The Work That Does Not Stop

My daily routine is a continuous and continued one. By its very nature, by the grace of God, it does not stop, regardless of occasions or circumstances. At its core, it consists in working on understanding, calculation, proof, and programming in my theoretical-physics research, always trying to bring one project or another to completion. Some of these projects go back nearly twenty years and are still unresolved. Despite all the disappointments I have encountered in this field, this remains my absolute priority.

I then continue my routine and turn—truly as a form of respite—to reading in philosophy, psychology, or scientific and philosophical fiction. At present, I am reading Foundation by the American Jewish science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It is a remarkable book by a remarkable writer. Asimov regarded Zionism as a trap and believed that Judaism had no need of it. He once said:

“What are we doing? We are building ourselves a ghetto, in a small corner of a vast Muslim sea… and the Muslims will never forget, and will never forgive…”

The paradox today is to find Arabs and Muslims who are Zionists—one of the strangest contradictions of our time.

After that, I may write down one of my ideas: on the Theory of Every Consciousness, on psychological existentialism, on the Theory of Multiple Islams, or a reflection on the history of Algeria and history in general, or a meditation on the Arab–Berber question, or on the Sunni–Salafi problem.

I admit here that I in fact try to refrain—and to restrain—myself from writing in these areas, because I do not truly wish to get involved in them, as they are not my original field of specialization. Yet these ideas often build up in my mind and imagination to such a degree that I am left with no choice but to write, compelled to do so in order to find relief. Writing has thus become, in this sense, a form of therapy—one that has helped me greatly to preserve my psychological and intellectual balance.

I therefore have many ideas that are almost ready, already drafted, but not yet finalized—original ideas waiting to be edited and turned into a unified and coherent framework. This task is carried out with the support of my linguistic partner, artificial intelligence (ChatGPT), which has greatly helped me to organize this vast and far-reaching project, and to achieve a finer command of both the Arabic and English languages. I should also note that, before the advent of AI, this work was considerably more tedious and slower; some of my writings from that earlier period are available on my blogs:

https://badisydri2.blogspot.com/
https://badisydri3.blogspot.com/

In this context, I should mention that I am close to finishing a new book, after a long and sustained effort, in which my ideas on consciousness over the past ten years are crystallized. In it, I present in particular my theory, the Theory of Every Consciousness, which I see as occupying an intermediate position between the physical Theory of Everything and the metaphysical Theory of Every ʿAyn, which I had developed many years ago. Four papers have already emerged from this theory and are published on the philosophical archive: https://philpeople.org/profiles/badis-ydri

As for entertainment, I watch American drama. For example, I am currently watching Vikings, an enjoyable series from which I have learned a great deal about the history of the Vikings in England, Ireland, France, and Europe more broadly.

This is my daily routine.

I go to the university only for teaching or examinations—which are the worst days for me—or for administrative matters, or for research—which are the best days—when I meet those who still wish to learn and to work in theoretical physics. They are few, and they grow fewer with time.

But it does not matter. My daily routine does not require the university, nor an office—I do not, in fact, have one despite nearly fifteen years spent in it—nor collaborators, especially since I have come to rely largely on artificial intelligence. It needs only the home. And although conditions at home have themselves become unfavorable, I still continue this daily routine. I cannot in fact stop working, even if I try—and I truly have tried.

There is, however, one thing that can bring this entire routine to a complete halt: Facebook. Once the account is open, everything goes out the window—no theoretical physics, no philosophy, no science fiction, no writing, no thinking, no creating. I cannot even watch television. Facebook, quite simply, destroys everything without effort. 

That is why, whenever I open my Facebook account, I soon find myself forced to close it again—in order to concentrate, to prevent my mind from scattering and my will from collapsing, and to be able to work, remain effective, and produce something, however little.

Multi-Islam and Multi-Muhammad and One-Qur’an

Islam, and religion in general, can be understood as emergent phenomena, subject to psychological and civilizational initial conditions, just as universes are subject to cosmological initial conditions.

The Islam we know, therefore, is only one bubble within a wider space of religious possibilities, or one self-disclosure within a possible series of self-disclosures of an enduring Islamic essence.

If Ibn ʿArabī holds that this universe is one of the self-disclosures of God, then I claim that this Islam we live is likewise a self-disclosure of God — but on the level of history, consciousness, and civilization, not on the level of matter.

In the language of cosmology:
this Islam is one bubble within a broader space of possible religious bubbles.

In the language of philosophical science-fiction:
this Islam is one repetition within a possible sequence of repetitions of the “Star Maker” — that is, God.

Just as this universe is only one universe among the self-disclosures of divine existence, this Islam is only one Islam among the self-disclosures of the divine essence in the realm of consciousness.

The prophetic emergence of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ﷺ within the Arabian Peninsula made tribal social structure, naql or transmission-centered religiosity, existential violence, and fear of metaphysics dominant factors in the crystallization of historical Islam — in the form of an Islam that is predominantly Sunni, later transformed, almost entirely, into a Salafi mode.

I claim that had the mission occurred in another civilizational environment, the Islamic essence would necessarily have self-disclosed in another form — not necessarily better or worse in itself (that judgment belongs elsewhere) — but necessarily different.

Had Muhammad ﷺ been sent in Europe, Islam would have been dominated by European rationalism — something we partially witnessed in the Muʿtazilites and the philosophers within civilizational Islam.

Had he been sent in Persia or India, Islam would have been dominated by Batini or Ishrāqī mysticism — something that historically appeared in Iran and Iraq; Shiʿism itself may be understood as the living self-disclosure of this latent Islamic inwardness.

Had Muhammad ﷺ been Amazigh-Berber in North Africa, I claim Islam would have self-disclosed as a metaphysical Sunni-Sufi synthesis, in which tradition, rational philosophy, and illuminative esotericism would merge in a form closer — in my view — to the spiritual core of Islam. We already glimpse this synthesis in the immense number of major Sufi figures produced by North Africa: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and al-Andalus — above all, Shaykh al-Akbar Ibn ʿArabī.

We therefore live in one particular Islamic bubble (in the sense of the multiverse). Islam is not one Islam, but a multiplicity of Islams (multi-Islam); Muhammad is not one Muhammad, but a multiplicity of Muhammads (multi-Muhammad). The Star Maker, or God, did not create only this universe, but a multiplicity of universes, Islams, and Muhammads.

Only God — the Star Maker — is one, and the Qur’an is one, because it is the Word of God transmitted by Gabriel to these multiple Muhammads in these multiple universes.

Thus we must distinguish between Islam as a historical crystallization — which is what we live — and Islam as the message of the Star Maker to existence. The true essence of Islam is closer to the plurality of Islams, i.e. to multi-Islam than to this single Islam we inhabit, since that plurality contains this Islam and all the other Islams of the other bubbles.

We emphasize again that the Islams of “multi-Islam” and the Muhammads of “multi-Muhammad” do not necessarily imply simultaneous historical existence, but rather ontological existence within the space of possibility. Just as in cosmology we speak of parallel universes not because they exist in our time, but because their existence is possible and objective within the structure of the laws — and if they exist, they exist in their own time and their own bubbles.

In other words, we live today within a specific historical crystallization of Islam, arising from the coupling of revelation with a particular psychological and civilizational environment. This Islam is not Islam in its absolute essence, but one particular solution to a broader cosmic-spiritual equation. Just as the laws of nature permit a space of possible universes, the Islamic essence permits a space of possible self-disclosures. The Islam we know is one bubble in this space — not the essence itself.

Or, in the language of philosophical science-fiction: we live the n-th iteration of Islam, not Islam itself, just as Isaac Asimov portrayed civilizations moving through historical recurrences in Foundation. In that novel, civilization passes through successive imperial cycles; and we live today at the very beginning of what he called the “1st Galactic Empire.”

For the Star Maker, universes within the multiverse may be conceived as forms of divine time. We live today in Islam number n — the n-th universe, the n-th bubble, the n-th divine moment: the Islam of Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh, sent in the Arabian Peninsula. It is an Islam dominated by Salaf authority, within which Muʿtazilite, Batini, and Sufi elements managed to survive — an Islam historically crystallized in the form we now inhabit, a form which troubles us because we can no longer clearly discern what within it is invariant and what is contingent. The invariant features are clearly the message contained in the word of Qur’an, not any interpretation.

Then before this Islam there was another Islam, and after it there will be another Islam — just as before this universe (this bubble n) there was bubble n − 1, and after it there will be bubble n + 1.

Further developments of this theory will follow, God willing.

(Algeria, Berber, Augustine) vs. (Ireland,Celt, Patrick)

 

Abstract

This essay compares Algeria and Ireland as two edge-zones of the Roman world that followed inverted civilizational paths. Algeria lay at Rome’s southern heart and was deeply Romanized through conquest and administration; Ireland lay beyond Roman rule and was never conquered. Yet the result was paradoxical: Ireland became profoundly Roman in culture, while Algeria—once fully Roman—became un-Roman.

The essay argues that civilizations endure not through conquest, but through metaphysical and psychological transmission. Rome entered Algeria as a material power, but Ireland as an ideal one through Christianity. When Islam later re-centered North Africa’s metaphysical world, Roman identity could not survive. Ireland, by contrast, internalized Roman-Christian consciousness without Roman rule.

At the center of this contrast stand Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Patrick—Romans by culture, not by blood. Augustine, a Berber in origin, articulated the psychological grammar of Western interiority—memory, divided will, and historical consciousness—at the end of Roman Africa. Patrick transmitted that interiority to Ireland not as empire, but as sacred language and worldview. Both were saints, yet their lasting power lies not in sanctity alone, but in their role as architects of inwardness.

The essay concludes that empires vanish, but civilizations persist through migratory forms of consciousness, carried by thinkers and saints rather than by armies or states. 

In both Algeria and Ireland, the received language acted as a migratory form of consciousness. Arabic displaced Amazigh, just as Latin displaced Irish, though by different means. In Ireland, Latin became the language of religion and learning, displacing Irish symbolically but not socially, before English later replaced Latin administratively. In Algeria, Arabic went further, becoming through settlement and mixing both the language of religion and everyday life. In both cases, language reordered the center of consciousness, shaping truth, tradition, and identity.

Algeria and Ireland: Two Inverted Roads of Rome

Algeria and Ireland stand at opposite edges of the Roman world. Algeria lay at its southern heart and was conquered, urbanized, and deeply Romanized. Ireland lay beyond Rome’s political reach and was never invaded or administered by Roman power. Yet the outcome was inverted: Ireland became profoundly Roman in form, while Algeria, once thoroughly Roman, became almost entirely un-Roman.

Rome entered Algeria as a material power—armies, cities, law, and administration. It entered Ireland as an ideal power—Christianity, Latin learning, sacred time, and metaphysical grammar. When Islam later entered North Africa, it replaced the metaphysical center itself; Romanity could not survive such a shift. Ireland, by contrast, internalized Rome through Christianity without ever experiencing Roman rule.

Civilizations do not endure through conquest. They endure through metaphysics.

Hippo and Augustine of Hippo

Hippo Regius, today Annaba, is a city that once stood at the intellectual center of a world that no longer exists. It is here that Augustine of Hippo articulated the psychological grammar of Western civilization. Augustine is not a Roman administrator, nor merely a Christian theologian. He is the thinker who defined inwardness: time as memory, the divided will, guilt as interior law, history as destiny. Rome was only the medium. The message was psychological.

Hippo and Carthage formed a Numidian–Carthaginian North African world that reached its highest interior expression in Augustine and then vanished as a civilization. What survived was not Rome, but Augustine’s consciousness, which migrated north and became Europe.

Islamic civilization follows the same structure. Its psychological articulation is not the Arab conqueror, but al-Ghazālī, who defined doubt, intention, sincerity, and the limits of reason. Arabs transmitted Islam and Arabic to North Africa as Rome transmitted Christianity and Latin; both empires disappeared, leaving only the message and the language.

Rome and Arab rule are gone.
Latin Christianity and Arabic Islam remain—paradoxically both ghostly, remembered only because Augustine and al-Ghazālī cannot be forgotten.
Civilizations endure not through conquest, but through the thinkers who teach humanity how to be inward.

Augustine and Patrick: Romans by Culture, Not by Blood

Augustine of Hippo and Saint Patrick are often described as “Romans,” yet neither fits the simple ethnic or imperial meaning of the term. Augustine was a Berber (Numidian) by origin, living in North Africa; Patrick was a Celt from Roman Britain. In both cases, Romanity was not a matter of blood, but of culture, language, and interior formation.

Augustine is claimed as Roman because he wrote in Latin, thought within Roman-Christian categories, and belonged to a Roman civic world. Yet his psychological depth, his sensitivity to interior conflict, memory, and will, emerges from a Numidian–African context rather than from Rome itself. He is Roman in expression, African in depth. Rome gave him the language; North Africa gave him the soul.

Patrick is similar. He was not Irish, and not “English” in any later sense, but a Romano-Celtic Christian shaped by the late Roman world of Britain and Gaul. When he came to Ireland, he carried Rome not as empire, but as metaphysical grammar: Latin Christianity, sacred history, and a new interior orientation. Like Augustine, Patrick is Roman not by conquest, but by consciousness.

In this sense, both figures reveal the same civilizational truth. Rome’s most enduring legacy was not territorial control, but the ability to produce minds who could carry Rome beyond Rome. Augustine articulates Roman-Christian interiority at the moment Rome dissolves in North Africa. Patrick transmits that interiority to a land Rome never ruled.

Both are thoroughly Roman in culture, yet neither is Roman in origin. And both outlive Rome itself.

They show that civilizations do not survive through peoples or empires, but through cultural and psychological forms capable of migration. Rome vanished as a state. It survived as a way of being human.

Amazigh and Celts: Western Europe and North Africa’s Deep Parallels

Algeria and Ireland look far apart on the map, but historically they play strikingly similar roles. At the core of both stands a deep indigenous substrate: the Amazigh (Berbers) in North Africa and the Celts in Ireland. Neither built large empires, yet neither could be erased. Both were tribal, kin-based, poetic cultures—rooted in land, memory, and resilience. History did not replace them; it mixed with them.

Because of their geography—maritime, fertile, and positioned at the edge of larger worlds—both regions became zones of convergence. Sea-oriented peoples arrived first. In Ireland, the Northmen (Vikings) founded cities like Dublin and mixed with the Celts, producing Norse-Gaelic societies. In North Africa, Phoenicians and Carthaginians founded ports such as Hippo (Annaba) and blended with Numidian populations. In both cases, these maritime peoples created cities, trade networks, and hybrids—then disappeared as distinct identities.

Later came universal religions and imperial languages. Ireland absorbed Latin Christianity without Roman conquest; Algeria absorbed Arabic and Islam, partly through conquest but decisively through settlement and mixing. Here lies a crucial difference with Rome: Arabs did not rule North Africa as a thin administrative layer. They migrated, settled, and intermarried—much as the Northmen and later the English did in Ireland. Language became vernacular; identity became embodied.

Rome ruled Algeria but did not become its people. The Arabs did.
Rome never ruled Ireland, yet its culture arrived through Christianity and endured.

This is the key parallel. Amazigh and Celts are not peripheral peoples; they are civilizational anchors. Empires pass through them, traders and raiders mix with them, religions re-author them—but they persist, transformed rather than erased.

Algeria and Ireland are not anomalies. They are mirrors.
Different histories, same structure: deep substrates that absorb the world without disappearing into it.

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Ibn Taymiyyah: Anti-Epistemology, Islamic Schism, Five Positions on Revelation/Consciousness Duality and the Epistemology-Theology Divide

Ibn Taymiyyah versus al-Ghazālī, Ibn ʿArabī, and Ibn Sīnā: The Struggle Over “Salaf”

The real disagreement in classical Islamic thought is not about revelation itself, but about how finite human cognition can relate to infinite divine meaning. All major positions agree that revelation is true; what they dispute is the mode of access to that truth.

Historically, three major epistemic responses emerged.

1. Tafwīḍ (dignified suspension)

Tafwīḍ affirms revelation while suspending claims about its ultimate reality. One accepts the text as true without specifying its modality or inner nature. This position preserves divine transcendence and epistemic humility, recognizing the limits of human understanding without denying meaning altogether.

2. Taʾwīl (reinterpretation)

Taʾwīl proceeds when literal meaning fails or when conflicts arise. In such cases, the text is carefully reinterpreted in order to preserve coherence between revelation and reason. This approach is methodical, honest, and intellectually responsible, operating within regulated hermeneutical principles rather than arbitrary speculation.

Its exemplary representative is Al-Ghazali, who not only articulated taʾwīl with exceptional rigor but was also the first to recognize its intrinsic limitations. Precisely because of this awareness, al-Ghazālī was also the first to appreciate the legitimacy of moving, when necessary, either back to the first position (tafwīḍ), grounded in epistemic humility, or forward to the third position (takhyīl), which acknowledges the symbolic and imaginal mediation of transcendent truth.

 

3. Takhyīl / Khayāl (symbolic ontology)

The third position holds that revelation, insofar as it enters cognition, language, and spacetime, can only do so symbolically. Ibn Sina and Ibn Arabi recognized this constraint and constructed a full theory of the imaginal realm—real both in consciousness and in the world—where symbolic forms possess genuine ontological status. Here, symbolism is not rhetorical decoration but the very mode through which transcendent truth becomes accessible.

These three orientations—associated respectively with the Salaf (tafwīḍ), Al-Ghazali (taʾwīl), and Ibn Sīnā / Ibn ʿArabī (takhyīl)—do not disagree about revelation itself. They agree on a crucial point:

Revelation exceeds ordinary human cognition.

Their disagreement concerns how finite minds may legitimately relate to that excess.

4. Ibn Taymiyyah and the Fourth Position: Ithbāt

Ibn Taymiyyah represents a fourth position, commonly termed ithbāt (affirmation). In substance, this stance can be characterized as the claim that:

revelation equals ordinary human cognition.

That is revelation is fully commensurate with ordinary human cognition. Meaning is thus affirmed directly, without suspension, reinterpretation, or symbolic mediation.

Ibn Taymiyyah goes further by asserting that the true position of the Salaf is not tafwīḍ, but precisely this form of ithbāt. In doing so, he redefines Salafī authority retroactively, excluding positions that historically coexisted within early Islamic thought.

From this perspective, the earlier three approaches are not merely mistaken but defective—either evasive (tafwīḍ), intrusive (taʾwīl), or misleading (takhyīl).

5. Nested Levels, Not Rival Doctrines: Our Position

Yet the above three positions do not, in fact, contradict one another. They form nested epistemic levels, not mutually exclusive doctrines. One may stop at tafwīḍ out of humility, proceed to taʾwīl when coherence demands it, or explore takhyīl when confronting the limits of language and cognition—without compelling others to follow.

The tension introduced by Ibn Taymiyyah arises not from defending revelation as such, but from collapsing a layered epistemic structure into a single permissible mode of understanding—his own—thereby denying the plurality of legitimate cognitive relations to divine meaning.

This tension, introduced by him in the eighth Islamic century, functions effectively—and by analogy to Christianity—like a schism within the body of Islam: it is not a dispute over revelation itself, but a rupture over who may legitimately access, interpret, and relate cognitively to divine meaning.

The classical tradition, at its richest, did not enforce uniform access to transcendence. It acknowledged that truth may exceed cognition—and that different minds may justifiably meet that excess at different levels.

6.Which Positions Are Truly Epistemic?

Tafwīḍ, taʾwīl, and takhyīl are genuinely epistemic positions, since each directly addresses the problem of how finite human cognition relates to infinite divine meaning—whether by acknowledging cognitive limits, regulating interpretation, or theorizing symbolic mediation. Our nested synthesis is likewise epistemic at a meta-level, ordering these approaches as legitimate stages rather than rival doctrines. By contrast, Ibn Taymiyyah’s position of ithbāt is not truly epistemic: it does not analyze the conditions or limits of knowing, and then proceeds to monopolize this mode of understanding as the only legitimate one.

Ahl al-Tafwīḍ

Ahl al-Tafwīḍ (the people of suspension) hold that the revealed text is true, yet its ultimate meaning is fundamentally unknowable. They affirm the wording without specifying its intent or modality, deliberately suspending interpretation. This stance preserves reverence and safeguards divine transcendence, not by abolishing understanding altogether, but by refusing detailed and determinate understanding. There is always a minimal level of comprehension—recognition, affirmation, and submission—but the cost is the deliberate suspension of articulated meaning.

Ibn Taymiyyah objects to this position, which he characterizes polemically as ahl al-tajhīl—those who cause or institutionalize ignorance. This critique is striking, given that the Salaf themselves largely adhered to a form of tafwīḍ. In Ibn Taymiyyah’s view, however, refusing interpretation does not merely restrain speculation; it effectively evacuates revelation of communicable meaning. Tafwīḍ, he argues, paralyzes reason and risks reducing faith to silence rather than intelligibility. For him, revelation is meant to guide and inform the intellect, not to suspend it indefinitely.

Nevertheless, this position remains internally coherent. Its coherence, however, is achieved through principled abstention rather than resolution: it avoids error not by correcting understanding, but by limiting how far understanding is allowed to go.

Ahl al-Ta'wil

Ahl al-Taʾwīl (the people of reinterpretation) hold that the revealed text means something that is cognitively accessible. This point is crucial: everyone agrees that revelation has meaning, but the dispute concerns access to that meaning. Unlike tafwīḍ, which maintains that what the text ultimately means cannot be accessed by the intellect, taʾwīl insists that meaning must be reachable, even when it is not given directly by the literal wording.

Accordingly, when the literal sense and apparent (ẓāhir) meaning of the text conflicts with reason, Ahl al-Taʾwīl argue that the text must be reinterpreted. The literal sense is not denied arbitrarily, but displaced in favor of a deeper, rationally coherent meaning. Interpretation here is explicit, methodical, and governed by principles aimed at harmonizing revelation with reason. Interpretation here is neither suspended nor implicit, but explicit, systematic, and self-conscious.

Ibn Taymiyyah objects to this approach on principled grounds. In his view, taʾwīl subordinates naql (transmitted revelation) to prior rational frameworks, allowing reason to dictate in advance what revelation may or may not mean. This, he argues, fragments religious authority, since differing rational premises inevitably generate divergent interpretations. Once reinterpretation is licensed as a rule, disagreement becomes structurally endless rather than exceptional.

Again, Ibn Taymiyyah’s concern is coherent. Yet the approach he polemically labels Ahl al-Taʿṭīl or Ahl al-Bidʿa—most notably represented by the Muʿtazila and the Ashʿarīs—is internally consistent within its own epistemic commitments. These schools do not reinterpret arbitrarily; they operate within clearly articulated rational and theological frameworks that regulate meaning and constrain disagreement.

The objection that reinterpretation is norm-governed by external rational criteria is therefore true, but not disqualifying. Such criteria are precisely what make taʾwīl coherent rather than ad hoc. The real risk lies elsewhere: that revelation may be transformed from a source of meaning into a field continuously renegotiated by competing intellects.

In Ibn Taymiyyah’s own approach, this danger is not eliminated but displaced. The open interpretive process is effectively halted by his own reinterpretation, which functions as a terminal authority. This maneuver is more problematic than the substance of taʾwīl itself, since it replaces plural, regulated reasoning with a singular closure—thereby threatening rational autonomy and free will rather than genuinely protecting revelation.

Ahl al-Takhyil

Ahl al-Takhyīl (the people of imagination) maintain that revelation points to truths that lie beyond direct cognitive grasp. Because such truths cannot be presented in their naked reality, prophetic discourse necessarily employs images, metaphors, and symbolic forms. Ordinary people, they argue, grasp meanings through images rather than through abstract essences or things-in-themselves. Revelation is therefore pedagogical in nature: its language is not a literal ontology, but an educative medium adapted to the cognitive capacities of its audience.

Ibn Taymiyyah objects to this position on several grounds. He argues that it demotes scripture from a bearer of truth to a merely rhetorical device, privileges philosophers and speculative elites over the general community of believers, and introduces a stratified epistemology in which access to truth is unevenly distributed. Revelation, on this view, risks becoming a set of symbols for the masses while its “real” meanings are reserved for an intellectual minority.

That objection is understandable. It reflects a legitimate concern for the universality of revelation and the moral danger of epistemic elitism, even if it does not, by itself, refute the symbolic account of prophetic language.

Ahl al-Takhyil: A Map Is Not the Territory, But It Is Not a Lie Either

The claim of takhyīl—as articulated by philosophers and symbolic theologians such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Arabi—is not that the prophet deliberately misleads people because they cannot understand. That formulation already presupposes a moral fault. The actual claim is epistemic rather than deceptive.

The position is this:

The prophet communicates truth in the only mode in which it can be received by a finite, embodied, historically situated human community. When the reality in question exceeds direct conceptual grasp, non-literal language is not a lie but a necessity. Images, metaphors, and symbols are not falsehoods; they are vehicles of access. They point beyond themselves without pretending to exhaust what they signify.

To call this “misleading” assumes that truth must always be stated in literal, ontological propositions. But that assumption is exactly what is being rejected. Pedagogical adaptation is not deception. A map is not the territory, but it is not a lie either. Likewise, symbolic language does not negate truth; it mediates it.

What Ibn Taymiyyah does—by labeling this view takhyīl in a derogatory sense—is to moralize an epistemic limitation. He reframes a structural constraint (the gap between ultimate reality and human cognition) as intentional manipulation. This is why disagreement becomes personal: differences in theories of knowledge are recast as failures of sincerity or integrity. 

The real contrast between the formulations of Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ʿArabī, on the one hand, and Ibn Taymiyyah’s polemical reconstruction of their position, on the other, is therefore this:

• Symbolic view:
  The prophet speaks truthfully, but truth itself requires symbolic form to be accessible.

• Polemical reframing:
  The prophet “misleads” because symbols are treated as substitutes rather than as necessary mediations.

Once this distinction is restored, the accusation collapses. The issue is not honesty versus deception, but direct realism versus mediated intelligibility.

The Problem with Literal Absolutism

Ibn Taymiyyah attacked all three positions as errors and claimed instead that:

• Scripture means exactly what it says

• No allegory, no reinterpretation, no suspension is needed

• Everything essential is already fully knowable

This amounts to an unacknowledged fourth position:

The claim that human intellect fully coincides with divine meaning.

Epistemologically, this collapses the hermeneutic gap and denies the limits of cognition.
Ironically, this position still performs re-interpretation, but refuses to acknowledge it.

Ibn Taymiyyah: Literal Immediacy as First Principle

The decisive move in Ibn Taymiyyah’s position is thus not a conclusion reached at the end of argument, but an implicit first principle: revelation is fully commensurate with ordinary human cognition. From the outset, revelation is assumed to be directly intelligible without remainder.

On this basis, everything else follows. Scripture is taken to mean exactly what it says; there is no need for allegory (takhyīl), reinterpretation (taʾwīl), or suspension (tafwīḍ), because nothing essential exceeds what the human mind can already grasp. The epistemic problem is not solved—it is preemptively denied.

This premise generates an impossible conjunction. The position maintains that revelation surpasses speculative reason, yet insists that no mediation is required and that no ignorance remains. The only way to sustain this is to collapse the distance between finite cognition and infinite meaning, identifying human understanding with divine intent. That move is not humility but epistemic absolutism: a claim of total semantic transparency.

Describing this stance as “megalomaniac” is therefore justifiable and diagnostic. It names the refusal to acknowledge any remainder, opacity, or excess of meaning—no hermeneutic gap, no undecidability, no future reinterpretation. What is implicitly asserted is: what is accessible to ordinary cognition already exhausts what revelation can mean.

The social power of this position lies in what it offers—certainty without interpretation, authority without mediation, obedience without doubt. Its danger lies in what it forecloses: disagreement becomes deviation, inquiry becomes suspicion, and history is frozen in the name of clarity.

What is defended here instead is explicit hermeneutics: the recognition that every access to meaning is mediated, every understanding partial, and every claim to transparency a claim to power. This is an epistemological stance, not a theological one.

Ibn Taymiyyah: Anti-Epistemology

Ibn Taymiyyah resolves the tension not by developing an epistemology, but by splitting reason itself. He rejects speculative, philosophical reason (naẓar, kalām) while affirming another form of reason, which he labels fiṭra—a supposedly natural, immediate, and universally shared mode of understanding. Revelation is said to exceed the former while perfectly coinciding with the latter.

This division is ad hoc. It is introduced precisely to secure the conclusion in advance: that revelation requires no mediation, reinterpretation, or suspension. Instead of analyzing how human cognition relates to transcendent meaning, the problem is dissolved by stipulation—by declaring one kind of reason illegitimate and the other infallibly adequate. The result is not an epistemic solution but a normative exclusion, where disagreement is explained away as corruption of fiṭra rather than as a genuine cognitive difficulty.

The Deeper Insight: Symbolicity as Cognitive Necessity

• If revelation is true in cognition, it must be symbolic

• Imagination (khayāl) is not deception — it is the interface between finite minds and infinite meaning

• The refusal of symbol is not humility, but epistemic overconfidence

Certainty without mediation is not truth — it is authority. 

Hence, our core claim is this: if revelation enters cognition and spacetime, it can only do so symbolically. This is not a theological thesis but a cognitive fact. Once revelation is expressed in language, received by finite minds, remembered, narrated, and enacted in history, it is already mediated. Symbolicity is therefore not optional, nor a later interpretive choice; it is intrinsic to the very conditions under which revelation can appear to human consciousness.

This is precisely why Ibn Sina and later Ibn Arabi undertake what can rightly be called a tour de force. They do not apologize for symbol, nor treat it as a mere pedagogical concession. Instead, they ontologize symbol.

For Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ʿArabī, khayāl is neither illusion nor rhetorical device, nor a simplification for the masses. For them, the Imaginal (Khayāl) is an ontological domain. It is a real intermediate mode of being, situated between pure intelligibility and brute materiality. Imaginal forms exist both in consciousness and in the world, and revelation necessarily belongs to this domain. Symbolic form is thus not a weakness of revelation, but an expression of ontological realism about cognition itself.

To dismiss this position as takhyīl in a derogatory sense only works if one assumes that literal language is the sole bearer of truth and that only one ontological register is real—assumptions that Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ʿArabī explicitly reject. Their position does not diminish revelation; it explains how revelation can be real for finite minds in a finite world.

Al-Ghazali occupies a different but complementary position. His approach is epistemologically strong: it recognizes the limits of reason, allows taʾwīl when needed, and suspends judgment where necessary. Its weakness—as he himself explicitly noted—is not epistemological but sociological: it never fully closes, never finally settles, and satisfies neither those who crave certainty nor those who crave ultimate truth. For this very reason, al-Ghazālī himself remained dissatisfied on both counts. His stance is therefore philosophically careful yet politically fragile, intellectually honest but structurally incapable of serving as a final, authoritative closure.

Our own position integrates the three approaches that Ibn Taymiyyah attacks polemically, into a three-level structure rather than rival doctrines. First comes tafwīḍ: affirmation without ontological claims, sufficient in itself and a legitimate stopping point. Second comes taʾwīl: careful reinterpretation when questions or tensions arise, optional rather than mandatory. Third comes takhyīl / khayāl: the deepest level, where revelation is understood as symbolic truth with real ontological status. No one is forced to move beyond their level; epistemic humility and plurality are built into the structure.

Ibn Taymiyyah’s hostility misses this entirely. He treats these positions as mutually exclusive errors, whereas they are nested responses to the same excess of meaning. Ironically, he himself could be admitted at the level of taʾwīl: despite attacking reinterpretation, he constantly practices it—selecting meanings, privileging contexts, rejecting competing readings. The real divide is not interpretation versus no interpretation, but explicit hermeneutics versus denied hermeneutics.

Conclusion

If revelation is true within spacetime and human cognition, it must be symbolic; Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ʿArabī recognized this by granting the imaginal full ontological status, while our three-tier framework—tafwīḍ as sufficient, taʾwīl as optional, and symbolic ontology as deepest—respects cognitive limits and epistemic plurality, whereas Ibn Taymiyyah’s literalism collapses all levels into a single, falsely transparent one, even as he himself practices unacknowledged reinterpretation.

The positions Ibn Taymiyyah rejected are thus epistemologically stronger, ontologically more honest, and cognitively realistic.
They respect complexity, finitude, and the symbolic nature of all deep knowledge.

What is at stake is not theology —but epistemic humility versus epistemic closure.