Corrected Lecture Knowing God - Reason, Revelation, and Intuition
By Yasir Qadhi | 2026-01-07T19:43:58.593238+00:00 | Topic: Allah
Knowing God: Reason, Revelation, and Intuition
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi
Introduction
The topic today is about knowing God through reason, through intellect and intuition, and how various early Muslim scholars and philosophers and movements went about understanding this particular aspect of theology. Now, the problem that I had coming here is I didn't know the level of the students.
I was going to talk to a bunch of graduates from SOAS, I was going to talk to Muslims who are interested in the field, and whoever I asked wasn't able to give me an answer. And so I'm going to speak from my heart, kind of sort of semi-academic and semi, if you like, religious or Islamic. So I hope I don't lose some of you, and I hope I'm not too boring for others. I hope the majority, inshallah, are able to benefit and follow along.
Defining Kalam (علم الكلام)
So let's begin from the beginning. What we're talking about basically is kalam (كَلَام), and the way that early kalam scholars viewed this field, and how those who opposed kalam objected to their view.
So we first have to define kalam. Kalam is a science that is difficult to define, and it's been the subject of hundreds of PhDs and doctoral dissertations. It's difficult to define kalam from philosophy. It's difficult to differentiate the two. And that is why some of the modern academics actually conflate the two when they say kalam is merely a branch of philosophy. And that is a madhab or an opinion out there.
But in fact, kalam is different from philosophy. And kalam is dialectic theology. In other words, you are having a rational, cosmological basis of reality upon which you base your theology. So you base your theology not from texts, not from scripture, but from rationality.
Now, how is that not philosophy? This is the whole question. Because that is, in fact, philosophy. Philosophy is you base your ethics, you base your morality from intellect. So is kalam, except that kalam is kind of sort of in the middle between philosophy and pure religion or pure scriptural theology. And so it's difficult to demarcate the two.
But there are many differences between falsafa (فَلْسَفَة) and kalam. And we'll talk about some of them, but that's not the topic of this class. So I'll take it as a given that kalam is different than falsafa because I think it definitely is.
Historical Development of Kalam
The Early Pioneers
Kalam first began at the turn of the second Islamic century. And generally, a person by the name of Ja'd ibn Dirham (جَعْد بْن دِرْهَم) is accredited with starting this type of dialectic theology. Ja'd ibn Dirham died roughly 110 Hijri.
And I apologize that all of my dates are Hijri dates because that's the way I think of early Islam. To convert, you can just write a date and convert yourself later on. Ja'd ibn Dirham passed it on to his main student, Jahm ibn Safwan (جَهْم بْن صَفْوَان).
Now, these two guys were the earliest people who actually began talking about the concept of God's attributes. The controversy over God's attributes never arose before these guys. These were the first people to begin talking about how do we understand the attributes of God in the Quran.
Before these two guys, you had controversies over faith. What is the reality of faith, iman? Who should have been the khalifa, Ali or Abu Bakr? What is the role of the khalifa? How about divine predestination? How much does God know? How much is about control? So you had groups like the Kharijites (الخوارج), the Murji'ites (المرجئة), the early Shia (الشيعة). You had all of these other groups forming.
This is before this controversy. Nobody ever talks about God and the nature of God. The first people to come forth with this type of thought are these two people, Ja'd and Jahm.
The Mu'tazila Movement
Contemporaneously to this, there are other movements going on as well. And of those movements is the movement of, or the theological position of, what do we do with somebody who's a believer, but not a good believer? What if he's a Muslim, but he drinks? What if he's a Muslim, but he womanizes? What if he's a Muslim, but he steals? He's a bad Muslim.
Is he a Muslim, or is he not? So the theological position of how do we define faith, what constitutes minimal faith, is going on contemporaneously. And, of course, a lot of people are talking about this, but of the earliest people to really make a statement, to make a scene, is somebody by the name of Wasil ibn Ata (واصل بن عطاء). Wasil ibn Ata died around 128 Hijri.
Wasil ibn Ata is really one of the first people to begin a movement that is clearly distinct from both Kharijism and Sunnism, which both existed. We should not say Sunnism at this time, we should say proto-Sunnism, because the Sunni movement as it is actually developed after him. But proto-Sunnism and Kharijism are existing at this time.
Wasil ibn Ata comes and he puts forth a position. The sinning Muslim is neither a disbeliever nor is he a Muslim. He's kind of, sort of, in a limbo status:
He's in a quandary. He's in a unique box. He's neither a Muslim nor a kafir. Before this time, Sunnis to this day consider a sinning Muslim to be a Muslim. Kharijites to this day, there are still Kharijite movements, consider a sinning Muslim to be a non-Muslim.
So this comes along and he goes, they're right in the middle. We don't call them Muslim, we don't call them non-Muslim.
Wasil ibn Ata is accredited, and I do believe this to be true, with the founding of the actual Mu'tazila (المعتزلة) movement. He is the one who began the Mu'tazila movement.
Amr ibn Ubayd and Stage Two
Wasil ibn Ata did not talk about God's attributes. As far as we can tell, this was not a controversy to him. It's too early on. He's too early to really talk about that. But he influences his brother-in-law and his main student, Amr ibn Ubayd (عمرو بن عبيد) And Amr ibn Ubayd died around 148 AH.
Amr ibn Ubayd was the first person, really, to kind of sort of meld these two trends together. And he brought forth a theology that included elements of God's attributes, God's attributes denying them, elements of Wasil ibn Ata's status limbo in between the two statuses, and also another movement which we're not going to really talk about, the Qadarites (القدرية), who were talking about predestination and denying it.
So he basically took from Wasil ibn Ata, Ja'd ibn Dirham, and the Qadarites, and he took Mu'tazilism to a different level. He took Mu'tazilism to stage two. And really, in my opinion, Amr ibn Ubayd is the real founder of Mu'tazilism.
At this stage, we don't really have sophisticated proofs or intellectual theorems theorizing any of these things. They're just simplistic notions. Greek thought has yet to hit the Muslim ummah. Aristotle and Plato have yet to be translated.
The John of Damascus Connection
So Amr ibn Ubayd is getting these ideas. Where does he get them from? This is a really, really deep question. Interesting question. We're never going to know. How, in 140 hijra, is he talking about issues that are clearly Neoplatonic, clearly Aristotelian, but he cannot express them in Platonic and Aristotelian language because he doesn't know them. He hasn't read them.
In my master's dissertation, I proposed another line, and this is something perhaps one of you can write a research paper on, because I don't have time to go into this really. But Amr ibn Ubayd took this general thought from Jahm ibn Safwan. That's well-known. Jahm ibn Safwan took it from Ja'd ibn Dirham. That's also well-known.
I proposed a figure up here which really, nobody else has really concentrated on before, and that is John of Damascus (يوحنا الدمشقي). John of Damascus is a very interesting figure, and it has been corroborated that Ja'd lived at the same time as John in Damascus, in the same quarters as John of Damascus. Same time, same place, but nobody ever said that Ja'd studied with John. I was really the first person to say that, and I could be wrong.
John of Damascus was a type of minister to the Umayyad Caliph at the time, and he spoke Arabic, and this is at the time when the Romans are being given high positions because they're educated, they're literate, they're bureaucrats. And so the Umayyads come along, and they take the Jews and the Christians, and they give them high ministerial, secretarial positions.
Now, his theology is very, very similar to John of Damascus, in God's attributes, in issues of other, and even, and this is one of the main points that we're coming to, how to prove the existence of God. John of Damascus was one of the first people to propose a very rudimentary form of what later is called the kalam cosmological argument for the proof of the existence of God.
The Sophisticated Stages of Mu'tazila
Stage Two: Al-Nazzam and Al-Allaf
Stage two, you have a whole bunch of other people. The main people really are al-Nazzam (النظام) and al-Allaf (الألاف). And al-Allaf died around 235 or so.
Stage Three: The Jubba'is
Stage three are the Jubba'is (الجبائي), the nephew and the uncle. And, of course, Jubba'i is the stepfather of al-Ash'ari (الأشعري). He married al-Ash'ari's mother. And that's why al-Ash'ari grew up in this environment.
So stage three, we have a number of eccentric figures. And these are the figures of really strange Mu'tazili thought.
Al-Allaf's Revolutionary Contribution
Each one has some very unique ideas. It is, in fact, al-Allaf whom we can credit for taking Mu'tazilism to yet another level. And he was the first person as far as we know to introduce the kalam cosmological argument for the creation and existence of God.
Al-Allaf was the first person to introduce the kalam cosmological argument for existence of God for creation and existence of God. And this changed the course of kalam history.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument
Fundamental Premise
One of the fundamental differences between all the groups of kalam and what I call orthodox sunnism which is basically early sunnism which still exists and falsafa one of the fundamental differences and this is the only one we'll talk about in this lecture is that all groups of kalam agree to the basic premise of the kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God.
And there are three Mu'tazilites - sorry, there are three kalam movements that are very well known and they are Mu'tazilism, Ash'arism, Maturidism. These are the three kalam movements that are well known but these are not the only ones.
The Argument Structure
To simplify and this is of course the famous Kalam cosmological argument - there's a whole book written on this by William Lane Craig: "The Kalam cosmological argument for the proof of the existence of God" - to simplify, there are a number of premises of the Kalam cosmological argument for the proof of the existence of God:
The first premise: Accidents subside in bodies
This is all Al-Allaf and it was taken by all Kalam proofs including Ash'aris and Maturidis which to this day have exact same wordings as Al-Allaf portrayed them. What are accidents? What are bodies?
Bodies are that which exist by themselves such as a pen such as this table - the table exists by itself, the microphone exists by itself, the chair exists by itself. Accidents are that which do not exist by themselves - they need bodies to exist in such as motion. You cannot have motion by itself - it must exist in a body. Such as color - you cannot have black without it being on something. Such as temperature - you cannot have hot or cold except that there is a body that has this temperature associated with it.
So he divided the world into accidents and bodies and he said accidents subside in bodies.
The second premise: Accidents are created
All accidents are created. No accident is eternal. Motion is created, being at rest is created, color is created, temperature is created. This is pure Aristotelian thought found explicitly in Metaphysics book ten of Aristotle where Aristotle gives these examples of motion.
Putting the premises together:
If accidents are created and accidents are inherent to bodies - you cannot have a body without accidents. An object is either in motion or at rest - there is no in-between state. An object has a certain temperature, an object has a certain color, an object has certain properties. These properties must be characteristics of bodies - you cannot have a body without characteristics, without accidents.
The Irony of the Argument
Now of course this proof which was Aristotelian in origin ironically was meant to refute Aristotle himself and the philosophers because one of the fundamental points of the philosophers is matter is eternal - matter is not created, matter has always been there. And they wanted to refute this and ironically they took elements of Aristotelian cosmology and incorporated them into their theological school and then used it to refute Aristotle himself.
Impact on Kalam Movements
Core Beliefs Resulting from the Argument
This impacted the Kalam movements in a number of ways:
1. Knowledge of God is not inherent
It is not patently obvious that God exists - you need to prove that God exists. That's the whole point of the Kalam argument. You don't know God exists - how do you know? So this is a very philosophical premise in that you approach everything with a clean slate.
The belief that knowledge of God is not inherent, it is not patently obvious that God exists, you need to prove that God exists. And this is explicitly mentioned by Qadi Abdul Jabbar (القاضي عبد الجبار) in his famous book "أصول الخمسة" (The Five Principles) when he writes: "The very first obligation upon the rational individual is the intention to rationally contemplate the existence of God."
2. Sound belief requires rational proofs
A sound belief in God, an acceptable - a sound or acceptable iman (إيمان) - must be built upon rational proofs for the existence of God. In other words, in order to be a good Muslim according to the Mu'tazila and many Ash'aris and Maturidis, you need to prove God through this method, and if you don't do so your iman is problematic.
3. Status of the blind follower (المقلد)
What is the status of the faith or iman of a blind follower? In other words, suppose you believe in God because your father believes in God. Suppose you're a Muslim because your society is a Muslim. You never really thought: is Islam true or not? You never really compared it with Christianity and Paganism and Judaism and Hinduism and Shintoism. You just assume that Islam is valid because you were a blind follower. In Arabic, what is a blind follower? Muqallid (مقلّد).
The majority of the scholars of the Mu'tazila basically said such a person is not a Muslim, period. And Abu Hisham al-Jubba'i said: "Whoever does not know the existence of God through rational proofs is a kafir."
Al-Juwayni also says that if a person had enough time to think about the rational proofs for the existence of God but he didn't do so, then such a person is considered to be amongst the kuffar (لحق بالكفار) because he didn't rationally prove.
Al-Ghazali's Position and the Ghazalian Paradox
Al-Ghazali in his "المنقذ من الضلال" (The Deliverer from Error) presents what I call the Ghazalian paradox. He basically said: children who are born to Muslim parents are Muslim, and children who are born to Jewish parents are Jewish, and children who are born to Christian parents are Christian. And so I realize that I need to rediscover the truth of my religion. Just because I'm born a Muslim doesn't make me a Muslim. I needed to basically step outside the box and look at all of these religions neutrally and then logically, rationally decide that I should be a Muslim.
And Ghazali's paradox is actually quite profound. As a Muslim, somebody asks you: why do you believe Islam to be true when you haven't studied Christianity, you haven't studied Judaism, you haven't studied philosophy? You're just assuming Islam to be true. What gives you the right to assume that Islam is true? And you really don't have a good answer if you're coming from within this frame of mind from the very basics of Kalam.
Ibn Taymiyyah's Response
The Revolutionary Counter-Argument
Finally comes along the scholar who I will not hide I have great admiration for and his name is none other than Taqiyyuddin Ahmad ibn Abd al-Salam ibn Taymiyyah al-Harrani (تقي الدين أحمد بن عبد السلام ابن تيمية الحراني)
What Ibn Taymiyyah did is he took what I call Neo-Sunnism or orthodox or Ahl al-Hadith orthodoxy and he communicated it in a vernacular for the people and place of his times. No theologian that ascribed to simple Sunni Islam was able to communicate with the mutakallimun in a language that they deemed was acceptable before Ibn Taymiyyah.
Knowledge of God is Inherent: The Fitrah
Ibn Taymiyyah comes along and says: "Look at what you've done - belief that knowledge of God is not inherent - that's not true. It is inherent and that's clearly what the Quran tells us." The Quran tells us about the issue about the existence of human nature intuition which the Quran calls Fitrah (فطرة).
And he said: "God has already taught a knowledge of his existence in us - it's embodied in us." And he used the Quran and the Sunnah. In Surah Ar-Rum, if you have continued on to verse 30, it says:
That there is an intuition that God has placed in every single creation, and this intuition is further expounded in a tradition ascribed to the Prophet in Bukhari and Muslim in which it is said:
(Bukhari 1385, Muslim 2658)
"Every single child is born upon this fitrah, and then his parents make him into a Jew or a Christian or a Zoroastrian."
The Covenant (الميثاق)
Ibn Taymiyyah relates this to another concept also found in the Quran and Sunnah and that is the covenant or Mithaq (میثاق) which is mentioned in Surah Al-A'raf verse 172:
"Remember when your Lord took a covenant with the children of Adam - and the covenant was 'Am I not your Lord?' and they all said 'Yes, you are.'"
So Ibn Taymiyyah says the existence of God is ingrained in every human being - it is intuitive, it doesn't need to be proven.
Solving the Ghazalian Paradox
How Ibn Taymiyyah solved the Ghazalian paradox: he basically said we have an inner compass that allows us the luxury of saying "I don't have to step outside of my faith, check my faith, and then step back in." And he quotes the paradox that arises when you believe in this and he says he basically calls Ghazali out and he says: "The net result of believing in this paradox - you have to become a kafir before you become a Muslim. You're a Muslim, you're born a Muslim, you're raised a Muslim, you have to become a kafir, step outside and then become a Muslim."
And he said: "What type of religion is this that requires you to disbelieve in it and believe in it? Where did the Prophet ever ask the companions to do so? Where does the Quran ask you to do so?"
The Problems with the Kalam Cosmological Argument
Ibn Taymiyyah's main problem with this proof was not the fact that it was invented in the third century, that it was Aristotelian, that it was very difficult to understand, that its conclusion was common sense - everybody knows bodies are created. These were all his problems, but he had one major problem which he kept on insisting was the biggest problem of this time, and that is: the reality of believing in the
kalam cosmological argument - what are the ramifications when you believe in the kalam cosmological argument?
His main problem with this proof was: when you believe in this proof, you cannot ascribe something you have called an accident to God. Why? Because if you, in your definition, say that for example motion is an example of an accident - and this goes back directly to Metaphysics book 10 - Aristotle himself, the best example that he had for an accident is motion and stationary, something that is moving versus something that is stationary.
Now if you say that God moves, what is motion? Motion is an accident. Accidents must subside in what? Bodies. And bodies are created. God can never move according to all the scholars of kalam, because if God moved, what would happen? The very premise upon which kalam is built would be destroyed.
So if you believe in this proof, what that does is you must take this proof as dictating your understanding of God. God cannot move, cannot rise over the throne, cannot come down in the lapse of the night as the Quran and Sunnah allegedly says. God cannot have accidents, and if an accident is direction, because direction is an accident, only a body can have direction, so God cannot have a direction.
The main problem that Ibn Taymiyyah had with this proof was: the primary problem that Ibn Taymiyyah had - this proof was the cornerstone that led the groups of kalam, according to Ibn Taymiyyah's perspective, to deny or misinterpret the attributes of God.
The Quranic Approach vs. Kalam
The Fitrah-Based Approach
Ibn Taymiyyah says the existence of God is ingrained in every human being - it is intuitive, it doesn't need to be proven. Then he challenged this point as well and he said: "This basically means that the majority of Muslims are not Muslims because you are saying that a person who doesn't have rational proof for the existence of God doesn't have sound faith, and we know that Abu Bakr and Umar and the famous scholars - we know that all of these people did not rationally prove God. They simply accepted - they were in that sense muqallid. They didn't go and do comparative religious studies - they accepted the faith as is."
The Quranic Methodology
For the ahlul hadith in general, there is really no need to engage with atheists more than the very basic level. Because God is known intuitively. Allah is known intuitively. And so anybody who denies it is denying something whose evidence is more clear, as Ibn Taymiyyah used to say, than the existence of the sun in the middle of the day.
As Ibn al-Qayyim, the student of Ibn Taymiyyah, used to say: "How can you find evidence for something when everything around you screams as evidence? How can you try to look for some evidence for the existence of God when everything around you screams that he exists?"
So generally speaking, and this is the Quranic methodology as well, you don't really take on the arguments of atheists. Because traditionally, ahl al-hadith has always trivialized atheistic arguments. Because they are not solid.
The Quranic Challenge
Nothing happens without a cause. Ibn Taymiyyah says, your conclusion is self-evident anyway. Everybody, even the peasant, knows that bodies are created. And through all of this jumping through intellectual hoops, you get to the most obvious conclusion, that things are created. Everybody knows things are created. Because things don't happen by themselves.
Life doesn't come out of nothing. And the Quran, of course, challenges early pagans by asking a simple rhetorical question:
"Did they create themselves, or did they come out of nothing?"
And Allah does not answer the questions because the questions are self-evident.
Faith and Reason in Islam
The Balanced Approach
I have a lecture online called "Intelligent Faith: The Role of Reason in Islam." But I'll tell you now, as a practicing Muslim, the Quran asks you to use your intellect if you don't know the truth of Islam. So Allah says, look at the heavens and earth - they must be a creator. Allah says, look at the prophet - this person is not a liar, he's not a magician, he's a truthful man.
Allah challenges non-Muslims to use their brain, use their logic, use their rationality to look at the simple theology of Islam, look at the prophet, look at the Quran, and come to the logical, rational conclusion: this is the true religion.
For Believers vs. Non-Believers
But there is not a single verse in the Quran that praises Muslims for questioning their own faith. Rather, the very first verse in the Quran:
Conclusion
In conclusion, Ibn Taymiyyah's critique of the kalam cosmological argument and his emphasis on the fitrah represents a fundamental shift in Islamic theological discourse. Rather than requiring complex rational proofs for God's existence, he argued that such knowledge is inherent in human nature and confirmed through revelation.
This approach resolves many of the philosophical paradoxes created by kalam theology while maintaining the intellectual integrity of Islamic belief. The balance between reason and revelation, between inquiry for non-believers and trust for believers, represents a sophisticated understanding of how different people come to faith and how faith should be maintained.
The debate between these approaches continues to this day and represents one of the most significant theological discussions in Islamic intellectual history.
"[May Allah reward you [with] goodness, and peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon you]"