Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture

by Farhan Mujahid Chak

  loose two forces: creativity and chaos. Free from the shackles of blind faith,

  leaving nothing as sacred, and challenging all established meaning in society,

  caused creativity to flourish. Yet, by desacralizing establishing meaning, chaos

  ensued. That disappearance of meaning, then, implanted a ‘doubt’ in all that

  was and how it was understood. Taylor mentions that ‘once society no longer

  has a sacred structure, once social arrangements and modes of action are not

  longer grounded in the order of things or Will of God, they are in a sense up for

  grabs’. 18 Yet, interestingly enough, that loss of meaning had the unintended consequence of searching for ‘True’ knowledge. That, specifically, led to the

  development of the modern occidental field of epistemology. Of course, how

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  could it not? If neither religious text, nor the guardians of it, controlled

  understanding, then the field was open to new interpretations.

  At that moment, occidental epistemology began to deal with such questions

  as ‘What can I know?’ and ‘How can I distinguish between those things that

  I am justified in believing over those things that I am not justified in believing? ’19

  Accordingly, two dominant and diverging paths in occidental epistemology

  began which persist to the present-day: ‘we might be able to know the truth’ –

  plausibility – or ‘we are unable to know anything’ – denial. The ‘plausibility’

  of knowing assesses the way we understand knowledge, its source, its acquisition,

  and how we make valid knowledge claims. The ‘denial’ of knowing, or

  The theory of knowledge and Qur’anic epistemology 39

  skepticism, insists that sustained reflection about knowledge will eventually

  generate a skeptical attitude toward any claims of certainty, that there are ‘no

  absolutes’, and that ‘all knowledge is relative’. Interestingly, both trends in

  contemporary occidental epistemology set the tone for learning in Western

  civilization: the repugnance of certainty.

  Plausibility

  From one standpoint, modern occidental epistemology follows a logic that we

  describe as the ‘plausibility’ of knowing. Because epistemology studies

  ‘knowing’, it struggles to comprehend the criteria for distinguishing between

  ‘true’ or ‘adequate’ knowing and ‘false’ or ‘inadequate’ knowing. That, then,

  leads to assessing what methods of justification best achieve the objective of

  knowing something to be true.20 Now, as ever, epistemologists continue to devise increasingly complicated formulas to understand claims of knowledge.

  For instance, Audi uses the terms ‘intrinsic’ – its value in and of itself – and

  ‘instrumental’ – concerning its value through what it leads to – when

  contemplating the problematic associated with understanding occidental

  epistemology. 21 Alston, on the other hand, uses the terms ‘internal’ and

  ‘external’ methods of justification of belief.22 Yet, regardless of those differences, it still remains only ‘plausible’ to convincingly know. In other words, we

  might be able to know the ‘truth’, but we’re not sure how, or, even if, it exists

  at all. The differences among epistemologists, here, exist only in assessing

  the value of one model over another; that is, in methods of justification. 23

  Simply put, different formulas for ‘justification’ include the methodology

  used to understand what is considered truer and may adequately be labeled as

  ‘knowledge’. Audi’s methodology for acquiring knowledge employs the following

  six basic premises: ‘perceptual, memorial, introspection, a priori, inductive,

  and testimony-based’ – and much of occidental epistemology deals with the

  reliability of knowledge from these sources. 24 For instance, a belief that the mug is coarse is perceptual, arising as it does from touch – tactile perception.

  My belief that I walked through the streets of Seville on a sunny afternoon is

  memorial, since it is stored in my memory. My belief that I am imagining a

  rose garden is called introspection because it arises from ‘looking within’ – the

  etymological meaning of introspection. Consider my belief that if a tiger is

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  larger than a jaguar, and a jaguar is larger than a snow leopard, then a tiger is

  larger than a snow leopard. A belief like this is called a priori – roughly based

  on what is prior to observational experience. It arises through ‘reason’ based

  on an understanding of the physical world, and is thereby dependent on the

  three basic sources. Collectively, Audi considers these four epistemic sources

  that lead to a fifth and sixth – induction and testimony. My belief that a flower

  will not grow well without water for its roots is called induction because it is

  formed on the basis of generalization from similar experiences with flowers.

  Lastly, testimony-based knowledge arises when I form a belief on the basis of

  being given information by someone or something I trust that must have

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  Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture

  relied on one of the previous basic sources. Taken together, these six methods

  of acquiring knowledge explain ‘how we know’ and ‘how we distinguish

  between true and false knowledge’. The trouble is, skeptics argue, that fallible

  humans use them. Therefore, human fallibility is the fiercest argument that

  skeptics put forward to deny the existence of true knowledge.25 For instance, a cup may be coarse to the touch, and we may then establish a belief that the

  mug is, indeed, coarse. However, some defect on the tips of our fingers may

  falsely give us the sensation of coarseness, when in reality the mug is smooth.

  Just like that, skeptics put forward countless hypothetical arguments to dispute

  that ‘knowing’ is at all possible.

  Even though, epistemologists persist undeterred. While acknowledging

  their fallibility, they still seek ‘true’ knowledge without committing on whether it is possible. They do so because only human beings are capable of the ‘kinds

  of cognition required to build an airplane … to write Hamlet or compose a

  symphony … how is it that we are able to engage in such sophisticated

  thought and arrive at the capacious knowledge that we use to direct both our

  everyday activities and our momentous achievements like flying to the

  moon?’26 This perplexing paradox, along with a non-committal stance on whether knowledge is possible, leads to the attainment of knowledge being

  ‘plausible’ at best.

  Aside from that, another noteworthy feature of occidental epistemology,

  highlighting the ‘plausibility’ of knowing, is the ‘Gettier’ problem: a formula

  that assesses criteria for justification of belief. Gettier states the following

  formula for the justification of belief: ‘S knows P – if and only if: (i) P is true, (ii) S believes P, and (iii) S is justified in believing P’.27 Chisholm slightly varies this by proposing the following formula as providing the necessary and

  sufficient conditions for knowledge: ‘S knows P – if and only if: (i) S accepts P,

  (ii) S has adequate evidence for P, and (iii) P is true’.28 Ayer, too, suggests a formula for the sufficient conditions for knowledge as: ‘S knows P – if and on
ly

  if: (i) P is true, (ii) S is sure that P is true, and (iii) S has the right to be sure that P

  is true’. 29 Subtle differences aside, the above epistemologists are comparably suggesting that their formulas offer, at best, the ‘plausibility’ of knowing since

  human fallibility precludes any surety. Now, this is the most bewildering of

  epistemic circles that, as often as we seek the ‘truth’ and methods of justifi-

  cation, human fallibility, as skeptics point out, prohibits us. In this respect, it

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  is difficult to find fault with the skeptics, particularly when ‘S’ – that is, the

  human being, is the epicentre of their respective formulas. To be fair, it is

  possible to be justified in believing in something that is, in fact, false.

  Denial

  That epistemic conundrum brings us to an alternative viewpoint on the

  modern occidental theory of knowledge – namely, on whether knowledge is

  possible at all. Actually, skeptics doubt whether it is even possible for us to

  find out if there is anything we can know. By proposing this, ‘skeptics’

  The theory of knowledge and Qur’anic epistemology 41

  discredit any attempt to establish the justification of belief by arguing that

  ‘there are good reasons, after all, for supposing that we cannot know the

  kinds of things that most people think they can know’. 30 Supporting their claim, skeptics provide an impressive amount of information on human fallibility

  and, thereby, delegitimize any pursuit of ‘true’, non-relativist knowledge.

  For instance, consider remembering a beautiful meadow, overlooked by the

  majestic Karakoram mountain range, then speculating that it may be nothing

  more than a hallucination. The methods of justification, in this instance mem-

  orial, include the potential for ‘pervasive error’, which lies at the root of

  skeptical argument.31 As a matter of fact, that skeptical challenge can be

  ‘directed against all our beliefs about the external world, all our memory

  beliefs, all our beliefs about the future; indeed, all our beliefs about any subject provided they depend on our memory for their justification or for their status

  as knowledge’.32 The rejection of memory-based justification is plausible since memory is at least as fallible as vision. If any of the senses can deceive

  through hallucination, then beliefs grounded in the senses may, also, be justi-

  fiably undermined. Hence skeptics claim that the possibility of hallucination

  prevents the observation of physical objects from being justified and precludes

  ‘things seen’ from constituting knowledge.

  Concerning ‘pervasive error’, skeptics insist that while you may perceive rain

  as falling from the sky, there are alternative explanations of how a person’s

  sensory faculties may, wrongly, believe this. For instance, Descartes’ reasoning

  that ‘some malicious demon of utmost power and cunning has employed all his

  energies in order to deceive me’ is theoretically plausible and no contradiction

  is involved in assuming all our present experiences are caused by evil spirits. 33

  Similarly, Putnam imagines that an evil scientist has subjected a human being

  to an operation. ‘The person’s brain has been removed from the body and

  placed in a vat of nutrients, which keeps the brain alive. The nerve endings

  have been connected to a super scientific computer which causes the person,

  whose brain it is, to have the illusion, that everything is perfectly normal.

  There seems to be people, objects, the sky, etc … but really all the person is

  experiencing is the result of electronic impulses from the computer to nerve

  endings’.34 Both scenarios insinuate that it is logically possible to exist in this predicament and, since it cannot be disproven, we are not justified in believing

  otherwise. Note, skeptics are not saying we are living in a vat of nutrients, or

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  even that we are justified in believing so. They are saying that we are not

  justified in believing otherwise. The skeptical position states: ‘you cannot rule

  out the possibility that you are a brain in a vat, and without being able to rule

  out that possibility, knowledge of the material world is impossible’.35

  In total, skeptical arguments follow that every piece of empirical evidence

  you might rely on to prove that you really are here, could be used to prove

  that you are not. From a skeptic’s point of view, it is not reasonable for me to

  have the beliefs that I do about things around me; hence, knowledge is

  impossible. That, then, led to Hume maintaining that persistent contemplation

  on knowledge will, eventually, challenge our claims to certainty.36 Kant, too,

  42

  Islam and Pakistan’s Political Culture

  proclaims that it ‘remains a scandal to philosophy … that the existence of

  things outside of us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that, if anyone

  thinks good to doubt their own existence, we are unable to counter his doubts

  by any satisfactory proof ’. 37 The skeptics’ position leads to reductio ad absurdum; that is, if we act upon our belief that there are familiar physical

  things around us, we will find we do not have any justified beliefs.

  Moreover, skeptics show that we cannot have the kinds of knowledge that

  many of us claim to have. And if skeptics challenge our most basic kinds of

  knowledge, then they easily undermine the sophisticated knowledge distinctive

  of human beings. Such problems have played a central role in occidental

  epistemology. But more recent occidental epistemological trends take a different

  attitude toward skepticism. Rather than responding to human fallibility, episte-

  mologists struggle to promote better levels of understanding the ‘justification

  for belief ’. It is plausible to be able to answer the skeptic by showing that

  those beliefs can be securely defended by appeal to other beliefs not among those

  deemed problematic. But skeptics maintain a monopoly on the construction of

  the argument – they set the intellectual boundaries from which to react.

  ‘Every argument must proceed from some premise, and if the skeptic calls all

  relevant premises into doubt at the same time, then there is no way to reason

  with him. The whole enterprise of refuting the skeptic is ill founded because

  he will not allow us anything with which to work’. 38 Keeping in mind the restrictions placed by skeptics on the justification of belief as a result of

  human fallibility, or pervasive error, epistemologists are moving toward lesser

  levels of qualified belief or contextualization.

  Contextualization refers to a naturalized approach to epistemology. Quine

  holds that ‘epistemology could find its answers by simply studying how

  believers justify their actions’.39 Hence the real problem one faces in epistemology involves searching for a one-size-fits-all answer to ‘knowing’, or on ‘how to

  have true knowledge’ in all societies and circumstances. When confronted by

  human fallibility, this leads to ‘plausibility’ or ‘denial’. Therefore, what is

  required is to simply understand how people rationalize their own actions and

  what their methods of justification are. That is, precisely, what we intend to

  accomplish by ex
amining Qur’anic epistemology.

  Qur’anic epistemology – ‘certainty of knowing’

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  Epistemology, at its most basic level, provides an insight into how a certain

  society thinks. This includes social phenomena and interactions, leading to

  experiences that ultimately involve some sort of knowledge, whether justifiable

  or not, as an integral part of life. That means any epistemic account must

  resort to fundamental principles, which could explain life, and the source and

  acquisition of knowledge, its limits, and its objectives, and provide a deeper

  and more comprehensive understanding of the world, the nature of human

  relations, and what they entail in terms of duties, rights, and proscriptions. As

  Al-Alwani makes clear, ‘since people’s thinking stems from their overall

  The theory of knowledge and Qur’anic epistemology 43

  worldview, their references, methods and theory of knowledge will be determined

  by their own doctrinal foundation and ideals … which, in turn is based on

  Qur’anic origins of thought. 40

  Therefore, the Qur’an is an obvious place to start in developing an over-

  arching Islamic epistemology. However, it must be recognized that one may

  develop differing epistemologies from the Qur’anic text through differing

  interpretations. Certainly, one must recognize that the Qur’an is not the same

  as Islam writ large and that elements of Islamic epistemology could be

  derived from other sources. Yet this study is not tackling the totality of Islamic

  epistemology, but on the assumption that it begins to develop coherently, and

  legitimately, based on insights the Qur’an shares. Thus, for this study, the

  relevant questions are ‘What are the origins of knowledge in Qur’anic episte-

  mology?’ and ‘How does the Qur’an approach “knowing” and “justification

  of belief”?’ How does this influence our understanding of political culture in

  Muslim polities?

  It is ‘undeniable that various epistemological issues have been discussed in

  Muslim philosophy with a significantly different orientation from that of