A plan for Da’wah

I recently watched a video on Jordan Peterson’s Youtube channel where he has a discussion about Islam with the well-known speaker and vlogger Muhammad Hijab. While it was generally well received, and there was some fruitful discussion refuting the notion that Islam is a more violent religion than others, I feel that the opportunity for da’wah (inviting others to Islam) was not taken advantage of as much as possible by Muhammad Hijab. In my opinion, this is because he lacks knowledge of the Sufi tradition, he failed to address the chief concerns of Peterson, and instead fell back on the combative discourse he has developed in public debates and commenting on others in his vlog to defend Islam against atheism and the doctrines of other religions.

Firstly I must acknowledge that public speaking is a difficult task, and any efforts by a fellow Muslim to defend the Dīn of Allah should be commended. However, I believe that some constructive criticism is due where methodology is concerned. Muhammad Hijab is highly educated with a PhD from a prestigious university in the UK. Nevertheless he may have failed in this instance to seize upon the essence of Jordan Peterson’s discourse, the reason why he is popularly listened to, even among Muslims, and why his positive traits and focus as an intellectual need to be addressed differently.

Jordan Peterson talks about a return from our society’s obsession with rights and freedoms to Truth and responsibilities. Talking about metaphysical reality has been an anathema in modern universities since Immanuel Kant. Post-modernism focuses on deconstructing without constructing anything to fill its place. Peterson’s psychological expertise coupled with his diverse interests in literature, politics and philosophy give him the attributes simultaneously of a life coach and political touchstone for the disaffected, especially conservative young white heterosexual males who have been consistently vilified for 50 years by the liberal left which dominates university campuses. He combines all this with a charismatic earnestness and a highly logical way of speaking. With his popularly available talks on the life lessons derived from a Jungian analysis of the archetypes present in famous stories, including religious Biblical narratives, he has the potential to reopen the door of traditional religion to a generation who are otherwise heavily conditioned to keep it closed. While he identifies with the Christian tradition as his heritage, he is not a bigot. Rather he maintains a scholarly open mind to where logical discussion will take him. I feel that Muhammad Hijab understood this, and perhaps took it to mean that throwing logical arguments at Peterson point blank would convince him on the spot. This is very counterproductive.

Peterson, whilst he speaks in a structured and logical way, is also a clinical psychologist by profession. The majority of his career has been concerned with the very unstraightforward and nebulous phenomena of the human mind; dreams, neuroses, psychoses, depression and dysfunctional relationships are the bread and butter of the clinical practitioner. And these issues are not solved simply through the robotic formula of syllogistic logic. Peterson has to have the subtle perception of the artist, a level of insight into the individual yet universal symbolism of dreams which does not follow straightforward rules. Philosophical though he is, I believe that Peterson is ultimately more interested in answering the question of how to live the Good Life than the fine details of ontology.

In short, you have to take a human-centred approach. I believe this involves more of a focus on the points towards the end of this piece below. I know from experience that even people who think they are highly logical are not convinced by intellectual arguments alone. People are complicated and often their hearts need more convincing than their heads.

I once tried to make a schema for the main hurdles one needs to jump to prove to someone that Islam is the true religion and it went like this:

1. Prove that Allah, the Creator, exists. The main arguments being the cosmological argument, the ontological argument and the teleological argument.
2. Prove the elegance of the metanarrative. The metanarrative of Islam is the best fit with what we experience in life, as well as logic. The metanarrative is that God sends selected infallible human beings called prophets to guide humanity, that He has done this throughout human history and that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is the final Messenger abrogating all previous dispensations. It would also include the other creedal beliefs in angels, divine decree and so on. This involves, for example, working with inductive premises like ‘all men are mortal’ and showing how (following the Pascal’s Wager argument) belief in an afterlife and preparing for it with righteous deeds and establishing a prayerful relationship with the Creator is preferable (in terms of risk vs. reward) to taking the chance that nothing exists after death. In general, alternative states of consciousness and paranormal experiences are other phenomena that can be used in this ‘best fit’ approach.
3. Proof that the Quran and the Sunnah truly source back to one person in 7th century Arabia, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). This requires studies of the historical evidence for the textual integrity and preservation of the Quran and the authentication of the Sunnah traditions as they are explained by traditional Muslim scholars.
4. Demonstration that all the Islamic sciences are authentically rooted in the tradition of the Quran and Sunnah. This requires another presentation of the historical development of the four canonical schools of law, the orthodox schools of theology and the sourcing of the formalised Sufi tariqas within traditional Islam’s early community, and not as a process of ‘syncretism’ or ‘folk practice’ that accreted later. The brilliance of the Sanad tradition must be emphasised here. At this point if successful you have narrowed down the discussion to the premises of traditional Sunni Islam!
5. Show that while Islam is an integral whole, a universal religion, it historically was able to become embedded in diverse cultural frames and successfully integrate ideas, traditions and culture from outside of its temporal Arabian origin. For example, the Baghdad translation movement which resulted in the defence of Islamic doctrine using a modified form of Greek Aristotelian logic, and the dissemination and development of medical and mathematical knowledge. This subtly starts to address the psychological needs of the person you are addressing (fear of losing identity).
6. Hone in on the psychological needs which Islam directly addresses. Islam in the Quranic and Muhammadan dispensation is the religion for the end times, and it speaks to modernity’s post-enlightenment humanism, existential ennui, alienation from nature and secular collapse of belief in the Christian narrative, with a strong tradition of purifying the human self in a life affirming embodied way and the doctrine of Fitrah.
7. Leave theory and show examples of inspiring Islamic character through the Sirah of the Prophet (PBUH) and from the biographies of his companions (RA), Muslim saints and major figures throughout the centuries, as well as the beauty they left behind in poetry, architecture etc. Don’t forget, of course, to have the best behaviour in your own interactions with the person so that the water is not made murky by a dirty vessel!

And Allah is the One who guides.