Mustafa Eren Bozoklu
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The first group seeks to explain faith and religion through scientifically grounded philosophical arguments. The second insists that Islam, by its nature, is inhospitable to philosophical inquiry—and that this very incompatibility has been one of the chief reasons for the fall behind of Muslim world.

The popularity of the first group stems from the fact that, over the past fifty or sixty years, quantum mechanics has shattered the positivism that ruled the scientific world for nearly two centuries. The popularity of the second group, on the other hand, arises from the lingering influence of the Vienna School, which insisted that the relationship between human beings and the Creator is not a matter of knowledge but of belief — an idea that still casts its shadow over the world of philosophy.

One must ask: What real value do philosophical explanations and scientific theories hold when it comes to religion? Must philosophy, in the face of spirituality, always choose to ignore it? And does a believer who engages in philosophy necessarily have to interpret the universe through a secular mind — one that leaves the divine outside the frame?

The very questions that once drove philosophers like Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, and the mutakallimūn such as al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, to write refutations (tahāfut) against one another — how significant are these debates within the world of faith itself?

Centuries ago, Muslims already recognized a profound tension. They understood that the laws and the meaning of nature are related yet belong to distinct realms. They concluded that there is no path to understanding life and the universe other than turning one’s gaze toward the Creator Himself. Thus they built an independent discipline—Kalām, or theology—that sought both the physical and the metaphysical, grounding itself in revelation while engaging reason.

Muslim philosophers often tried to explain existence through nature and logic, while the scholar of kalām worked to establish and safeguard faith using both the Qur’an and rational principles. The scholars of kalām believes in a Creator who -through knowledge, will, and power- continuously governs and transforms the cosmos. For them, this belief is not mere doctrine—it is the only true and meaningful form of knowledge.

For the ḥukamā’—the muslim philosophers—the Creator they speak of is the Necessary Being (Wājib al-Wujūd), whose existence follows as an inevitable consequence of the natural order. The Creator is almost regarded not as a personal God who chooses to create, but as one who must exist—because existence itself demands Him.

Here lies the rift between the ḥukamā’ and the mutakallimūn, the scholars of kalām: they could never agree on how to interpret the universe, which is at once the subject and the object of philosophy. Should one begin with the Creator—through revelation—to understand nature? Or should one begin with nature—through reason and science—to know the Creator?

It must be said that the confinement of philosophy to a secular sphere and of science to a profane atmosphere stems from its inability to overcome three fundamental doubts: Philosophy tends to define the visible universe in one of three ways: either as a self-existent realm born of randomness, as a product of causal forces that create and govern all things, or as something endlessly reproduced in the printing press of nature itself.

A certain assumption is made: what lies beyond nature can neither be the subject of philosophy nor of science. Both are restrained from entering a path centered on meaning, intention, and will, and are instead confined to methods and axioms that can only grasp becoming, not being. For instance, philosophy and science may inquire into the letters of a book, its binding, its typography — yet none of this reveals what the author intended to say. 

Meaning is not the sign itself, but what is conveyed through the sign — what is meant to be shared with us. This is precisely where religion finds its genuine value, its advantage, and its critical function: One is to transcend the confusion and blindness produced by philosophy’s three modes of explanation, and the other one is to perceive existence — through reason, logic, observation, and the uniquely human faculties of inner sense, yet always grounded in revelation — as the art, knowledge, and deliberate decree of an Almighty Creator (Qādir al-Zul-Jalāl).

No one, when gazing at an oil painting, imagines that the colors have somehow arranged themselves on the canvas to form an image. A painting is beautiful because the artist guides the paint — from form to form, from color to color — to express something, to speak to us. And no admirer of the painting believes that beauty lies in the pigments themselves or in their supposed ability to produce meaning or form. What we truly admire are the qualities and capacities of the painter, not the material shapes on the canvas.

Shortly, the science concerns itself with the chemistry of the paint; philosophy, with how the paint spreads and forms patterns; religion, while being connected to both, focuses on the intention of the painter — on what the artist seeks to express through that image. To turn away from the paint’s composition and the picture’s appearance, and instead to seek the painter’s message, is to step from the world of science and philosophy into the realm of faith. This is why thinkers such as al-Ghazālī and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī on one side, and al-Fārābī and Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) on the other, exchanged endless refutations — because they were struggling at the boundary between knowledge and meaning, matter and spirit.

Metaphysics, often regarded as a branch of philosophy, is commonly thought to deal with what lies beyond matter — the realm of the spiritual. This leads to the mistaken belief that philosophy, through metaphysics, somehow enters the domain of religion. In truth, metaphysics does not belong to religion’s sphere, but rather to the realm of concepts through which thought itself is conveyed.

For metaphysics, terms like God or the Divine are not sacred realities but conceptual concentrations of human emotions such as inadequacy, fear of death, and the longing for power, idols, or myths. It seeks not so much understanding as explanation — an attempt to make the non-objective intelligible through the objective. Thus, even metaphysics falls short of touching the essence of religion.

Philosophy, even when it reaches into metaphysics, cannot transcend materialism, nature, or causality. It remains trapped within mechanism and never truly arrives at meaning. Religion, therefore, continues to be the only path toward genuine understanding.

When we move from what is said and how it is said to what is meant, we have already gone beyond philosophy.

Religion — particularly and, Islam — teaches and commands us to look at the object and discover within it the true reason for its existence: its meaning. Contemplation (tafakkur) is not merely the act of reasoning, of tracing causes and effects, or of narrating existence systematically. Rather, it is the effort to uncover the meaning concealed within existence, and to recognize the One who intended that meaning.

Meaning is the only reality that grants the object its true cause for being. It arises through the simultaneous operation of knowledge, will, and power. Humanity — the only creature in nature endowed with all of these (knowledge, will, and power) — cannot escape the search for meaning.

Yet this search is easily deceived by the dazzling wonders of science and technology or the explanatory seductions of philosophy. The question remains: Can religion, indeed, with its unique explanations and methods concerning existence, truly transcend philosophy and science?