Islam

In Defence of Secondary Causation Against Occasionalism

So, if created things have no actions productive of effects, it follows that no nature of anything would ever be known through the effect. And thus, all the knowledge of natural science is taken away from us, for the demonstrations in it are chiefly derived from the effect. (Aquinas SCG 3.69.18)

Secondary Causes: Their Relation to the Primary Cause (God)
The Primary Cause (God) is the uncaused cause, the source of all beings and existence.¹ God continues to sustain the universe at every moment to ensure its continued existence and operation.

Secondary Causes like finite living beings and natural forces possess causal powers. For example, fire has the power to heat and a human has to power to make choices and initiate action. Everything must have a cause. A thing’s nature must be caused by another, that is, it is causally dependent on another agent in a chain of causes. Since these agents are dependent, there are accordingly regarded as secondary” causes. This chain of causes operates as an interactive system established by God. However, each “secondary” cause is ultimately dependent on the power of the Primary Cause (God).

What is the relationship between primary cause and secondary cause? The relationship between a craftsman and his tool provides a helpful analogy: The craftsman (God) is the primary cause of the artifact but this does not undermine the genuine role contributed by the tool (secondary cause) in the production of the artifact.

In Defence of Secondary Causation Against Occasionalism
According to occasionalism², created substances do not have intrinsic power of causation to bring about changes or events. There is no secondary causation since all events are directly caused by God. The discussion below defends the necessity of secondary causation by highlighting some weaknesses of occasionalism. Continue reading “In Defence of Secondary Causation Against Occasionalism”

1
“For Scholastics, in order to be caused (whether caused to exist or caused to undergo some change), a thing must in some way be a mixture of act and potency, since to change or come into being is to go from potency to act. But then what is pure actuality and thus devoid of potency not only need not have a cause, but could not have had one. Hence it is false to say that everything has a cause. The principle of causality says that what changes requires a cause, that what comes into being has a cause, that what is composite, contingent or merely participates in being needs a cause, and in general that what goes from potency to act requires a cause. But that is very different from saying that absolutely everything has a cause. When the Scholastic says that God is uncaused, that is not because God is being made an arbitrary exception to a general rule. It is rather because God is taken to be pure actuality, non-composite, non-contingent, and so forth.” Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (editiones scholasticae, 2014), p. 107.
2
Occasionalism was a dominant philosophy school in medieval Islam. Its prominent advocates included Al-Ash’ari (10th C), founder Ash’arite occasionalism and following him, Al-Ghazali (12th C) and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (13th C). According to Islamic occasionalism, what appears to be causal relationships in nature are merely God’s habit (’adah) of creating certain events after others, with no necessary connection between them. “God has decreed as a matter of habit (’adah) that the succession of accidents shall correspond to a certain pattern… But it is clear that God who is the ultimate Agent could alter this course of habit freely.” See Majid Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism (Routledge, 1958, 2008), p. 30

Federal Court Rules Kelantan Shariah Criminal Enactment as Unconstitutional

CJ says challenged provisions under Kelantan Shariah criminal enactment mandated by state not Allah, cannot be construed as act against God

Malaymail Online By Kenneth Tee
Friday, 09 Feb 2024 1:38 PM MYT

PUTRAJAYA, Feb 9 — The country’s top judge said today a constitutional challenge brought by two Muslim women to nullify 18 provisions under the Kelantan Shariah criminal enactment cannot be construed as blasphemy since the laws had been mandated by the state legislative assembly and not Allah.

Earlier, the Federal Court in a majority verdict of 8-1 struck down 16 out of 18 provisions under the Kelantan Shariah criminal enactment as unconstitutional, ruling that the Kelantan State Legislature does not have the power to enact laws on said offences because there are federal laws covering the same. Continue reading “Federal Court Rules Kelantan Shariah Criminal Enactment as Unconstitutional”

Berry Cake House Not Allowed to Write “Merry Christmas” on Cakes?

The prohibition of writing of Merry Christmas or X’mas on cakes looks like a repeat of an earlier prohibition given by Jakim in 2020. Re: text quoted below.

But see conclusion at the end of this article:

Conclusion: The clarification from JAKIM only says that greetings like “Merry Christmas” are not allowed on cakes to be exhibited in premises that have been certified halal or on products marked with the halal logo. This does not prohibit the sale of cakes with “Merry Christmas”to personal orders by customers.

Prohibition of sale of these cakes in response to personal orders by customers would be an outright infringement of the religious rights and freedom of Christians and non-Muslims. Indeed, one may still wonder whether the standing order, notwithstanding the clarification still constitutes an unwarranted restriction of the rights of Christians and non-Muslims freely to buy and sell merchandise among themselves. These incidents give the impression that Christian celebration is on the wrong side of the law – another example of “Salami Islamization”?

[Clarification added on 17 Dec 2023] – I received several friendly suggestions that I could have committed a typo error – it should be “salafi”. But I definitely mean “salami”. You cut salami piece by piece. It was first used as “salami politics” in political discourse. I use the word “salami Islamization” to alert us to JAKIM’s long term strategy of Islamization of Malaysia slice by slice.

Perhaps Berry Cakehouse is going beyond what JAKIM requires. We hope that Berry Cakehouse would resume its sales to customers who order cakes with decorations like “Merry Christmas”.

Latest update added on 17 Dec 2023 in light of clarification by JAKIM.

———————-
Relevant earlier reports.

See the update in The Star 16/12/2023 at the end of the article
No ban on Christmas cakes for halal certificate holders, says Mohd Na’im

Continue reading “Berry Cake House Not Allowed to Write “Merry Christmas” on Cakes?”

A Critique of Ismail Faruqi’s Metareligion and Ethical Analysis of Christianity. Part 3/3

Faruqi sharpens his critique of the Christian doctrine of God by asserting that Christianity,

eternalizes the revelation of Christ not as a system of ideas that may be God’s will, but as the Christ-event. . . Christianity consistently argues that Christ (i.e. his significance) is not the will of God, nor his command, nor His idea, but God Himself, or rather God co-eternal with God. Christianity is driven to this deifying hypostasis because it eternalizes a real person and a real event. A person may be co-eternal with God, but not derivatively eternal without violating the law of identity. But to violate the law of identity in this instance is to lapse into polytheism (CE 228).

Unfortunately for Faruqi, his objection is only hitting at theological strawmen since Christians are not asserting that Christ is identical with God without remainder in his incarnate state. Indeed, Faruqi’s objection is self-defeating. If he accuses Christianity of eternalizing a historical person, his religious philosophy commits the same logical move by eternalizing the Quran which was revealed to its messenger in 7th century Arabia. Continue reading “A Critique of Ismail Faruqi’s Metareligion and Ethical Analysis of Christianity. Part 3/3”

A Critique of Ismail Faruqi’s Metareligion and Ethical Analysis of Christianity. Part 2/3

II. Methodological And Doctrinal Distortions

A. Jesus’ Interiorization of Law
In part 1/3, I highlighted some problems with Faruqi’s methodology as its premises give a distorted reading of Christianity and skew the evidence in favor of Islam. The distortions become evident when Faruqi seeks to rewrite the history of the mission and ministry of Jesus through the lens of his metareligion. Faruqi, like all Muslims, maintains a respectful attitude towards Jesus. At the same time he is persuaded that the “real” Jesus is not that of historic Christianity. For Faruqi, the real Jesus should be based on results of German historical critical method and Quranic sources. One cannot help but notice the irony when Faruqi (and other Muslim apologists) unreservedly appropriates the skeptical results of the historical critical method to critique the bible while at the same time eschewing any application of the same critical method in the study of the Quran.

Faruqi has taken considerable effort to familiarize himself with the works of critics like Joseph Klausner and C. H. Dodd. Unfortunately, his appropriation of historical research is selective and subordinated to an overriding and debatable presupposition that Jesus’ pristine religion was solely aimed at effecting an internal correction of the Jewish legalistic religion. This presupposition allows Faruqi to dismiss any Biblical teaching which he finds personally unpalatable to the corrupting influence of Jewish racialism. Jewish racialism was undeniably a harsh reality in Faruqi’s personal experience. After all, he had to abandon his role as governor of a Palestinian district when the Jews won their War of Independence in 1948. But one wonders if Faruqi has in this matter allowed his unfortunate experience to color his judgment when he analyzes the Bible. Continue reading “A Critique of Ismail Faruqi’s Metareligion and Ethical Analysis of Christianity. Part 2/3”

A Critique of Ismail Faruqi’s Metareligion and Ethical Analysis of Christianity. Part 1/3

I. Methodology

Ismail Faruqi (1921-1986) is regarded as one of the most trenchant scholarly critics of Christianity in recent times. This estimation is attested by his post-doctoral project on Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas (1967). Its 333 pages indicate detailed familiarity with Christian thinkers ranging from Augustine to Barth and Reinhold Neibuhr. His later books on Divine Transcendence and Its Expression (1983), Al Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life (1982), Islam and Other Faiths (1998) and Selected Essays (2018) demonstrate that he is well-versed in matters of Western philosophy and they are replete with sharp criticisms of Christianity. Undoubtedly, his sustained engagement with Christianity is a product of his life experiences, as a Palestinian Arab in Lebanon and subsequently as an American scholar in Harvard University and McGill University. Perhaps he also felt compelled to respond to the vigorous intellectual enterprise among Christian missionary scholars in his time. We shall analyze critically Faruqi’s work as it provides a rare opportunity for Christians to respond to Islamic misunderstanding of Christianity at the level of sophisticated scholarship. Continue reading “A Critique of Ismail Faruqi’s Metareligion and Ethical Analysis of Christianity. Part 1/3”

Islamic Rejection of the Crucified Messiah

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ recorded in the four Gospels is supported by impeccable testimonies of multiple eyewitnesses. The historical factuality of the cross is further attested by reports found in authoritative non-Christian historical sources like Josephus and Tacitus. The Christian witness to the crucifixion is plausible since it is inconceivable why Christians should invent the crucifixion which declares that their founder died an accursed death under divine judgment on the Cross. As such, an outright denial of the crucifixion would amount to a willful blindness to historical reality. Some Muslim critics therefore grudgingly acknowledge that historically a crucifixion did occur. However, they suggest that someone other than Jesus was crucified. They argue that Christians have misunderstood the significance of the Cross because they are victims of an illusion. God, they claim, replaced Jesus with someone that bore his likeness.

Muslim scholars bypass the historical record with an appeal to the Quranic revelation: Continue reading “Islamic Rejection of the Crucified Messiah”

Judicial review power for Selangor Shariah High Court ‘unconstitutional’

Free Malaysia Today 21 Feb 2022

PUTRAJAYA: A nine-member bench of the Federal Court today unanimously declared that it is unconstitutional for the Selangor legislative assembly to pass a provision to confer judicial review power to the Shariah High Court in the state.

Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat said Section 66A of the Administration of the Religion of Islam (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003, as it stands, is also unconstitutional.

“I find Section 66A, as it stands, is unconstitutional and void as it is a provision the legislative assembly has no power to make,” she said of the unanimous ruling.

As such, she said, the petition filed by SIS Forum Malaysia is allowed and the declaration is granted, pursuant to the Courts of Judicature Act.

SIS filed the application in the Federal Court on Jan 21, 2020 after the High Court in Kuala Lumpur dismissed its judicial review application against the Selangor religious authority’s fatwa labelling the group “deviant”. Continue reading “Judicial review power for Selangor Shariah High Court ‘unconstitutional’”

Federal Court Rules Against Unilateral Conversion of Children into Islam

Mais loses final appeal to restore five kids’ unilateral conversion to Islam, Federal Court upholds Indira decision where both parents’ consent needed

Kuala Lumpur 26 Jan 2022

The Selangor Islamic Religious Council (Mais) today failed in its final court bid to reinstate the 2015 conversion of five young children to Islam when they were aged in the range of around three and nine years old.

A three-judge panel in the country’s highest court chaired by Chief Justice Tun Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat unanimously ruled in favour of the mother and dismissed the application for leave to appeal filed by both the Mais chairman and the Mais registrar of muallaf or Muslim converts.

In reading out the decision, Tengku Maimun pointed out that Section 117 of the Administration of the Religion of Islam (Selangor) enactment clearly stated that both the mother and the father must agree to their children’s conversion.

“This is our unanimous decision. The application does not meet the threshold of Section 96 of the Courts of Judicature Act for leave to be granted.

“The issue before us has been settled by the decision of this court in M. Indira Gandhi’s case. The courts below were therefore correct in following Indira Gandhi.

“Further the provision of Section 117 of the enactment is very clear that a person who is not Muslim may convert to the religion of Islam if he is of sound mind and attain 18 years or if he has not attain, the mother and father must consent to the conversion.

“The application is therefore dismissed,” Tengku Maimun said.

The court also awarded RM30,000 as costs to the mother. Continue reading “Federal Court Rules Against Unilateral Conversion of Children into Islam”