An uncertain certainty: a philosophical investigation into contemporary Muslim epistemology

© 2012 Dr. Richard John ShumackMuslim and Western scholarship has suggested the possibility of some sort of epistemological crisis in contemporary Muslim philosophy. In this thesis I argue that there is indeed such a crisis. It is exhibited in a failure of contemporary Muslim philosophers’ arguments supporting their views to which core Muslim beliefs can be held with epistemic certainty, and the extent to which even Muslims might hold reasonable doubts about their beliefs. In support of my main conclusions, I argue that traditional Muslim accounts of epistemic certainty fail, and that the most religious believers can hope for is some future way of establishing that their beliefs are beyond reasonable doubt. I identify epistemic desiderata that need to be considered in any such Muslim project. I further argue that scholarship recognizes two main extant Muslim epistemological approaches: an Islamizing approach that, roughly speaking, rejects Western epistemology as mired in some form of skepticism and argues that Muslim belief can secure certainty via some distinctly Muslim epistemology defined by the Qur’an; and a “humanizing” approach that, roughly speaking, recognizes that epistemic certainty corresponds to the degree to which beliefs can be supported by philosophical argument. I show that there is an almost universal acknowledgement among scholars that both these schools of contemporary Muslim epistemology have largely failed to develop strong arguments. I build a supporting case that this assessment is correct through case studies into the thought of two representative Muslim epistemologists: the Islamizing approach of S.M.N. al-Attas and the humanizing approach of Shabbir Akhtar. Both these philosophers agree that there is some sort of Muslim epistemological crisis, both seek to address this crisis through positing an epistemology that is supposedly capable of securing certainty for Muslim belief, but neither epistemology is able to provide strong support for their approaches. Both accounts display, variously and to differing degrees, a lack of weighty philosophical argument, inadequate engagement with contemporary epistemological scholarship, and a failure to consider a wide enough range of epistemic desiderata. The weakness displayed reveals contemporary Muslim epistemology to be in a parlous state with respect to establishing meaningful epistemic certainty concerning key Muslim beliefs for the purposes of religious epistemological debate. I conclude with the suggestion that if Muslim epistemologists wish to participate in such debate – and I make no claim that they should – they might profit from engagement with emerging, and more permissive, religious epistemological approaches