Discussion: How do I respond to the arguments of ideology?

A Q&A with a college student concerning first principles and basic assumptions in arguments with progressives (though this goes for any other ideological orientation).

Every so often I will receive questions from people concerning topics of shared concern. This back and forth occurred via WhatsApp on October 10th with a student at one of the universities in the DC area. I have anonymized the messages from that student and made some slight edits to facilitate reading as well as clarifications where necessary. I am sharing it here because I have been asked to comment on these issues before and found this interaction to have been beneficial enough—for both the questioner and myself—to share in case it is of benefit to others. I welcome any feedback, including sharp criticism. Thank you.

Q: Something you said at an MSA halaqa last year came to my mind. You said how when non-Muslims challenge us on Islamic morals we can easily flip the tables and question their own first principles. However, how do you respond if they try to claim that their own first principles are "based on science and rationality”? Do you just say that even "science and rationality" have their own first principles and basic assumptions too?

Yes, empiricism has its own assumptions such as the uniformity of the laws of nature in space and time. Natural determinism which is the prevailing scientific orientation today also assumes that the laws of nature exist within a closed system such that if you know all the relevant inputs, as well as the equation to produce the next state of the system, one could determine the future precisely. These are just two examples of basic assumptions that are taken for granted.

One has to explain why there should be a relationship between nature and morality, since science is an inductive venture to understand how nature operates. Why should the laws of nature give us any hint as to what is moral? Someone like Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens cites the argument that obesity is a natural phenomenon that is coded into the DNA of some individuals from the era of hunter-gatherers wherein if one stumbled across a bush of berries, it made sense to gorge them down because one could never know if they’d find enough sugar to sustain them in the near future. Is overconsumption moral because it has a natural justification? How does one square the science that justifies that kind of behavior with the science on the detrimental effects of over-consumption on the climate and ecosystem?

Just to show you how absurd this is, consider the following: If science determines morality how is it possible to have discussions, such as those in the field of bioethics, wherein the topic of the ethical implications of how we use our empirical knowledge are debated? It’s obvious that science cannot be the justification of morality, rather it’s subject to moral discourse not a governor over it.

Q: Something I've seen progressive Muslims argue concerning LGBTQ issues is that "we should make room for interpretations that accommodate same sex acts or transgender surgeries because these allow for full human expression against repression of these feelings.” While it's easy to make an argument drawing on the Qur’an and the Sunnah for why these things are prohibited, how do we respond to the "repression and human expression" argument they try to make? Even when my friends and I were in a Muslim professor’s class it seemed as if the professor was hinting at accommodating these interpretations.

Full human expression isn’t accepted by anyone, not even progressives. There are forms of expression that are deemed impermissible by progressives as well. Consider the attraction of a 25 years old to a 16 year old, which, despite being historically prevalent, would be adjudged an impermissible form of human expression. What about people with religious values that hold abortion—whether absolutely or under specific circumstances—to be inhumane? Those people are also told by progressives that their views should be kept silent, privatized and hidden away from society, never to be expressed. And if the person is male, the expression of his view on the matter, even if he’s the father, is considered fit for repression because it’s not his body and therefore not his right.

Who determines these things? They’re definitely not “natural” determinations that one can glean from the historical or biological record. They’re just conventions. To borrow an important distinction made in Leftist discourse: they’re social constructs. What’s the difference between dismantling the social construct of patriarchy and dismantling the new social construct concerning reproductive rights being associated only with women? What if a person considers reproduction to be a form of economic production that should be shared by all members of society? There is some evidence that women in some societies would co-habit with multiple men, and that the child born from these sexual encounters would be attributed to the society at large as it was believed that the sperm of all the men went into the creation of the child. What if rather than focusing on the unrestricted freedom of cohabitation in this society—something that some would find empowering for women today—one focused on the other element: the idea of communal ownership over the means of reproduction. This is not too far-fetched. After all, Plato, in The Republic, believed that children are the shared property of society and that the reproductive power of women was the property of the state which represents the interests of society as a whole. What is to say that idea of reproduction as production doesn’t come back in a few years if infertility rates continue to rise as a result of environmental and health factors? Is the idea that reproduction should be within the state’s domain to guide and regulate worthy of freedom of expression or should it be repressed?

Know that I am not arguing in favor of any of these views. I am merely pointing out the issue with the general principle that all contrary, differing, or heterodox positions should have the right of expression. This general principle is only really argued by those who hold those positions in order to further advance them. The easiest way to get your foot through the door is to say that all feet should be allowed in the room, no matter whose foot.

As for the Muslim professor, ask yourself the following question: is this person arguing that we should accommodate views that contradict an orthodox moral position also willing to do the same when it comes to orthodox moral positions that relate to prevailing sociopolitical norms? In other words, would that person also advocate the position that alcohol and other intoxicants should be banned? Should we also accommodate the views of eugenicists, scientific racists, or separatist white nationalists? How about the materialist view that there is no psyche and therefore trauma and the therapy that is sought in its wake is not real? Or the view that trickle-down economics actually does work? Should these views be equally accommodated? Or is it possible that a person can believe that there are no two sides to some moral discussions?

Q: What if the progressives try arguing that their restrictions on human expression are in line with the harm principle whilst ours allegedly aren't? How do we address that?

What is harm and who determines it? Is harm purely physical? We know that whoever you’re talking to will likely say that it includes psychological harm because the harm one claims in denying a trans person their pronoun is psychological, not physical.

What’s to say the psyche exists in the first place? What gives it a real existence such that it’s worthy of consideration in determining harm? One has to accept the philosophical position of mind-body dualism to even claim that a psyche exists. Then they have to explain why the experiences of the psyche, when they contradict that of the material body, should be given preference in determining reality.

Every argument is built on a series of premises and first principles. Sometimes they are axiomatic (i.e. self-evident and incontestable) but often they are subject to debate. Muslims—and here I use the term “Muslims” to refer to those who would be considered Muslims by the vast majority of self-professed Muslims historically—will state that they believe in a tripartite composition of human beings: mind, body, and soul (the latter of which the Greeks would have referred to as the psychē which, at pain of falling too far into digression, we’ll leave for another discussion). For Muslims, harm is not just restricted to the physical, nor the psychological, but the spiritual as well. Why won’t the people you’re describing accept the expansion of harm to include spiritual matters which is far more inclusive than just physical and psychological harm? After all, both the psyche (mind) and spirit (soul) are immaterial and therefore have no justification for existence according to empirical methods of tthe prevailing materialist worldview.

Q: I see. So even progressives assume first principles, such as the validity of mind-body dualism, just like we accept our first principles? Again, many thanks. This was really in-depth. Unfortunately, there are staunch progressives in our community who tend to adopt the latest woke trend and to "reinterpret" Islam to fit their worldview.

Ignorance of history, philosophy, and theology will lead (and has led) to many Muslim making silly mistakes and putting forth silly arguments. One of the things Socrates was complaining about was the rise of faux sophistication. We have the same thing nearly 2500 years later. At the end of the day, the issue is not about labels, but about whether the moral positions one holds are in consonance or dissonance with those immutable aspects of our faith. Many things are left to culture and the vicissitudes of time. However, some moral positions are intentionally so stable as to remain impervious to change. Those who argue otherwise follow in the footsteps of the sophists of Socrates’ day who, noticing that many beliefs and values were culturally-bound, generalized this relativism to all matters, including religious beliefs. Our tradition has an incredibly nuanced position: some things are immutable and timeless truths, while others are temporally- and culturally-relative. This level of sophistication unfortunately escapes many Muslims not trained in the native intellectual tradition passed on from master scholar to master scholar.

May Allah bless our teachers.

And God knows best.