A Founding Conversation

I remember that conversation with Dr Zaghloul El-Naggar, may God have mercy on him, very clearly. I put to him a question that shook his settled calm: “Does God exist?” He looked at me in astonishment and asked, in his Egyptian dialect, “Are you a Muslim, my son?” I said I was. “Then how can you be a Muslim and ask whether God exists?” I told him that my question came from my refusal to describe God in any way He has not described Himself. My mind is too limited to encompass His majesty, and I was holding to the general rule that the Islamic movements themselves proclaim: that God’s attributes are fixed by revelation, so that no description may be ascribed to God unless He has stated it in His Book. To the best of my knowledge, God has not described Himself with the word “existent” (mawjūd), either in the Qurʾān or in the authentic Sunna. If I was wrong, I asked him to show me a clear text. His reply was strange. “My son, every verse of the Qurʾān speaks of God’s existence!” I asked him for a single verse containing the word mawjūd. He began to recite verses: “God — there is no god but He, the Living, the Self-Subsisting”; “God is the Creator of all things”; “Say: He is God, the One.” I said to him: “Professor, where is the word ‘existent’ in these texts? You are listing the attributes of divinity, self-subsistence, oneness and eternal self-sufficiency, and all of them are active participles or adjectives. But you have not shown me the word mawjūd, which is a passive participle.” He answered in amazement: “You want the verse to tell you in so many words that God exists? What does ‘God is the Creator’ mean, then? That He creates but doesn’t exist? How can He create if He doesn’t exist?” Here I put my finger on the flaw. I said: “So we have reached the point where you are inferring God’s existence from reason, not from the text. Do you then allow God to be described by reason, against the doctrinal rule you yourself hold?” He said the scholars had established that God is the Necessary Existent, because innate nature does not deny it. I asked him: “Since when has innate nature been a source of proof for God’s attributes in your school? And who made His existence necessary upon God?” His answer showed fear of fitna, of stirring up discord, rather than concern for the truth. “What do you want us to tell people? That there’s no God? People have enough trouble as it is.” My answer was clear. “I am discussing with you what you believe, not what you tell people. I have no interest in pleasing others by betraying my faith and my principles. It is the inherited folklore of doctrine that created these conflicts, with its endless quarrels over God’s place and His existence. Had the question been treated with real Abstraction, we would never have reached these disastrous results.” Hashem Nassar All rights reserved