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I am a believer. A practising Muslim. Observant of all core obligations, shunning every prohibition. But after a quarter of a century both walking this path and just growing as a human being, I no longer find the naive apologetics of our proselytisers very convincing.

Recently, I have been attending a course with our son intended to provide proofs for the truth of our faith. The course began soundly enough, founded on the arguments of the renowned twelfth-century Muslim philosopher, Al-Ghazali, who posited that everything that begins to exist has a cause for its beginning. A firm foundation, which might have been summarised with just two verses of our Book:

Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding. Those who remember God while standing or sitting or lying on their sides, and give thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth: “Our Lord, You did not create this aimlessly! Exalted are You, so protect us from the chastisement of the fire.”

Quran 3:190-1

The more we learn about the creation of things, the more in utter awe we should be. If you’re not blown away by the functioning of your cells, or the encoding of your DNA, or the fact you can perceive the universe at all with eyes that see, ears that hear and a brain capable of processing such complexity — well then your cerebrum is completely wasted on you.

The creation of the heavens and earth is greater than the creation of mankind, but most of the people do not know.

Quran 40:57

If it was me, I would have condensed the four-month course down into a couple of lessons meditating on verses like these. But I accept I am not the target audience, given that I took up this path twenty-five years ago. In my case, though I proclaimed myself an atheist for a while in my teens, really I was an agnostic: that is, there was an innate feeling within that there is a cause of all things, but in what sense? Certainly, I needed to be convinced back then, but in the decades since, the Quran’s rejoinder to ponder deeply has kept my faith alive.

It may be that these youngsters likewise need to be convinced, and in that sense appeals to logic may be helpful. But this is where I stumbled as the course proceeded, for once it moved beyond proofs for the existence of God, many an argument did not seem to be logical at all. Logical, perhaps, to a bright young student, yet to experience much of the world. But not so convincing to one in his mid-forties who by now has been exposed to the full spectrum of human psychologies.

A quarter of a century ago, I may have been convinced that Muslims as a group of people are truthful, because our Book commands us to be so. Do not mix truth and falsehood, it says. Stand firmly for justice even against yourselves, it demands. However, living through an era of viral messaging, first the chain email then the social media share, I have learnt that as a group we care no more about verifying information and sharing only what we know to be true than society at large. Amongst us, there are indeed truthful individuals, but they are few and far between.

Thus as I caught the last few modules of the course, I found myself mostly biting my tongue. Listening to the lecturer respectfully, and keeping my objections to myself in deference to the younger audience who might erroneously look up to me as some kind of role model. Biting my tongue because it was becoming ever more clear that none of the arguments posited had actually been tested against actual evidence. My experience of life itself is enough to prove to me that many a supposition was faulty at best.

To demonstrate the integrity of an individual, for example, it was argued that because they did not self-praise, and indeed held themselves to be lowly, it necessarily showed them to be truthful, for one serving only their own self-interests would exalt themselves. But of course anyone familiar with basic human psychology would know this logic to be seriously flawed. A narcissist, for example, may affect modesty in order to demand or extort reactions from others. In healthy narcissism, this might be considered the positive foundation of self-esteem, but in its destructive manifestations it may be the source of profound manipulation.

It is not that I deny tenets of our faith, or hold the great personalities of our tradition in any less esteem than others. It’s simply that many of the arguments of our apologists simply don’t stand up to scrutiny, when tested against the complexities of life. There is no point arguing that a person must be truthful because they did not obtain any worldly gain from their efforts, for all around us we see people behaving in particular ways for all manner of motivations.

As an individual, I know that I myself must remain constantly vigilant of my own intentions, correcting course whenever I go astray. As an individual — as ordinary as any other — I know that I can be motivated by different urges, depending on my state of mind at any given time. Sometimes I am extremely sincere, adamant that I will live a good life. At other times, I may be driven by my passions to pursue all kinds of puerile nonsense. Such is the human condition:

“All of the children of Adam are sinners, but the best sinners are those who repent.”

Hadith

Power needs to given back to the argument. Strong arguments are those that stand up to scrutiny when presented with contrary evidence. Any hypothesis has to be tested, and evaluated on its merits. Much of our apologetics are not very good at doing that. Power tends to be given to a scholar, academic or charismatic preachers instead. Rather than engaging with objections, however well grounded, the communal response is to hold up a learned individual and say, “Look, this is what this great person says — and they have a much greater intellect than you — so defer to their wisdom and insight, and put away your own misgivings.”

But on the contrary our Book repeatedly begs us to ponder. And it was that pondering that led us to faith in the first place. For me, first concluding that there is a cause of all things, then rejecting the notion that the cause was a man. Over and over, mankind is explicitly told to use their intellect, to think and reflect deeply.

Have they not pondered upon themselves? God did not create the heavens and earth and everything between them without a serious purpose and an appointed time, yet many people deny that they will meet their Lord.

Quran 30:8

So ponder. Put those arguments to the test. Come to a truer kind of faith, that engages with the real world as we find it. Don’t just slavishly accept the arguments of those around you, packaged as some kind of proof when you yourself know that isn’t the case. Truth stands on its own merits.

Let there be no compulsion in religion: truth stands out clear from error. Whoever rejects evil and believes in God has grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And God hears and knows all things.

Quran 2:256