From Orthodoxy to Radical Critique: An Epistemological Reading of Abdullah Al-Qasimi’s Religious Reason in Islamic Theology

Abstract

This study aims to examine the transformation of Abdullah al-Qasimi’s religious reason by comparing the epistemic structures of his early, transitional, and late writings and identifying the continuities and changes underlying his intellectual trajectory. While previous studies have largely interpreted his shift from defending Salafi-Wahhabi orthodoxy to criticizing religion, tradition, Arab society, and reason as a biographical or ideological rupture, this study approaches it as a transformation of religious reason. Employing qualitative library research, intellectual history, and philosophical-theological analysis, the study comparatively examines representative primary texts through nine analytical categories: the source of truth, epistemic authority, the function of reason, the status of revelation, the conception of tawhid, the object of critique, modes of argumentation, the treatment of doubt and certainty, and the relationship between reason and transcendence. Al-Ghazali provides the diagnostic framework, while Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’s Islamic Worldview serves as the evaluative horizon. The findings reveal a three-stage transformation. In the early phase, reason operates within firm doctrinal boundaries established by revelation and tawhid. In the transitional phase, inherited and mediated forms of authority become objects of critical scrutiny. In the late phase, this critical orientation extends to language, collective belief, religious representation, and reason itself. Despite these changes, an oppositional organization of truth and error persists across the three phases. This pattern is conceptualized as dichotomous reversal, in which the direction and objects of negation change without overcoming the underlying binary epistemic structure. The study therefore proposes epistemic integration as a reconstructive model that brings ʿaql, naql, ethical-spiritual formation, and tawhidic orientation into a mutually reinforcing relationship while preserving the critical function of reason.