorporate modern Western influences, much like the way the ancient debates showed the influence of Greek speculative metaphysics. Philosophical apologetics is still in a comparatively undeveloped state among Muslims, but the challenge of more socially visible nonbelief may also spur more interest in philosophy among the devout. Classical Islam showed little interest in theodicy partly because religious intellectuals ultimately sought satisfaction not in arguments but a religious way of living. The plausibility of the Muslim god and revelation were anchored in a life of piety, where the injustices of the world could be turned into further motivation for surrendering ones’ self to the true religion. But modernity has too severely disrupted the older ways of living piously. The currently most successful forms of faith are more fundamentalist, more political, and more oriented toward market success. Modern Muslims increasingly have to defend their faith as one option among others. The classical downplaying of theodicy, no matter how intellectually attractive, may no longer work so well in practice. Is Evil Such a Problem? Many atheists think that belief in a god is harmful, perhaps even a cause of injustice. Such atheists will be very interested in the persuasive power of arguments against god. And the problem of evil has numerous advantages in motivating atheism. A large number of atheists, and certainly those whom atheists hope to persuade, are immersed in a theistic cultural environment. In such circumstances, explanations of the world in terms of supernatural agents and their purposes come naturally. The most promising way to unsettle conviction in a benevolent all-powerful god in charge is to identify a difficulty within theism. If unnecessary suffering is evident in creation, that may be reason to doubt the very notion of a good creator. Moreover, atheists try to channel moral discomfort with traditional religions and their antiquated scriptures into a more cosmic perception of injustice and accompanying doubts about a personal god. The Muslim historical experience, however, suggests that theistic religions have resources to contain the persuasive force of arguments from evil. The intellectual establishment of a religion can refuse the legitimacy of theodicy, prompting believers to instead make sense of suffering in the context of a life of piety. This can be a successful strategy, especially when combined with a religious emphasis on personal transformation. Individual Muslims have to continually fight against their selfish nature in order to better conform to a set of religious virtues. The believer must accept the absolute authority of sacred knowledge, treating doubts as yet one more obstacle to overcome in the process of purifying the self. Opportunities for a life of piety depend on a wider social and political context. Muslims have usually thought that an Islamic state is necessary to support piety and suppress vice, creating an environment conducive to living as a proper Muslim. Edis, Islam Evolving, 101–108. Today’s Islamists inherit this concern with state power. But their style of doctrinal fundamentalism has been very worldly in its effects. Islamists in power have done little to restore an emphasis on inescapable suffering in the context of a pious life. Instead, they have often sought to get rich. Inadvertently, they have helped provide an opening for concerns about evil to affect wavering believers. Many atheists do not care just about the persuasive potential of the problem of evil; they think it provides good reasons for nonbelief regardless of the circumstances. But Muslim intellectual history also dampens confidence in the power of arguments from evil. Some Muslim thinkers, as in the Christian tradition, have proposed theodicies. Others have been drawn towards what in modern terms would be called skeptical theism, denying that finite humans can be confident that god does not have deeper reasons to allow evil. Hani, “The Problem of Evil.” In all such cases, there are atheist counterarguments. Law, “Skeptical Theism and Skepticism About the External World and Past.” But if the purpose of theistic philosophy is purely defensive—to show that reason does not rule out a theistic god—it can succeed. If evil is not a decisive objection to god, and there are other compelling reasons to believe in revelation and that the universe is fashioned by a divine power, a believer can continue to affirm god without causing any offense to reason. A modern Muslim might still invoke Al-Ghazali and promote a mystical theodicy, according to which apparent evil is not a problem and instead is part of a divine plan. Rouzati, “Evil and Human Suffering in Islamic Thought.” Furthermore, Muslims can take a more interesting, Asharite approach. They can argue that the validation of revelation and the reality of god is rooted not in abstract philosophical exercises but the lived experience of a pious person. They can, in other words, deny that philosophy can legitimately settle the question. If philosophy is represented by the conventional arguments for and against god, the defensive project of theism has every hope of success. After all, the philosophy of religion is notable for its sterility. It is far more effective in generating variants of age-old arguments than settling any of them. If the philosophical game is rigged to produce a stalemate rather than progress, theists are correct to deny the legitimacy of classic philosophical critiques of god such as the problem of evil. Perhaps the Greek philosophical tradition and its modern heirs are not appropriate tools to address questions about god. It is common for Christian theologians today to admit that the traditional metaphysical proofs of god are not compelling and to state that the foundations of belief are in lived religious experience. Muslims will be tempted to say that their intellectual tradition has always been centered on a similar position. The Muslim example should also prompt atheists to reconsider their dependence on the philosophy of religion. Bringing up the problem of evil is like a child questioning the reality of Santa because the distribution of Christmas presents does not appear to consistently reward the good kids and admonish the bad. Starting from within a shared belief in the Santa Claus story, such a failed reality check could well be a motivation for further doubt. But how many adults would, when explaining their nonbelief in Santa, keep pointing to the injustice in the distribution of gifts as their main argument? At some point, genuine knowledge about how the world works should take any gift-distributing supernatural agent out of serious consideration, regardless of anyone insisting that Santa has hidden reasons for his gifts. Modern atheism should aspire to a similar maturity. Nonbelievers rely too much on the problem of evil. They too often hope to win the games set by the philosophy of religion rather than to play a different game. But if they were to try something different, they could learn from the Muslim tradition’s skepticism about Greek philosophy and become less Christian in their doubt. Consider the “intelligent design” (ID) version of creationism. Defenders of evolution sometimes bring up examples of poor design to undermine creation. Charles Darwin, in a letter to Asa Gray, pointed out that “there seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.” Darwin, “Letter no. 2814.” Today, some critics continue to use examples of poor design, such as the recurrent laryngeal nerve, as a knock-down argument against intelligent design. In response, creationists produce what are in effect theodicies, suggesting that it was good design that resulted in the developmental constraints that led to the seemingly absurd path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve. Bergman, “Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve Is Not Evidence of Poor Design.” Some ID proponents have tried to turn observations of poor design against evolution, arguing that it is mainstream science, not ID, that harbors illegitimate theological motivations. ID, they say, is about establishing the fact of design—rather than variation and selection—as the best explanation for complex biological systems. Whether that design is poor or excellent by human standards depends on the purposes of the designer, and what theology can tell us about such purposes is a separate argument. Evolution, such ID proponents argue, is derived from theodicy, not legitimate science. Hunter, Darwin’s God. If arguments concerning poor design played a major role in the evidential support for evolution, such ID proponents would be correct. But poor design is only a very minor argument for evolution. The question of poor design is most relevant when probing the internal coherence of creation as an explanation. In that case, claims of poor design might serve to establish that our intuitions about good design fail reality tests. Beyond such initial motivations to doubt divine creation, however, very little about the evidence for evolution depends on intuitions about design. No evolution textbook requires poor design to make its case. Darwin’s comment comes from a letter, not the Origin of Species. The power of evolutionary explanations becomes clearest when we move altogether beyond thinking about the designs of intelligent agents. Continually harping on poor design would be a sign of remaining stuck in the conceptual framework of divine creation. This is speculation, but an atheism that learned from Islam, that was less Christian, would probably no longer emphasize the problem of evil. It could even move beyond the conceptual framework of theism. There is a case to be made that our world does not include any supernatural agents, but the problem of evil is only a minor part of this argument. Atheism is broader than and does not depend on positions such as naturalism. But critiques of god that don’t avail themselves of broadly science-based criticisms of supernaturalism risk degenerating into metaphysical gamesmanship. Edis, The Ghost in the Universe. Atheists who learn from Islam should, perhaps, no longer lean quite so much on the traditional philosophical arguments. They should demote the problem of evil from its central position.  Bibliography Akhtar, Shabbir. The Quran and the Secular Mind: A Philosophy of Islam. New York: Routledge, 2008. Ali, Ahmed. Al-Qur’an: A Contemporary Translation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Bakar, Osman. Classification of Knowledge in Islam: A Study in Islamic Philosophies of Science. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1998. ———. Islamic Civilisation and the Modern World: Thematic Essays. Universiti Brunei Darussalam: UBD Press, 2014. BBC News. “The Arab world in seven charts: Are Arabs turning their backs on religion?.” June 24, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48703377. Bergman, Jerry. “Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve Is Not Evidence of Poor Design.” Acts & Facts 39, no. 8 (2010): 12–14. Brown, L. Carl. Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Büchner, Ludwig. Force and Matter, or, Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe. With a System of Morality Based Thereupon. Translated from the 15th German edition; 4th English edition, London: Asher and Co, 1884. Bulliet, Richard W. Islam: The View From the Edge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Bullivant, Stephen, and Michael Ruse, eds.. The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Crone, Patricia. Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness. Volume 3. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016. Darwin, Charles. “Letter no. 2814.” Darwin Correspondence Project. Accessed October 11, 2021. https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2814.xml. Demir, Remzi. Osmanlılar’da Bilimsel Düşüncenin Yapısı. Ankara, Turkey: Epos Yayınları, 2001. Edis, Taner. The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science. Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 2002. ———. An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam. Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 2007. ———. Islam Evolving: Radicalism, Reformation, and the Uneasy Relationship with the Secular West. Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 2016. Edis, Taner, and Saouma BouJaoude, “Rejecting Materialism: Responses to Modern Science in the Muslim Middle East,” in Matthews, International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching, 1663–1690. Fish, M. Steven. Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Haberler.com. “Konda'nın Raporuna Göre, Son 10 Yılda Dindar Sayısı Azaldı, Ateist Sayısı Arttı.” January 3, 2019. https://www.haberler.com/konda-nin-raporuna-gore-son-10-yilda-dindar-11602799-haberi/. Hani, Suleiman. “The Problem of Evil: A Multifaceted Islamic Solution.” Yaqueen Insitute for Islamic Research. April 20, 2020. https://yaqeeninstitute.org/suleiman-hani/the-problem-of-evil-a-multifaceted-islamic-solution. Hunter, Cornelius. Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil. Ada, MI: Brazos Press, 2001. Law, Stephen. “Skeptical theism and Skepticism About the External World and Past.” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 81 (2017): 55–70. Leaman, Oliver. An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Mackie, J. L. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Martin, Michael. Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992. Martin, Richard C., Mark R. Woodward, and Dwi S. Atmaja, eds. Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mu‘tazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1997. Matthews, Michael R., ed. International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Volume III. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2014. Meister, Chad, and Paul K. Moser, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. My Religion Islam. “Both Good and Evil Are from Allah.” Last modified October 12, 2021. http://myreligionislam.com/detail.asp?Aid=5988. Peters, F. E. A Reader on Classical Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Pringle, Robert. Understanding Islam in Indonesia: Politics and Diversity. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010. Rizvi, Ali A. The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016. Rodinson, Maxime. Marxism and the Muslim World. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982. Rouzati, Nasrin. “Evil and Human Suffering in Islamic Thought—Towards a Mystical Theodicy.” Religions 9 (2018): 47. Schielke, Samuli. “The Islamic World,” in Bullivant and Ruse, The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Tzortis, Hamza. The Divine Reality: God, Islam, and the Mirage of Atheism. Revised Edition. Hong Kong: Lion Rock Publishing, 2019. Warraq, Ibn, ed. Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out. Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 2003. Whitaker, Brian. Arabs Without God: Atheism and Freedom of Belief in the Middle East. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014. Winter, Timothy. “Islam and the Problem of Evil” in Meister and Moser, The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil, 230–248. 2 God and Horrendous Suffering 1 Doubt and Submission 13 7