Question
I have had countless discussions with my friends on religion and fiqh, with regards to Islam in general and the shia fiqh. We have spent countless hours trying to understand a few basic concepts, which we can’t get answers to from our religious scholars. These questions might rattle a few nerves. Nonetheless, these questions are real. I am sure they pop up in all the minds at some point in time. We just don’t want to think about them as we fear Gods wrath for thinking such ideas.
The questions that were put to me are:
1. Does religion and logic go hand in hand and can everything in religion be supported by reason and logic?
2. What is free will, and how can it exist if God already has perfect knowledge. You might say that God knows but doesn’t control human beings, but then God controls the circumstances around us. Rizq, life and death. Merely free will for us means the way we do things, might be halal or haram, to reach a result that is pre determined?
3. Then what is the purpose of creation of mankind. We thought that mankind was created by Allah to see what would the most elevated of his creation would be like, and give them a free hand to do whatever they could and see if they still obeyed HIS ultimate will. But if he knows what the end result is from the beginning. What’s the purpose?
Of course our world is based on space and time, and HIS world isn’t. We are ordered to bring blind faith to exclaim that Allah has no beginning and no end, a concept us humans cannot perceive as our existence is based on a beginning and an end.
There are a lot of other questions etc, which my friends have, on matters of fiqh as well, so they basically were wondering if there was someone who could answer or at the least point them in the correct direction. They requested an audience with you when I mentioned your name, either on the phone or face to face. Please let me know if that is a possibility or not, and if it is, what is the requirement?
Answer
Answers to your questions are as follows:
1. Religion and logic are indeed hand in hand and everything in religion can be supported by reason and logic, although some times the whole reason and a clear understanding of the logic might not be accessible to human being’s intellect in this world. The Qur’an in numerous places invites people to ‘think’ and to use their ‘intelect’. All the reasons that the Qur’an provides for non-believers are based on logic. In fact the very reason we believe in the Qur’an to be words of God is heavily based on logic.
2. There are two levels of answers I can provide here.
On a basic level my answer is:
– Man has free will to do what he wants. However, God knows what he will do and he brings different conditions and circumstances in his life. How to deal with these conditions and circumstances is again up to the human being. A pre-determined result is not in conflict with free will. It actually refers to the knowledge of the Almighty that is so deep and broad and limitless that makes everything (from His point of view) predetermined.
On a more advanced level:
– God is not limited by time, therefore any questions that imply time limits for God is based on wrong assumptions. Phrases like “God already has perfect knowledge”, “pre determined” have elements of time limits in them and are therefore irrelevant to God. We need to understand that there are two ways to look at this. From human being’s point of view, (that is from bottom to top) there is a free will. From God’s point of view (that is top to bottom) there is no time and therefore no aspects of knowing something in advance or predetermining something. Human being cannot even remotely understand the top-bottom view therefore he recruits words and phrases that are only relevant to himself, for God. Many confusions and questions are raised simply because of this miss match.
3. I think my answer above also covers this question. See the words you are using: “beginning”, “end”.
Answered by: Farhad Shafti
Date: 2015-03-08
