Presented by Zia H Shah MD with help of Claude
The universe looks identical whether an unseen God sustains every particle at every instant or whether blind physical laws do the work alone. This is the central philosophical insight connecting Al-Ghazali’s 11th-century occasionalism to 21st-century quantum mechanics — and it carries radical implications for the epistemological divide between theism and atheism. What the naturalist calls “the laws of nature” and what the occasionalist calls “God’s habitual will” are empirically indistinguishable descriptions of the same observed regularities. Quantum mechanics, by revealing genuine causal gaps at the foundation of physical reality, makes this convergence not merely a metaphysical curiosity but a live scientific-philosophical question. The Quran anticipated this epistemological situation in a single verse — 6:103 — declaring that God transcends all vision yet encompasses all perception, Recite Quran placing the divine firmly beyond empirical detection while affirming His role as the ultimate ground of all causation. Quran Gallery App
This article examines six interconnected domains: Dr. Zia H Shah’s contemporary writings linking Ghazali to quantum physics; Ghazali’s original occasionalist doctrine; strong determinism in philosophy; the convergence of these two frameworks through quantum mechanics; the theological depth of Quran 6:103; and the key scholars whose work illuminates these connections.
Dr. Zia H Shah’s case for a quantum-age occasionalism
Dr. Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of The Muslim Times thequran and a physician in Upstate New York, has published fifteen articles (February–December 2025) in the “Occasionalism” category at The Glorious Quran and Science (thequran.love), constituting the most sustained contemporary attempt to bridge Ghazali’s theology with modern physics.
The foundational argument
Shah’s series begins with “Ghazali’s Occasionalism, The Miracle of Light and the Crown Verse of the Quran” (February 25, 2025), introducing the core doctrine: God is the sole true cause of all events, with created things possessing no independent causal power. He frames this through Ayat al-Kursi (Quran 2:255) and notes that “almost three-fourths of academic philosophers in the West believe in determinism,” Thequran but argues Ghazali’s occasionalism has been regaining ground since quantum mechanics emerged in the 1920s. The second article, “Does Al-Ghazali’s Occasionalism Naturally Follow From the Quranic Omniscience and Omnipotence of God?” (March 2, 2025), makes the theological case that occasionalism is a logical deduction from two divine attributes — if God is truly omniscient and omnipotent, allowing any real causal efficacy to natural objects would compromise both. thequran Thequran
The quantum mechanics connection
Three articles form the scientific core of Shah’s project. “Quantum Entanglement, Ghazali’s Occasionalism, and God’s Continuous Sustenance of the Universe” (March 5, 2025) connects the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics — awarded to Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger for experimentally confirming violations of Bell inequalities — to Ghazali’s denial of inherent causality. Shah argues that quantum entanglement’s demonstration of nonlocal, “acausal-seeming connections” provides “a striking parallel to al-Ghazali’s occasionalist contention that natural causation is ultimately an illusion.” The companion piece, “Quantum Mechanics and Al-Ghazali’s Occasionalism: A Philosophical and Scientific Argument” (March 11, 2025), extends this to quantum tunneling and wavefunction collapse, arguing that particles overcoming energy barriers they “classically shouldn’t be able to” and the observer-dependent nature of quantum measurement both reinforce the notion that “physical laws do not rigidly determine outcomes.” In “The Nobel in Physics 2022 Also Goes to Al Ghazali” (March 26, 2025), Shah metaphorically awards the Nobel to Ghazali, citing Karen Harding’s 1993 paper “Causality Then and Now: Al Ghazali and Quantum Theory” which draws parallels between occasionalism and the Copenhagen interpretation. thequranWikipedia
Quranic and narrative foundations
Shah builds a substantial scriptural case across several articles. “The Glorious Quran Endorses Al Ghazali’s Occasionalism” (March 26, 2025) catalogs verses including Q 35:41 (God holds the heavens and earth), Q 6:95 (God causes seeds to sprout), Q 55:29 (“Every day He is engaged in a new matter”), and Q 67:1-2 (life and death as divine acts). “Occasionalism in al-Ghazali’s Thought and the Quranic Emphasis on Divine Causality” (May 7, 2025) uses the Battle of Badr (624 CE) as the primary proof-text, where Q 8:17 declares “It was not you who threw… but Allah threw” — attributing military victory entirely to God. Shah concludes: “Al-Ghazali’s occasionalism is nothing other than the philosophical articulation of this Quranic faith: La ilaha illa’Llah, there is no deity — and no cause — except God.” Thequran
“From the Expression Inshallah to Al Ghazali’s Occasionalism” (March 7, 2025) traces the everyday Muslim expression “Inshallah” (if God wills) as the cultural-linguistic encapsulation of radical occasionalism. Shah describes the doctrine as “essentially the metaphysics of ‘Inshallah’” thequran Thequran and draws a parallel with David Hume, who “echoed Ghazali centuries later by arguing we only observe constant conjunction, not necessary connection.” ThequranThequran
Modern science, simulation, and cosmology
The most ambitious articles connect Ghazali to contemporary scientific paradigms. “Al-Ghazali’s Occasionalism and the Modern Understanding of the Universe” (May 13, 2025) argues that Big Bang cosmology vindicates Ghazali’s insistence on temporal creation against Avicenna’s eternal-universe thesis, Thequran calling the universe “radically contingent, having come into being from nothing physical.” Thequran Shah develops the metaphor: “The universe is like a grand theater where God is the only actor.” Thequran “From Simulated Universes to Occasionalist Metaphysics” (May 13, 2025) parallels Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument with occasionalism — both posit reality governed by an external agent — noting that “laws of nature are, in an occasionalist view, like the software of a simulation.” Thequran David Chalmers’ playful reformulation is quoted: “God said ‘Let there be bits!’ And there were bits.” Thequran
The determinism-to-occasionalism argument
Shah’s most philosophically rigorous piece, “Determinism, First Cause, and Al-Ghazali’s Occasionalism” (November 7, 2025), constructs a three-stage argument: determinism → First Cause → occasionalism. He engages Carl Sagan (“The Cosmos is all that is”), Bertrand Russell (“the universe is just there, and that’s all”), and Stephen Hawking’s “universe creating itself from nothing,” critiquing Hawking through George Ellis’s challenge: “Who or what ‘dreamt up’ the laws of physics?” thequran The article traces how once a First Cause is admitted, the step to occasionalism follows — God is not merely the initial spark but “continuously sustains reality,” with Thomas Aquinas quoted: “if God’s support were withdrawn, the universe would lapse back into nothingness.” Thequran
Shah’s recurring sources across the series include the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Karen Harding’s 1993 paper, the 2022 Nobel Prize materials, Kenneth R. Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God, classical tafsir from al-Tabari and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, and the M.A.S. Abdel Haleem Quran translation. It should be noted that while Shah’s quantum mechanics content accurately describes the science, his conclusion that quantum mechanics “supports” or “provides empirical evidence for” occasionalism represents a philosophical interpretation rather than established scientific consensus.
How Ghazali dismantled necessary causation
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Fandom presented his most influential arguments on causation Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in Discussion 17 of his Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers, c. 1095 CE). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that this discussion “is not triggered by any opposition to causality” per se, but rather “aims at forcing al-Ghazali’s adversaries, the falasifa, to acknowledge that all prophetical miracles reported in the Quran are possible.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The discussion opens with what has become the locus classicus of Islamic occasionalism:
“The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary, according to us. But with any two things, where ‘this’ is not ‘that’ and ‘that’ is not ‘this’ and where neither the affirmation of the one entails the affirmation of the other nor the negation of the one entails negation of the other, it is not a necessity of the existence of the one that the other should exist.” Thequran
The fire-and-cotton example remains the most famous illustration: “Fire, which is an inanimate thing, has no action. How can one prove that it is an agent? The only argument is from the observation of the fact of burning at the time of contact with fire. But observation only shows that one is with the other, not that it is by it and has no other cause than it.” AllzermalmerInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Ghazali further declares: “We admit the possibility of a contact between the two which will not result in burning,” Allzermalmer and identifies “the agent of the burning” as God alone. Philopedia
The philosophical move is precise: since cause and effect are logically distinct entities, no definitional or logical necessity connects them. Whatever connection exists is “the result of the Decree of God, which preceded their existence.” Ghazali targets Avicenna’s claim that causes logically necessitate their effects, Muslim Philosophy seizing on Avicenna’s notion of a “hidden syllogism” in causal judgments to declare that “existence with a thing does not prove being by it.”
The Ash’ari theological framework
Ghazali’s occasionalism is embedded in the Ash’arite school of kalam theology, thequran founded by Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari (874–936). The school’s metaphysical foundation is a distinctive Islamic atomism Wikipedia where the world consists of atoms conjoined to form bodies and accidents (properties) that reside in these atoms. Crucially, accidents exist for only a single instant and must be “continually created anew by God.” ThequranMuslim Philosophy Time itself is understood atomistically — discrete, indivisible moments rather than continuous flow. GhaybGhayb This means the entire qualitative fabric of the universe is recreated at each moment by direct divine action, Medium making the system “fundamentally occasionalistic.” Muslim Philosophy
Five key concepts structure this theology. ‘Ada (habit/custom) explains natural regularity: God ordinarily causes events in consistent sequences not because of necessity but because He chooses to govern His own behavior rationally — what we call “laws of nature” are properly “laws by which God chooses to govern his own behaviour.” WikipediaWikipedia Khalq (creation) refers to God’s continuous creative activity at every instant. Kasb (acquisition) attempts to reconcile divine omnipotence with human moral responsibility — God creates the act, but humans “acquire” it through intention. ThequranGhayb Continuous creation means God sustains the universe through perpetual re-creation. Atomism provides the metaphysical infrastructure for all of this.
Ghazali addresses the objection that his position makes knowledge impossible by arguing that “God has created within us knowledge that he will not bring about everything that is possible.” Tripod God’s habitual action provides sufficient regularity for practical knowledge, but this regularity is contingent on divine will and can be suspended for miracles. From Al-Iqtisad fi al-I’tiqad: “All temporal events, their substances and accidents, those occurring in the entities of the animate and the inanimate, come about through the power of God, exalted be He. He alone holds the sole prerogative of inventing them.” Academia.edu
The great critics
Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198) mounted the most famous rebuttal in Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence). WikipediaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy He charged Ghazali with self-refutation — “using causality to deny causality.” Islam-science He insisted that things have real natures (tabi’a) that determine their effects, and that denying natural causation renders all knowledge impossible: “to deny the existence of efficient causes which are observed in sensible things is sophistry.”
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149–1209) occupies a more complex position, developing what scholars call “conditional occasionalism” — every possible being is the direct creation of God, but some can only be created with preceding conditions that make them creatable. Cambridge Core Preceding events are conditions for possibility, not efficient causes. Academia.edu
Modern scholarship has complicated the simple reading of Ghazali as a “strict occasionalist.” Frank Griffel (2009) argues Ghazali leaves open the possibility that secondary causality is compatible with divine sovereignty Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “as long as it does not assume that any cause could stand on its own.” Oxford AcademicStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Jon McGinnis (2006) proposes that Ghazali holds created things have causal natures understood as passive powers requiring God’s actualization at every moment. ResearchGate
The path to Hume and the West
The parallel between Ghazali and David Hume (1711–1776) is among the most discussed in comparative philosophy. Where Ghazali wrote “observation only shows that one is with the other, not that it is by it,” Hume independently argued we observe only “constant conjunction” — never a “necessary connexion.” Thequran Both reject logically necessary causation; both argue observation reveals succession, not power. The critical difference: Ghazali’s critique serves a theistic purpose (God is the real cause), while Hume’s leads to skeptical agnosticism (we cannot identify any ultimate cause). ResearchGate As one scholar notes: “While Ghazali aimed to reject necessary causality in order to account for miracles, Hume used his theory of causality to reject the claim that miracles can occur.” J-humansciences
The transmission pathway ran through medieval Europe: Ghazali’s Maqasid al-Falasifa was translated into Latin, influencing nominalists including Nicholas of Autrecourt Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (as demonstrated by Harry Wolfson’s important 1969 article in Speculum). Mcmaster Malebranche (1638–1715), the greatest Western occasionalist, developed the doctrine within a Cartesian framework, Philosophyintrocourse and Hume was “a studious and astute reader of Malebranche.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Thus Ghazali’s arguments reached Hume through at least two centuries of philosophical transmission.
The clockwork universe and its quantum undoing
Strong (or hard) determinism holds that every event — including every human action, thought, and decision — is the inevitable consequence of antecedent conditions plus laws of nature. The term was coined by William James in 1884 to distinguish it from “soft determinism” (compatibilism). Its most famous articulation is Laplace’s Demon (1814):
“An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed… for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past could be present before its eyes.” thequran +2
The intellectual lineage runs deep. Spinoza (1632–1677) advanced the most radical version — necessitarianism — arguing “in nature there is nothing contingent, but all things are determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and to act in a certain way” (Ethics I, Prop. 29). Philopedia His famous observation on free will remains devastating: “Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.” Wikipedia Baron d’Holbach stanford (1770) stated it with Enlightenment bluntness: “The actions of man are never free; they are always the necessary consequence of his temperament.” Macromolecules
Quantum mechanics fractures the clockwork
The Newtonian clockwork universe shattered in the 1920s. Thequran Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (1927) showed that position and momentum cannot be simultaneously determined ScienceABC — not merely as an epistemic limitation but as an intrinsic ontological feature. Laplace’s demon requires exact knowledge of positions and momenta; the uncertainty principle ScienceABC denies this is possible even in principle.
The Copenhagen Interpretation holds that quantum mechanics is intrinsically indeterministic Wikipedia — probabilities are irreducible, and physical systems have no definite properties until measured. WikipediaTaylor & Francis Online Einstein objected: “God does not play dice.” Berkeley Lab He believed hidden variables must restore determinism. Bell’s Theorem (1964) proved that no local hidden-variable theory can reproduce all quantum predictions. WidelampWikipedia The 2022 Nobel experiments definitively confirmed nature violates Bell inequalities, ruling out local realism. Thequran +2
Yet determinism has not surrendered. Three interpretations attempt to preserve it:
- Many-Worlds (Everett, 1957): The universal wave function evolves deterministically; every measurement causes branching into parallel realities. PhysicssayswhatWikipedia Randomness is apparent — from the God’s-eye view, everything is determined.
- Bohmian Mechanics (de Broglie-Bohm): Particles have definite positions guided by a deterministic “pilot wave.” WikipediaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Bell himself endorsed it: “Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced… with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy However, the theory is intrinsically nonlocal. Scholarpedia
- Superdeterminism: Even the experimenter’s “choice” of what to measure is predetermined and correlated with the system, closing the loophole in Bell’s theorem. WikipediaWikipedia Bell described this escape route as requiring “absolute determinism in the universe, the complete absence of free will.” Wikipedia3 Quarks Daily
The convergence point where God might hide in quantum gaps
The philosophical convergence between strong determinism and occasionalism rests on a structural parallel: both deny independent causal power to secondary causes — they simply locate the determining agent differently. Determinism attributes determination to prior physical states plus laws; occasionalism attributes it to God’s direct will. Replace “the will of God” in Malebranche’s formulation with “the prior physical state plus laws of nature,” and you have essentially the same denial of autonomous causal power in created things. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Both frameworks account for observed regularity (determinism via lawful necessity; occasionalism via God’s rational, habitual mode of acting). Both face the same problem with human free will. And critically, both yield identical empirical predictions. No experiment can distinguish between a universe where physical laws necessitate outcomes and one where God wills those outcomes with perfect consistency.
Quantum indeterminacy as the causal joint
Quantum mechanics enters this picture as the meeting point because it creates what Austin Farrer called a “causal joint” — a point of potential contact between divine action and physical processes. Newdualism If quantum events are genuinely underdetermined by prior physical states (per the Copenhagen interpretation), then God could act at the quantum level to determine outcomes without violating any physical law. The laws specify only probabilities; God actualizes specific outcomes within those probability distributions.
The key thinkers who have developed this argument form a remarkable lineage. William Pollard (1958), a nuclear physicist and Episcopal priest, pioneered the idea in Chance and Providence, Cambridge Core arguing that what appears as quantum “chance” from a scientific perspective could be God’s providential guidance. Robert John Russell, founder of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at Berkeley, systematized this into Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA) Taylor & Francis Online through the landmark CTNS/Vatican Observatory Divine Action Project (1988–2003). Wiley Online LibraryHarding University Russell argues that “the collapse of the wave function occurs because of divine and natural causality working together even while God’s action remains ontologically different from natural agency.” This is “non-interventionist” because no physical law is violated, and “objective” because events would not have occurred precisely as they did without God’s specific action. Taylor & Francis Online
John Polkinghorne (1930–2021), the Cambridge particle physicist turned Anglican priest, Newdualism initially preferred divine action through chaotic systems rather than quantum events, Asbury Seminary introducing the concept of “active information” — God inputs non-energetic information at the level of chaotic systems. MDPI He raised four objections to quantum-level divine action, including the unresolved measurement problem and the availability of deterministic interpretations like Bohm’s. Universidad AustralResearchGate Nancey Murphy advocates that God acts in all quantum events, with divine descriptions “supervening” on natural descriptions without being reducible to them. Universidad Austral Ian Barbour (1999 Templeton Prize) asked pointedly: if one adopts a Copenhagen interpretation asserting intrinsic indeterminism, “one may ask if God is the ‘Great Determiner.’”
The epistemological argument for empirical indistinguishability
The most philosophically potent argument for convergence is epistemological. An atheist observer sees quantum randomness; a theist sees God’s continuous creative action; an agnostic sees the same observable universe and recognizes both interpretations are consistent with the data. As one analysis notes: “Given the inherent unpredictability of quantum events to human observers, any divine influence at this level would necessarily be hidden. Distinguishing a ‘natural’ quantum event from a divinely influenced one would be impossible. This approach preserves the integrity of scientific observations and theories, as divine action does not introduce observable anomalies.” Medium
Bell’s theorem strengthens this argument from an unexpected direction. If quantum events have no local physical hidden variables determining their outcomes, Ask a MathematicianWikipedia this leaves conceptual room for a non-physical “hidden variable” — God’s will. This is not a God-of-the-gaps argument in the traditional sense, because the “gap” is not due to ignorance of physical mechanisms but is claimed to be an ontological feature of reality itself. However, important caveats apply: Bell’s theorem does not rule out nonlocal hidden variables (Bohmian mechanics is fully deterministic), WikipediaWikipedia and if a deterministic interpretation proves correct, the quantum “gap” for divine action narrows. Russell himself acknowledges this hypothetical nature. Taylor & Francis Online
Ash’ari atomism meets quantum field theory
The parallels between Ash’ari physics and modern quantum theory are striking. Ash’ari atomism posits discrete units of space, time, and matter Ghayb continuously recreated by God Muslim Philosophy — paralleling Planck-scale discreteness in quantum mechanics and proposals in loop quantum gravity. McmasterMedium The Ash’ari doctrine that accidents (properties) exist for only a single instant and must be recreated Muslim PhilosophyGhayb parallels quantum field theory’s picture of the vacuum, where virtual particles are continuously created and annihilated. The quantum vacuum is not empty but seething with activity — echoing the Islamic notion that existence requires constant divine sustenance. As one commentator summarizes: “Al-Ghazali’s doctrine of constant divine involvement emerges not as an archaic quirk, but as perhaps the most coherent framework for uniting faith and reason in our understanding of the cosmos.” Thequran
Even the Many-Worlds interpretation has been connected to occasionalism: “MWI says from one state A, the evolution can produce multiple effect-outcomes in different branches rather than one predetermined result. Ghazali would phrase it as ‘God could have decreed otherwise’; MWI says ‘the other outcome does happen, just not in this world.’” Thequran
Quran 6:103 and the veil between Creator and creation
The verse and its layers of meaning
The Arabic reads: لَّا تُدْرِكُهُ الْأَبْصَارُ وَهُوَ يُدْرِكُ الْأَبْصَارَ ۖ وَهُوَ اللَّطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ
(Lā tudrikuhu al-abṣāru wa-huwa yudriku al-abṣāra wa-huwa al-Laṭīfu al-Khabīr)
The translations reveal the verse’s depth through their variations:
- Sahih International: “Vision perceives Him not, but He perceives all vision; and He is the Subtle, the Acquainted.” IslamAwakenedMy Islam
- Muhammad Asad: “No human vision can encompass Him, whereas He encompasses all human vision: for He alone is unfathomable, all-aware.” IslamAwakened
- Yusuf Ali: “No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things.” IslamAwakenedMy Islam
The key Arabic term al-Laṭīf denotes something “extremely subtle in quality, intangible and unfathomable.” Paired with al-Khabīr (the All-Aware), it creates a deliberate asymmetry: God is imperceptible yet all-perceiving — not an object within creation but the transcendent subject of all reality. Quran Gallery App
Classical tafsir reveals a millennium-old debate
Ibn Kathir (d. 1373) interprets the verse through the lens of the Beatific Vision debate, arguing that idrak (the word used for “perceive/grasp”) means comprehensive encompassment, not mere seeing. QuranX He reports ‘A’ishah’s position that whoever claims Muhammad saw his Lord “will have uttered a lie against Allah,” Quran.com but clarifies her denial as “a denial of the ability to encompass Him, meaning to perfectly see His grace and magnificence as He is, for that is not possible for any human, angel or anything created.” Surah Quran He cites the Hadith of the Veil: “His Veil is the Light — and if He removes it, the Light of His Face would burn every created thing that His sight reaches.” QuranX
Al-Tabari transmits Ibn Abbas’s crucial distinction: idrak means “encompassment” (ihāṭah), not mere vision (ru’yah). This distinction carries theological weight: “Whoever said it is just merely seeing has erred. For negating mere vision does not entail any praise or perfection, since the non-existent thing cannot be seen and that which a non-existing thing is described with cannot be perfection of praise.” Aqidah
Al-Razi (Fakhr al-Din, d. 1209), himself a key proponent of occasionalism, used this verse as a central proof-text for divine transcendence while maintaining that believers will see God in the Hereafter. His Asas al-Taqdis (Foundation of Declaring God’s Transcendence) is an explicit systematic refutation of anthropomorphism. Wikipedia
The Kashani Sufi commentary offers a remarkable epistemological argument: “How can vision perceive Him when it cannot perceive its own soul which is but a light from Him?” quranx If the human eye cannot perceive the soul — merely a ray of divine light — how could it perceive the Source? QuranX
Ma’arif ul-Quran (Mufti Muhammad Shafi) distills the philosophical core: “The Sacred Being of Allah is beyond the all-surrounding, all-comprehending overview of even reason and conjecture. The Being and Attributes of Allah are limitless while human senses, reason and imagination are all limited. It is obvious that the limitless cannot fit into the limited.”
Tanzih: the theology of utter transcendence
The verse is a cornerstone of tanzih (تنزيه) — the Islamic doctrine of divine transcendence, which purifies the concept of God from all creaturely attributes. Wikipedia Quran 42:11 states the principle most directly: “There is nothing like unto Him” (laysa ka-mithlihi shay’). Wikipedia Islamic theology navigates between two extremes: excessive tanzih leads to ta’til (divesting God of all attributes, associated with the Jahmiyya); excessive tashbih (similarity) leads to anthropomorphism. Wikipedia The orthodox position affirms God’s attributes while insisting they are unlike anything in creation (bilā kayf — “without asking how”). En-academic
Al-Maturidi (853–944) built his entire theological system on two pillars: tanzih and hikmah (divine wisdom). He insisted that anthropomorphic Quranic expressions (“hands,” “face,” “eyes” of God) must be reinterpreted to avoid “ontological confusion with creation.”
The epistemological divide illuminated by 6:103
The verse illuminates perhaps the deepest philosophical divide in human thought. Both the atheist and the devout Muslim agree on the empirical data: no visible God, regular natural laws, no routine miraculous interruptions. They part ways on interpretation.
The atheist observes that vision perceives God not, and concludes: therefore God does not exist — applying the principle that if something cannot be perceived, there is no reason to posit its existence. The Muslim hears the same verse and understands it as a theological principle: God should not be visible because God transcends the physical order. God’s imperceptibility is not evidence of absence but a necessary consequence of His nature as Creator rather than creature. The next verse (6:104) addresses this directly: “Indeed, there have come to you insights (baṣā’ir) from your Lord. So whoever chooses to see, it is for their own good. But whoever chooses to be blind, it is to their own loss.”
This connects directly to the occasionalism-determinism convergence. If God is the unseen cause behind all events (occasionalism), and God transcends empirical perception (6:103), then divine action is hidden behind the veil of natural law by design. The regularity of divine action creates the appearance of autonomous causation. Philosophyintrocourse God acts continuously and universally, but because He acts with perfect consistency reflecting His wisdom, His action appears as “natural law.” As the Wikipedia article on Occasionalism summarizes: “These are not laws of nature but laws by which God chooses to govern his own behaviour — in other words, his rational will.” Wikipedia +2
The verse thus predicts and validates the epistemological situation that quantum theology describes: the same physical universe is equally consistent with a godless deterministic framework and with continuous divine creative action. Medium The difference is not in what we observe but in what we believe about the ultimate ground of what we observe.
The scholarly architecture connecting these traditions
Islamic philosophy’s internal debate
The occasionalism debate within Islamic philosophy forms a spectrum. Al-Ash’ari (d. 935) denied all secondary causation: Wikipedia God rearranges atoms anew at every instant. Thequran +2 Al-Ghazali (d. 1111) mounted the philosophical defense in the Tahafut, FandomStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy though modern scholars like Frank Griffel argue he left room for secondary causality compatible with divine sovereignty. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209) developed “conditional occasionalism” Academia.edu and extended it to epistemology, arguing even human conceptualizations are directly given by God. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) mounted the counterattack, Wikipedia insisting things have real natures and that “to deny the existence of efficient causes observed in sensible things is sophistry.” Encyclopedia.com Key modern studies include Majid Fakhry’s Islamic Occasionalism (1958), Frank Griffel’s Al-Ghazali’s Philosophical Theology (2009), and Binyamin Abrahamov’s 1988 article in Studia Islamica on Ghazali’s evolving views.
Western occasionalism and the Hume connection
The transmission from Islamic to European thought ran through Latin translations of Ghazali and through Ibn Rushd and Maimonides. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Arnold Geulincx (1624–1669) developed the epistemic principle Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that one cannot cause what one does not know how to produce — strikingly reminiscent of Ghazali’s argument that inanimate fire cannot be an “agent.” Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) was the first to argue systematically for thoroughgoing occasionalism, developing the “necessary connection” argument, the “conservation is continuous creation” argument, and the “no knowledge” argument. Harry Wolfson’s 1969 Speculum article traced the connection between Nicholas of Autrecourt’s 14th-century arguments and Ghazali’s. Hume read Malebranche closely (Treatise, 158–160), completing the chain: Ghazali → medieval nominalists → Malebranche → Hume.
Quantum theology and divine action
The CTNS/Vatican Observatory Divine Action Project (1988–2003) produced five major volumes and established the field. Robert John Russell’s NIODA remains the most systematic proposal. Key works include Russell’s chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (2006), William Pollard’s Chance and Providence (1958), Polkinghorne’s Belief in God in an Age of Science (1998), Nancey Murphy’s Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (2006), Ian Barbour’s When Science Meets Religion (2000), and Nicholas Saunders’ Divine Action and Modern Science (2002). Mark Harris’s 2023 Zygon article, “Quantum Theology Beyond Copenhagen,” argues for theological engagement with quantum physics regardless of which interpretation prevails.
The philosophical foundations of causation
The causation debate spans three millennia. Aristotle’s four causes established the framework the falasifa defended and Ghazali attacked. Hume’s Treatise and Enquiry dismantled necessary connection from the empiricist side. Modern contributions include Nancy Cartwright’s The Dappled World (1999) questioning universal laws, Derk Pereboom’s Living Without Free Will (2001) on hard incompatibilism, and William Courtenay’s 1973 Harvard Theological Review article connecting kalam occasionalism with Western nominalism.
Conclusion: the same universe, two readings
The convergence examined here is not a forced analogy but a genuine structural isomorphism. Strong determinism and occasionalism share the same logical architecture — a single determining source, the denial of autonomous secondary causation, and an explanation for observed regularity. Quantum mechanics does not prove God’s existence, but it accomplishes something philosophically remarkable: it reveals that the physical world is not a closed causal system at the fundamental level, creating an ontological openness that is equally hospitable to divine action and to irreducible randomness. Bell’s theorem, by ruling out local hidden variables, ensures this openness is not merely epistemic but may be ontological.
Quran 6:103 stands as an extraordinary anticipation of this epistemological situation. A God who transcends all vision yet encompasses all perception is precisely the kind of God whose action would be empirically indistinguishable from natural law — hidden not through absence but through the very consistency of His creative will. The “veil” of natural regularity is not evidence against God but, on the occasionalist reading, the signature of His rational, habitual mode of acting.
Dr. Zia H Shah’s fifteen-article project represents the most sustained contemporary attempt to articulate this convergence for a Muslim audience, drawing on everything from the 2022 Nobel Prize to the Battle of Badr. Whether one finds the argument compelling depends ultimately not on physics but on metaphysics — on what one believes about the ground of being. The science is the same for everyone. The interpretation is where the paths diverge, and where they always have.
The Glorious Quran and Science 
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