There is no god but Allah, and He can prove it! Part III

Does Allah SWT Exist?

What is it to exist?  The Arabic word, “Kawn” implies being created.  If existence depends on being within Creation, then certainly, Allah cannot be said to “exist.” 

When we say, “Allah exists,” what kind of statement are we making?  As we have mentioned, there are two forms of perception, tasawir/conceptions and tasdiq/assertions.  Tasawir are either possible or impossible.  Assertions are of two kinds as well, factual and analytical.  Although the logical positivist philosophers contend that factual statements can be verified, and hence rendered conclusively established by experience, others such as Alfred Ayer, the English logical empiricist, held that verifiability means only that a statement is rendered more probable by experience.  This is true because factual assertions are verified through induction and as we have seen in Part I, induction only renders statements probable, not necessarily actual.  “Induction is a probable inference.”  (Our Philosophy, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Trans. Shams Inati, p. 76, footnote 22).  Such probable statements have potential.  In our swan example, swans have a strong potential to be white based on the probability statistics generated by our experiential observations and use of inductive logic.

Analytic statements, on the other hand, are verified through deductive logic, and hence are proven to be either true or false.  If they are proven true, then they are necessarily actual, and if they are proven false, then they have no actuality. 

So, when we say, “Allah exists,” we are making a factual statement, subject to induction.  Unlike swans, though, there is only one Allah, so how do we make the multiple observations necessary to generate an inductive proof?  Moreover, such a proof would only generate potential, not actuality.  If Allah exists, then surely His existence must be necessary. “Allahu as-Samad.”  “Allah is the self-sufficient upon which all depends.” (Surah al-Ikhlas).  The very definition of Allah as the Being that is most primary, the First Principle, the Unmoved Mover, the Source of All, means that if anything exists, then He must.  So again, this Ontological Proof is circular.  If the definition of the tasawir, Allah, includes His existence, then of course, He must exist. 

So can we prove the existence of Allah?  Allah Himself does not attempt to do so.  First, He makes it clear that Allah – the One most Worthy of Worship – is a tasawir, and tasawir are either possible or impossible.  So is Allah a possible being?  We have explored the idea of infinity and found that infinity is impossible, but Allah is not impossible.  He is Witr – Singular – and Samad – the self-sufficient upon which all depends.  Certainly, Allah as a tasawir, as the first tasawir, the primary tasawir upon which all else is based and upon which all else depends, which is singular, without beginning nor end, which is of no duration or extent; is possible. 

Then the next question is not “Does God exist?” but “Is Allah actual?” 

Allah SWT Himself answers this in the Qur’an through inductive means. 

1 By the sun and his brightness,

2 And the moon when she followeth him,

3 And the day when it revealeth him,

4 And the night when it enshroudeth him,

5 And the heaven and Him Who built it,

6 And the earth and Him Who spread it,

7 And a soul and Him Who perfected it

8 And inspired it (with conscience of) what is wrong for it and (what is) right for it. (Surah Al-Shams)

Here Allah SWT swears by the things He has created that He is actual.  Because there is a sun, moon, day, night, heaven and earth, and soul, then there must exist the One who Created them.  Over and over in the Qur’an, Allah used such inductive proofs for His actuality.

1 The Beneficent

2 Hath made known the Qur'an.

3 He hath created man.

4 He hath taught him utterance.

5 The sun and the moon are made punctual.

6 The stars and the trees adore.

7 And the sky He hath uplifted; and He hath set the measure,

8 That ye exceed not the measure,

9 But observe the measure strictly, nor fall short thereof.

10 And the earth hath He appointed for (His) creatures,

11 Wherein are fruit and sheathed palm-trees,

12 Husked grain and scented herb.

13 Which is it, of the favours of your Lord, that ye deny ?  (Surah Al-Rahman)

Here again, Allah recounts all of His favours.  Which of them can we deny?  All of them are inductive evidence of His actuality.

However, as we have noted, induction only produces probability, degree of potentiality.  If Allah is actual, He must be fully actual, the most actual, with no degree of potential.  He must be completely actual.  For this, we must turn to deduction.  Only a deductive proof can bring us such a degree of necessary actuality.

Is Allah SWT Actual?

And for this, we turn to our great teacher, Shaheed Sayyed Muhammad Baqir Al Sadr.  Hidden in his book refuting dialectic materialism and socialism, is a gem.  Embedded in his discussion of Matter and God, he states a proof for the necessity of the actuality of God.  Without rehashing his entire work at this time, we start with the conclusions of modern physics regarding the substance of the universe.  Scientists agree that the original matter of the world is one substance.  All qualities of this matter (including extension and duration) are accidental to this primary matter.  For example, fluidity, vaporousness, solidity, are qualities that can be removed from the underlying substance.  If they can be removed, then they are not essential.

We also hold that matter is divisible into elements – the periodic table.  And that matter is made up of particles such as atoms.  However, even these qualities are not essential.  For example, light behaves as both a particle and as a wave.  Even the attribute of physicality is not essential. 

This last point is very important.  Unlike Descartes, who held that there are two substances, physical and mental, Materialists who hold that there is only physical substance, and Idealists, like Berkeley, who hold there is only mental substance, Baqir al Sadr held that there is only one substance and that physicality and mentality are merely attributes of one substance.  The mental or non-physical is merely a higher quality, not a distinctly different quality.  So Baqir al Sadr is not a minimal attribute dualist or dual-aspect theorist.  He says there is only one substance, and physical and mental are merely different attributes among many attributes. 

In answer to materialism, Shaheed al Sadr then states that singular matter could not be the source of multiple attributes.  In fact, materiality itself is an accident, so how could it produce other attributes?  The substance of the universe is merely clay.  Something else has to give it attributes and qualities. Something else has to mold it.

“Empirical and scientific experiments have shown that all the qualities, developments and varieties of primary matter are not essential; rather, they are accidental.”  (Our Philosophy, p. 246).  “Similarly, the variation and difference in the qualities of the common matter also reveal a cause beyond matter.  The result of this is that the efficient cause of world is other than the material cause of the world.  In other words, the cause of the world is different from its raw matter that all things share.”  (Id). 

Here, Shaheed al-Sadr has shown that the essential cause of the world must be of necessity actual.  Because we observe qualities, and we observe physical matter, and even physicality is an accident, then whatever is the essential cause must be actual, and it must be actual of necessity.  And the cause of these attributes must be something other than this one substance of the universe.  And the only thing that this could be is Allah, SWT.

There is no god but Allah, and He can prove it! Part II

Does God Exist?

What is it to exist?  How have we defined this concept over time?  Is existence to be present in Creation?  If so, then God, Allah, does not exist.  Even though Christian philosophers have seemed to place God in creation, having done so, their proofs of the existence of God seem to go around in circles. Leaving aside arguments based on design and the ordering of the universe, and arguments based on morality, for the time being we will focus on the two primary arguments of philosophy, the ontological argument and the cosmological argument.

Starting with Saint Anselm, many have tried to prove the existence of God using ontological arguments.  Ontological arguments, such as the one devised by Rene Descartes, posit that once we understand the concept (tasawir) of God, then we must admit that it is impossible for Him not to exist.  If God is defined as Omnipotent, Omnipresent, the First Cause of all Things, then He must exist.  It is not possible that God not exist.  However, this argument is circular.  Certainly, a thing that is so defined as so necessarily existing, could not be proven to be anything else but, necessarily existing.

Rene Descartes also used himself as proof of God’s existence. How arrogant really.  “Cogito Ergo Sum.”  “I think, therefore I am.”  He felt that we cannot deny our own existence.  And we cannot deny that we think.  And we can think of a being that is infinite as to extent and duration, and that this is God.  And we could not have come up with this idea ourselves, since we are finite as to extent and duration.  And a thing cannot create something greater than itself.  So there must be a God that caused me to have such a concept in my mind.

Others have put forth what has been referred to as the Cosmological Argument.  Here, we acknowledge that the universe exists and that it could not have come from nothing.  Therefore, there must be something outside of Creation that created it, and that this Creator transcends time and space – ie Allah SWT. This is closer to the Islamic argument, and many Muslims have held such an idea.  In fact, science would seem to prove something of this sort.  One scientist actually stated that if there was a God, then the universe would have come into existence in one instant.  When the Big Bang Theory was first posited in my youth, it was extremely controversial and many scientists refused to even think about it.  Now it is accepted widely, and is posited by evolutionists as well.  They seem to have forgotten it actually proves the existence of Allah SWT.  (More on this later, inshaa llah).

Finity and Infinity

These arguments depend on something being greater than finity – what we call infinity. But is infinity possible - nothing within creation or nature is infinite.  The universe had a beginning, so it cannot be infinite as to duration. But what about extension.  Nothing can be infinitely big or small within Creation.  Something infinitely big would take up all the space in the Universe.  However, not even the Universe is infinite – according to science, the Universe is expanding.  What is it expanding into?  How can it expand?  If it has limits, be it expanding ones, then it still has limits and is not infinite.  And whatever vacuum it is expanding into is also not infinite, since there is a place that is not a vacuum. 
What about Allah?  Is He infinite?  He is not finite. He has no beginning or end.  Allah has also described Himself as a singularity – witr.  To be infinite would imply that Allah SWT is infinite as to extension and duration.  But Allah SWT has said that He is Time (Asr).  As noted before in Part I, Asr also means middle, as in Asr Prayer – the Middle Prayer. Allah SWT created Creation; He is absolutely distinct from it.

Qul Huwa Allah Ahad

Allahu As-samad

Lam yulid wa lam yulad

Wa lam yakun llahu kufuwan ahad

Say He Allah is One, Allah is the Self-sufficient upon which all depends.

He begets not nor is He begotten, and there is nothing like unto Him

So Allah SWT informs us in Surah Al-Ikhlas that He is self-sufficient and everything depends on Him.  In Greek thought, Creation, by definition, is dependent.  Anything which is dependent is created, and the only thing that is self-sufficient, God, is the only Creator.  The Greek concept of creation is different from the Arabic concept of “kawn.”  “Kawn” is Creation, so anything that existed before the creation of the universe is not created, although it may be dependent upon the Creator for its existence.  For example, the Lawh al-Mawfuz, the “Tablet” upon which Allah inscribed His Blueprint for the Universe, existed before the creation of the Universe.   It is dependent upon Allah for existence, so in Greek, it is created; but in Arabic, it is not part of the Kawn.

Allah begets not – He has not children.  And He is not begotten.  He is not the son or daughter of anyone.  He is singular.  There is nothing like Him.  He is absolutely unique. 

Creation has duration and extent, time and space.  What about Allah SWT?  When Allah SWT described Himself, He said that He is “Asr.”  As I have noted, this means middle – no beginning or end.  Others have said that it means that He is Time itself.  Creation has finite duration, so something must have existed prior to it.  Hence, Allah SWT who created it, must have existed prior to Creation, and so must have at least greater duration than the Creation.  And if Allah SWT was not begotten, and had no beginning, then He must be infinite as to duration.  However, Allah created both space and time.  The Creation includes both extension and duration – space and time.  How would something within time and space have created them?  If Allah SWT was subject to space and time or had extension or duration, then He could not have created them, and there would have to be something greater than Himself to have created Him.  But, as we noted, He is not begotten and has no beginning, nor end.  

Creation is finite as to duration and extent.  And Allah is singular, having no duration or extent.  He is not infinite.  And nothing in the Universe is infinite.  There is no such thing as infinity.  Infinity is impossible.

Zeno’s Paradoxes and the Proof of the Impossibility of Infinity

As we have discussed, concepts are either possible or impossible.  Cats are possible and unicorns are possible.  Round squares are impossible by their very definition.  For most of the history of human thought, infinity was deemed possible.  Even mathematics has posited infinite number.  As we have noted, people can imagine impossible things.  We have used a symbol to indicate infinity in mathematics, but even though we can image it, is it possible.  

In the case of round squares, the definition renders the tasawir/concept impossible.  It is logically impossible.  Despite thousands of years of belief in infinity, it is actually logically impossible as well.  The proof of this comes from an early source, Zeno.  Zeno (not the Stoic philosopher) discovered four paradoxes involving motion.  

The four most famous paradoxes are the Dichotomy, the Achilles, the Arrow, and the Stadium.

1. The Dichotomy: Motion cannot exist because before that which is in motion can reach its destination, it must reach the midpoint of its course, but before it can reach the middle, it must reach the quarterpoint, but before it reaches the quarterpoint, it first must reach the eigthpoint, etc. Hence, motion can never start.
2. The Achilles: The running Achilles can never catch a crawling tortoise ahead of him because he must first reach where the tortoise started. However, when he reaches there, the tortoise has moved ahead, and Achilles must now run to the new position, which by the time he reaches the tortoise has moved ahead, etc. Hence the tortoise will always be ahead.
3. The Arrow: Time is made up of instants, which are the smallest measure and indivisible. An arrow is either in motion or at rest. An arrow cannot move, because for motion to occur, the arrow would have to be in one position at the start of an instant and at another at the end of the instant. However, this means that the instant is divisible which is impossible because by definition, instants are indivisible. Hence, the arrow is always at rest.
4. The Stadium: Half the time is equal to twice the time. Take three rows. They start at the first position. Row A stays stationary while rows B & C move at equal speeds in opposite directions. When they have reached the second position, each B has passed twice as many C's as A's. Thus it takes row B twice as long to pass row A as it does to pass row C. However, the time for rows B & C to reach the position of row A is the same. So half the time is equal to twice the time.

For ages, no one could solve these paradoxes, until modern mathematics. “To the Greek mathematicians, who had no real concept of convergence or infinity, these reasonings were incomprehensible. Aristotle discarded them as "fallacies" without really showing why and Zeno's paradoxes were hidden away in the mathematical closet for the next 2500 years. For that time, they were reduced mainly as novelties of philosophy. However, they were revived mathematically in the twentieth century by the efforts of people like Bertrand Russell and Lewis Carroll. Today, armed with the tools of converging series and Cantor's theories on infinite sets, these paradoxes can be explained to some satisfaction. However, even today the debate continues on the validity of both the paradoxes and the rationalizations.”  (Interactive Real Analysis, 9.12 Zeno of Elea (495?-435? BC, http://www.mathcs.org/analysis/reals/history/zeno.html).

As noted by the authors of the Interactive Real Analysis website, only concepts of convergence and infinity provide reasonable explanations for these paradoxes.  However, I would propose another possibility, that these paradoxes prove that infinity is impossible.  Because things do move and Achilles does run faster than a tortoise, then infinite duration and extension are not possible.

 So, what are we saying?  Can Allah’s existence be proven?  Certainly the Ontological Argument is circular, and the Cosmological Argument also has problems.  But we said that Allah SWT has proved His own actuality.  So inshaa llah, if Allah SWT gives us life, we will explore this proof, and the ayaat ullah in the Universe.

Hiraba is Haram!!!

Allah has Forbidden Murder

al-Baqara 2:32.  On that account: We ordained
For the Children of Israel
That if any one slew
A person—unless it be
For murder or for spreading
Mischief in the land—
It would be as if
He slew the whole people:
And if any one saved a life,
It would be as if he saved
The life of the whole people.
Then although there came
To them Our Apostles
With Clear Signs, yet,
Even after that, many
Of them continued to commit
Excesses in the land.

Allah SWT has forbidden killing and declared acts of terrorism to be hiraba, a grave Hadd sin, punishable by very  severe penalties, including death and crucifixion.  Acts, such as those of the two youth in Boston, Massachusetts, are heinous, and as Muslims, we should condemn them.  These acts are against our religion, and are grave sins before Allah SWT.  Such perpetrators are not to be considered other than enemies of Islam, because their acts only bring harm to others and hurt us as Muslims.  

There is no question that Allah SWT considers war to be a sin.  Muslims are only permitted to use deadly force to defend the religion, - not countries or lands.  Allah says, " Was not the earth wide enough for you?"  If some one attacks you, then leave. Land belongs to Allah, not people. But if the attackers pursue you even after that, then they are attacking you for your beliefs, and we as Muslims are permitted to fight back.  

We must understand that the permission of Allah SWT to defend your personal private property does not extend to nations or states.  As I said, Allah says, "Was not the earth wide enough for you?"  Force should only be used to defend personal property, and to defend the community from religious persecution.  And then we should only use the same degree of force as used against us. 

Finally, as Muslims, we should use only the most effective means to achieve our goals.  If force is not working, then we must use more effective means.  Today, force is not working.  It only brings ridicule on Allah SWT and His religion, and harm to fellow Muslims.  When the Prophet SAW wanted to go on the offensive against the Quraish, he marched on Hudaibiyyah.  The agreement reached at Hudaibiyyah gave the Muslims the freedom to preach and when finally, the Quraish broke the treaty, the Prophet defended his allies with 10,000 souls.  We must abandon ineffective means, and use only those that work!  

One has to wonder about those who are brainwashing our youth.  Their efforts are only leading to the death of our youth or their internment for life in prison.  Who is benefiting from this?  Not Muslims!  Consider who is benefiting, - only our enemies.  So who is most likely behind these extremist views?  With today's media and internet, it is difficult to tell the source.  I would ask our youth to be careful and carefully consider the opinion they hear.  Agent provocaturs are everywhere, and they are very versed in how to distort Islam.  Some of them come from Muslim lands. 

I recently acted as an expert in a court case here in the US.  An Egyptian was recruited by FBI to act as a confidential informant.  He entrapped a young man who was a convert to Islam.  He told him Islam demands violence and that hijrah was fard, and that he had to go overseas and not tell friends or family.  I advise our youth to be careful.  There are agents of the enemies of Islam in our midst preaching violence and trying to destroy our religion.  

While it is true that Allah SWT repels one group with another, and that if He did not, then the world would be overrun by dhulm and injustice, it is also true that how we strive against oppression must be in the best and most effective manner.  Jihad is striving in the path of Allah, not in the path of Shaytan.  Audhu bi llahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajim.

May Allah SWT protect and guide us all.