How Can Islam Be True if Secular Arguments Exist?

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question

How can Islam, which began in the Middle East and was revealed in Arabic, and is now followed mostly in the global South and South Asia, be the true religion for all people?

Cultures around the world differ greatly, especially in matters such as family and money, and these differences often lead to conflict.

In addition, every religious argument, even about Heaven and Hell, seems to have a secular counter-argument. How can Islam still claim to be true for everyone?

Answer

In the Name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate

It is helpful to look at the assumption behind your question. It seems that a worldview can only be trusted if its evidence cannot be challenged. But no worldview, including secular ones, can meet this standard.

Philosophers have raised questions about every claim, whether about the origins of the universe, the meaning of life, or ethics. If we expect evidence that cannot be questioned, we are really asking for absolute certainty.

Mature belief, in any tradition, does not work this way.

Mature belief, in Islam or any way of seeing the world, comes from many kinds of evidence coming together. It is more like learning to trust a person than proving a math problem.

The Quran calls us to look at the world, ourselves, the Quran itself, and the life of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) with patience and honesty before making a judgment.

With this in mind, let us look at your three questions one by one.

On the Geographic and Linguistic Claim

Yes, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was born in Arabia, and the Quran was revealed in Arabic. Every revelation must enter history through real people and a real language, or it could not be intelligible to its first hearers.

Allah Most High says of every messenger before our Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace): “And We did not send any messenger except in the language of his people, that he might make things clear to them.” [Quran 14:4] Arabic is the vessel. It is not the limit.

The Quran’s own claim is universal. Allah Most High says of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace): “We have not sent you except as a mercy to all the worlds.” [Quran 21:107] He is commanded to proclaim: “O humanity, I am the Messenger of Allah to you all.” [Quran 7:158]

He is described as sent “to all humanity” [Quran 34:28] and “to others of them who have not yet joined them” [Quran 62:3].

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) himself said that earlier prophets were sent only to their own peoples, while he was sent to all of humanity. He also said that the earth itself was made for his community, a place of prayer and purity [Bukhari; Muslim].

The address is to humanity, from the first word.

Shaykh Faraz Rabbani has noted in his teaching on language that Arabic, like every language, is created, and that Allah Most High transcends language altogether.

Translation of the Quran’s meanings into every tongue is permissible and necessary so that the universal meaning reaches every people. The Arabic form preserves the revealed text. Translation carries its meaning. Both serve the religion’s universal address.

It is worth noting that most Muslims today do not live in the Middle East. About 59% of Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region. One third are in Indonesia, Pakistan, and India. Only about 20% are Arab.

The rest include Persians, Turks, Malays, Hausa, Wolof, Bengalis, Urdu speakers, French and English speakers, and many others, including growing numbers in North America. Islam began in Arabia, but it is now a global faith.

Every major tradition began in a particular place. Buddhism began in India. Christianity began in Roman Palestine. Modern science began in Western Europe.

But the place where something starts does not limit how far its message can reach.

The term’ global South’ is a modern political label. It does not reflect the true history of civilizations. For many centuries, the Muslim world led the world in knowledge and culture. Cities like Baghdad, Cordoba, Cairo, and Istanbul were centers of learning.

Many advances in mathematics, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, and literature came from these places. The current economic situation of many Muslim countries is due to recent history, such as colonialism and the loss of traditional institutions.

Truth and value are not measured by wealth. If they were, the early Christians hiding in catacombs would have had no value.

On Cultural Difference and the Inevitability of Clash

The Quran does not treat human differences as a problem to be erased. Allah Most High says: “O humanity, We created you from a male and a female, and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is the most God-conscious of you.” [Quran 49:13]

He also names the variety of languages and colors among His signs [Quran 30:22]. Ibn Kathir, commenting on [Quran 49:13], stresses that all human beings descend from Adam and Eve, and that honor with Allah comes through God-consciousness (taqwa), not lineage.

Plurality is in the design.

Islam’s universality does not mean everyone must have the same culture. It means that people of many cultures can share the same spiritual direction toward Allah.

Whether at a Senegalese or Bosnian wedding, in an Indonesian or Yemeni mosque, or among Hausa and Pashtun scholars, the unity of faith brings people together across many differences.

This is what classical Islamic law has always recognized. The Sacred Law distinguishes between fixed moral principles and adaptable cultural forms. The fixed principles include justice and excellence. [Quran 16:90]

Mercy and tranquility in marriage [Quran 30:21]. Honest trade and the prohibition of interest-based exploitation (riba). [Quran 2:275]

An economic order in which wealth does not simply circulate among the wealthy. [Quran 59:7]

Beyond such foundations, a wide cultural zone remains open.

A classical legal maxim runs: sound custom carries authority. Custom that does not contradict the Sacred Law has the force of law within its scope. Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, in his Islam and the Cultural Imperative, names the principle: “Good cultural conventions have the power of law.”

This is why Islam does not require Chinese families to become Arab families. Or Bosnian cities to become Hijazi towns. Or Indonesian commerce to imitate a medieval market layout. It requires that justice, mercy, honest exchange, and moral restraint govern each society’s local forms.

In Dr. Umar’s phrase, Muslims are “never aliens, no matter where they go.”

Feeling a Clash of Civilizations?

The feeling of ‘clash’ is real, but it is not a clash between Islam and culture itself. It is usually a tension between Islam and practices that go against basic moral instincts.

Values like marriage by consent, honest trade, modesty, and caring for the weak are found in many cultures, not just in the Middle East. Confucian respect for elders, African respect for ancestors, Christian charity, and Buddhist non-harm all show these values.

Islam brings these values together and connects them to their true source.

Where a culture clashes with Islam, it is usually one of two things.

The culture has forgotten the universal moral instinct (consumer modernity’s treatment of marriage and sexuality is one example).

Or the culture has added something that does not belong (caste, certain forms of nationalism, certain customs at odds with conscience and law).

Islam in each case calls the culture back to the moral instinct beneath it.

Allah Most High says: “So set your face toward the religion, inclining to truth — the moral nature upon which Allah has created humanity. There is no changing the creation of Allah. That is the right religion, but most people do not know.” [Quran 30:30]

The original moral nature God has placed in every soul—what the Quran calls the fitra—is the compass beneath every culture. Islam is its full articulation.

Addressing Secular Counter-Arguments and the Question of Heaven and Hell

Your example is thoughtful. The secular view says that the human mind looks for patterns and comforting meanings to deal with anxiety about life and death.

From this view, belief in Heaven and Hell is seen as a psychological response. Let us look at four points about this.

First, this is called the genetic fallacy. Explaining where a belief comes from does not show that it is false.

The same argument could be used about believing that other people have minds, or that the past is real, or that math is true.

Every belief comes from the mind so it can be explained in some way. If this makes belief invalid, then all beliefs, even secular ones, would be invalid.

So the argument does not prove what it claims to prove.

Second, this explanation can be seen in two ways. If people everywhere, in every age, believe in an afterlife, this may not just be a psychological trick. It may be a sign of something real.

The Quran teaches that this instinct is part of the nature God gave us. Islam says we expect to be accountable because we will be.

Atheism may call this a mistake, but Islam sees it as a sign from God. In the end, each view is a perspective that needs careful consideration.

Third, the moral argument is powerful. If death is the end, and the dictator and the saint have the same fate, then there is no justice in the universe. Not just no religious justice, but no justice at all.

Our sense that the murderer should not escape, or that the abused child deserves justice, or that the silent sufferer mattered, would all be illusions.

Some atheist thinkers, like Nietzsche, have accepted this result. But most secular people still live with a sense of moral seriousness. This is often inherited from religious traditions, even if they no longer follow them.

Islam teaches that this moral sense is real because it comes from the Creator, and that our sense of accountability is true because there is a real Judge.

The Quran does not argue for the afterlife out of fear. It argues it from divine wisdom. Allah Most High says: “Did you think We had created you without purpose, and that you would not be returned to Us?” [Quran 23:115]

And: “Does the human being think he will be left without purpose?” [Quran 75:36] The dictator-and-saint problem is exactly the moral incompleteness the Quran refuses to leave standing.

Allah Most High says: “Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it.” [Quran 99:7-8]

The afterlife is not a comforting invention. It is the universe’s moral structure made explicit.

Fourth, and most important, the Quran does not base faith on Heaven and Hell. The afterlife comes from knowing Allah, not as a reason to believe. Allah Most High says: “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth.” [Quran 41:53]

The signs are in the world, in ourselves, in the Quran, and in the life of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). Faith comes when these signs come together in the heart. The afterlife is then part of the whole picture.

What Kind of Certainty Does Islam Offer?

Islam does not offer the certainty of a mathematical proof or a scientific experiment. Those kinds of certainty are for limited questions.

For the deepest questions of meaning, ethics, and our end, no tradition, religious or secular, offers that kind of proof.

The certainty Islam offers comes from many things coming together. These include the unique qualities of the Quran, its preservation, and its unmatched style; the life and character of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), his effect on people, and the wisdom of his teachings; the witness of our own moral sense; the experiences of those who worship; and the history of the Muslim community at its best.

All these together build a strong conviction.

As Shaykh Nuh Keller writes in Sea Without Shore, this certainty grows over time, not from one proof, but through study, worship, and learning from those who know.

The religion itself is integrated in the same way. In the Hadith of Jibril, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) defines it in three orders. Faith (iman) is belief in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, the Last Day, and the Decree.

Submission (Islam) is one of the outward pillars of worship. Spiritual excellence (ihsan) is to worship Allah “as if you see Him, and if you do not see Him, then He sees you.” [Bukhari; Muslim] Truth about reality. Disciplined practice in life. Inward beauty before God. That is what the religion is.

That is what holds together across the Atlas Mountains and the Himalayas, across Mali and Malaysia, across Cairo and Toronto.

In the end, the question of the ‘true religion’ is not about one civilization ruling over others, or everyone following the same customs.

It is about whether there is a way of life that truly answers the big questions of who we are, why we are here, and where we are going, and gives us a real path to live by.

Islam claims to do this, and this claim should be looked at as a whole, not just by picking out single arguments.

The Way Forward: Practical Steps

For Muslim readers: Take a course on Islamic belief (aqida) with a SeekersGuidance teacher. At SeekersGuidance, we have courses on Islamic beliefs from the fundamentals to advanced levels.

Read Shaykh Nuh Keller’s Sea Without Shore on the spiritual path to Allah, taking your time. Read Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad’s Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions and Traveling Home, which speak directly to these questions.

Listen to Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s Vision of Islam lectures. Sit with a local teacher who knows the tradition. Read the Quran slowly, and reflect. Pray.

For non-Muslim readers who are sincerely searching: Read the Quran in a careful translation.

Shaykh Nuh Keller’s The Quran Beheld is a good choice. Read a reliable life of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace); Martin Lings’ Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources is a beautiful starting point.

Read Sea Without Shore, which tells the story of a Western seeker’s journey to Allah and within the highest teachings of Islam.

Visit a mosque. Speak with a Muslim scholar who is patient with questions. Ask the One who owns the hearts for guidance, in whatever words you have.

The opening prayer of the Quran is for every sincere seeker: “Guide us to the straight path.” [Quran 1:6] This prayer is at the start of the Quran for this very reason.

To all readers: These questions are sincere and deserve careful thought. The answer is not a slogan or a quick reply, but a journey that is best taken with those who have walked the path before.

There is more clarity, purpose, meaning, and beauty in this way than many people expect. May Allah guide every sincere seeker, give peace to every heart, and open the doors of certainty to all who seek it.

And Allah knows best.

[Shaykh] Faraz Rabbani

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