The Strongest Case for Islam

Muslim thinkers make the case for Islam through reason and through the heart, and they begin with the Quran itself, which challenges doubters to produce a text like it.¹² Classical theologians, the mutakallimun, used reason and argument to defend revealed belief, and they built formal arguments for God's existence.³ A modern paper on God's existence from the Yaqeen Institute, a Sunni research center, begins its case with the inborn sense of God.²

The five are this site's selection, and each draws on both Sunni and Shia sources. Its Shia voices are hadith reports, from al-Kafi and a modern collection of reliable reports, and the scholars Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei and Murtada Mutahhari.⁴⁵⁶ Ibadi sources are not represented on this page. Allah is the Arabic word for God.⁷ For how the branches differ, see the Branches page.

Five of the reasons Muslim thinkers give

1. The Quran's challenge: a book no one can match

Muslim scholars teach that the Quran is Muhammad's miracle and that no one can produce its like, a quality called ijaz, or inimitability. The scholar Issa Boullata calls this an Islamic doctrine of the utmost importance¹, because it is held to establish both the book's divine source and the truth of the prophet who brought it.¹ The Quran issues the challenge in several places, asking doubters to produce one surah (chapter), ten surahs, or a discourse like it.¹ One passage reads: Or say they: He hath invented it? Nay, but they will not believe! Then let them produce speech the like thereof, if they are truthful. (Quran 52:33-34)⁸

The argument took shape early. Al-Jahiz (died AH 255, 868 or 869 CE) reasoned that Muhammad's opponents were masters of rhetoric with every motive to discredit him, yet they did not take up the challenge.¹⁹ Later scholars located the miracle in the Quran's style, in its content, or in both. Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani (died 1078) worked out most fully the theory of how its words are chosen and arranged.¹

The Sunni scholar Suleiman Hani calls ijaz the agreed-upon doctrine whose basis lies in the Quran itself. Other miracles, including those of earlier prophets, he writes, were limited in time and place and moved most those who witnessed them, while the Quran's challenge stands open to the experts of every age.⁹ The Shia scholar al-Khoei argues the same from the nature of a final message. A short-lived miracle could not persuade people far away in time, so the final and lasting prophethood inevitably requires a lasting miracle¹⁰. That miracle, he holds, is the Quran.¹⁰

Historians' views: see the Sacred Texts page.

2. The signs of Muhammad's prophethood

Muslim thinkers argue that Muhammad's teachings, their effect on people's hearts, and the miracles reported of him show that he was a true prophet. Early scholars wrote whole works on these signs; al-Jahiz titled one Proofs of Prophethood.⁹

The Sunni theologian al-Ghazali (1058 to 1111) makes this argument in his autobiography, Deliverance from Error.³¹¹²¹² He warns against resting faith on a single wonder, such as a staff turned into a serpent, since a reader might suspect magic or deception.

Instead, he advises a seeker to study the Quran and the reports of Muhammad's words, and to test his teachings on worship and the heart. Miracles then become one strand among many: let such preternatural events be one of the proofs and concomitants that make up your total reflection on the matter¹². Certainty comes, he writes, the way it comes from a report heard from many people, from no single witness but from the whole.¹²

Al-Ghazali also points to Muhammad's care for his community. Anyone who reflects on his concern for guiding people, he writes, will know that his compassion for them was greater than a father's for his son.¹²

The Shia scholar al-Khoei adds the miracles reported of Muhammad besides the Quran. Muslims of all schools, he notes, have compiled many books of these reports, handed down through uninterrupted chains. Yet he holds that the Quran remains the lasting proof of Muhammad's mission.¹³

Historians' views: see the History page.

3. The inborn sense of God (fitra)

Muslims hold that God created people with a natural sense of him, called fitra.²¹⁴ The Quran speaks of the nature with which God created humankind (30:30, paraphrased here), and it describes a covenant made before birth:

And (remember) when thy Lord brought forth from the Children of Adam, from their reins, their seed, and made them testify of themselves, (saying): Am I not your Lord? They said: Yea, verily. We testify. (Quran 7:172)⁸

Sunni and Shia hadith reports both draw on these verses. In Sahih al-Bukhari, a Sunni collection, Muhammad teaches that no child is born except on the fitra, and that parents later raise the child in another religion.¹⁵ In a Shia report, an imam explains the fitra of 30:30 by saying that God created all people upon tawhid, belief in his oneness.¹⁴

A Yaqeen Institute paper builds its case for God on this teaching. It holds that people sense a higher power by instinct, and that this sense has appeared in cultures widely separated by time, place, and language. In Islamic terms, it explains, this is because God took a covenant from every person that they would recognize their Creator.² The paper adds that people often turn to prayer by instinct in times of danger, and that someone whose nature has been clouded may need an argument to recover what was once known without one.²

4. Signs in creation: a first cause and a designer

Muslim theologians argue from questions the Quran itself poses: Or were they created out of naught? Or are they the creators? (Quran 52:35)⁸ The Yaqeen paper reasons that the universe could not appear from nothing and that people did not create themselves, so the universe was caused by something greater than itself.²

The philosopher Bruce Reichenbach reports that Islamic philosophy developed two forms of this argument. Ibn Sina (about 980 to 1037) argued from contingency, the fact that things exist that might not have existed. The theologians argued that the world had a beginning: al-Ghazali held that everything that begins to exist needs a cause, and since an actual infinite is impossible, the world must have begun and have a cause.³

The Quran also points to order: Will they not regard the camels, how they are created? And the heaven, how it is raised? (Quran 88:17-18)⁸ The Yaqeen paper calls this a teleological discourse, an argument from design. It cites the jurist al-Shafii (died 820), who noted that the same leaves become silk in worms, honey in bees, and musk in deer.²

Shia hadith reports make the same appeal. In al-Kafi, an imam tells a doubter to consider the sun, the moon, day, and night, which follow each other without fail and have no choice in their course. Of the power that drives them, he says: The One who has forced them is stronger than them and greater.¹⁶¹⁶

5. A scripture preserved

Muslims hold that God promised to guard the Quran: Lo! We, even We, reveal the Reminder, and lo! We verily are its Guardian. (Quran 15:9)⁸ They see that promise kept in the way the text was handed down, by memory and in writing, from Muhammad's time.¹⁷¹⁸

The Sunni scholar Yousef Wahb describes oral transmission as the main way the Quran was preserved. Muhammad recited and taught it constantly, he writes, and memorization spread through Medina and among the Bedouin. Scribes wrote down revelations as they came.¹⁷ Biographical works, Wahb notes, trace unbroken chains of teachers of recitation from Muhammad's companions to later centuries. Several of those companions stand at the head of the chains of the ten canonical readings (qiraat), the recognized ways of reciting the text.¹⁷

Al-Khoei, a Twelver Shia scholar, writes: The accepted view among Muslims is that no alteration has occurred in the Qur'an¹⁸. He cites leading Twelver scholars, including Ibn Babawayh, who counted that belief among the doctrines of the Twelver Shia. He calls it the common view, or the unanimous one, of Shia scholars, while noting that a faction of Shia traditionists and a group of Sunni scholars held that alterations were made.¹⁸

Historians' views: see the Sacred Texts page.

The hardest objection: why does God allow evil?

Hani's paper states the question this way: if God is all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing, why does suffering or evil exist? Muslim theologians, he explains, understand suffering in light of God's wisdom, knowledge, benevolence, will, and power.¹⁹ This page takes it as the hardest objection because Muslim writers treat it at length: Hani gives it a full paper, and Mutahhari treats it at length in his book Divine Justice.¹⁹⁶ The classical dispute over al-Ghazali's view that this is the best of all possible worlds is the subject of a modern study by Eric Ormsby of more than 300 pages.²⁰

Sunni writers begin with God's wisdom, which exceeds human knowledge. Hani recalls the story of Moses and al-Khidr in the Quran, in which acts that seem evil turn out to be good once their purpose is known.¹⁹ He cites a verse: it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not. (Quran 2:216)⁸

Life, he writes, is a test of ease and hardship: Every soul must taste of death, and We try you with evil and with good, for ordeal. (Quran 21:35)⁸ Free will makes wrongdoing possible, and the afterlife brings justice and a reward that outweighs a lifetime of suffering.¹⁹

Hani reports that many Muslim scholars hold that no absolute evil exists. He quotes Ibn Taymiyya (died 1328): Rather, in everything that God creates is a wise purpose by virtue of which it is good.¹⁹ Hani also reports that Ibn Sina defined evil as a lack of good, which certain goods require, as fire must burn in order to be fire.¹⁹

Ash'ari theologians, of a leading Sunni school, answer from God's lordship. The scholar R. M. Frank explains that, for them, God's acts and commands are right and just simply because they are his, whatever good or harm they bring to any creature.¹¹

Twelver Shia thinkers stress God's justice, which they count among the principles of religion.⁴ Mutahhari, drawing on the philosopher Mulla Sadra, argues that evils are not real existing things that would need a creator of their own. Evil, he holds, is either a lack of being or relative to something else, and this answers those who posit two sources of existence.⁶

Where to go next

The comparison page sets this case beside Christianity's own account: Christianity vs Islam. The book Christianity vs Islam sets each faith's strongest ground beside its hardest objection.