Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

10 The existence of God
ayman shihadeh
whence the need for proof?
The problem of whether or not belief in God should be founded in
reason has a complex history in Islam. Both kalam exponents and
philosophers showed a keen interest in advancing arguments for the
existence of God, which was born of diverse motives, chiefly the need to
establish this most crucial doctrine within their broader metaphysical
systems, to respond to physicalist atheism, and to support and enrich the
belief and piety of believers. Yet the epistemological view that rational
proof is needed to recognise the existence of God was not held universally:
while some propounded discursive reasoning, others advocated
fundamentally non-rational ‘‘methods’’ (sing. t _
arıqa)tothisend,suchas
spiritual discipline, said to provide direct, experiential knowledge of
God. Some, moreover, maintained that only one correct method should
be followed exclusively, whereas others allowed for a hierarchy of different
methods. Related to this was the question of whether lay people
must follow essentially the same route as theologians, or whether, if
they are incapable of doing so, they may adhere to simple, uncritical
belief instead. Let us first briefly consider some historical solutions to
this complex of questions.
Most early mutakallimun typically maintain that rational reflection
(naz _
ar) is the only method that provides knowledge of God, to the
exclusion of all other, fideist or fallacious, methods and stances. It follows
that everyone, theologians and lay believers alike, ought to learn,
not only the main creeds, but more primarily their key theological
proofs. 1 Abu Hashim al-Jubba’ı (d.933), a prominent early Mu‘tazilite,
went so far as to argue that the primary duty of each person is to rid
oneself of traditional, uncritical belief by doubting God’s existence,
before attempting to prove it.
Most traditionalist theologians took the contrary view, holding
that having a rationally unjustified belief in God, which accords with
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