Secularism: The Most Brutal and Deceptive Project in Human History
Mohammad Kourani — 2026.09.15
I would like to begin by emphasizing that I greatly appreciate the contribution of Dr. Abdelalim Mohamed Ismail. I believe that our disagreement is not about the necessity of science, reason, or human responsibility. Rather, it is a deeper disagreement concerning the authority that should guide the human mind when it seeks to build its future and save itself and the world.
I believe that the starting point of this dialogue is that a person who believes in God cannot approach history and existence as though divine guidance were absent or left to chance. If God created the human being, endowed him with reason, innate disposition, and will, and sent prophets and scriptures to him, then within a faith-based worldview it is natural to assume that God does not place guidance where it cannot be followed, nor leave humanity without a path toward understanding the purpose of its existence and how to regulate its relationship with itself, with others, and with the universe.
But if we place all religions, beliefs, and philosophies on the same level and then say that everything we possess is merely a collection of human experiences equal in epistemic value, we lose from the outset the possibility of distinguishing authentic revelation from distortion, sound argument from illusion, and divine guidance from human conceptions of God and the universe.
This is where our disagreement begins.
If Revelation Is Divine, It Is Not Precise to Call It Merely a Human Experience
Dr. Abdelalim argues that a project based on revelation is ultimately a human project because human beings are the ones who understand revelation and put it into practice.
This is true at the level of understanding and application, but it does not settle the question at the level of the source.
The human being who reads a divine text is human. His understanding is human, his reasoning is human, and his institutions are human. But this does not make the text he believes to be revelation human in origin.
A physician uses reason to understand the laws of nature, but that does not mean that the laws of nature were invented by the physician.
Likewise, Muslims use reason to understand revelation, but the fact that understanding is human does not necessarily mean that the truth being understood is human in origin.
This distinction is essential between:
divine origin, human understanding, and human application.
Confusing these three levels leads to a dangerous philosophical conclusion: if everything that enters history through human beings becomes human in origin, then we would have no basis whatsoever for acknowledging any divine revelation.
But What Happens When We Replace Revelation with a Human Project?
Here I reach a deeper point in Dr. Abdelalim’s argument.
He proposes that humanity should translate heavenly values into a measurable project and transform these values into human systems, institutions, and laws.
I agree that principles must be translated into institutions capable of practical implementation and measurement.
But there is a paradox that must be recognized:
Once the human project is separated from divine reference, it itself becomes a human project vulnerable to error, deviation, and the redefinition of good and evil according to circumstances, interests, and prevailing powers.
At that point, we are no longer speaking about the “application of revelation,” but about reproducing revelation within a human philosophy.
Modern history has witnessed major experiments that began as projects intended to save humanity and subsequently developed into vast systems that produced outcomes contradicting many of their original aims.
Communism promised a society of justice, yet in several historical experiences it developed into repressive systems.
Capitalism promised expanding prosperity, but it also produced enormous concentrations of wealth and influence.
Liberalism raised the banner of freedom, but it did not prevent economic, media, and technological freedom from becoming instruments of power that the elites with the greatest access to capital and technology could exploit for their own interests.
The problem, therefore, is not merely that a project is human. It is that human beings themselves can turn their projects into instruments for reproducing their own interests.
Here Begins the Most Brutal and Deceptive Form of Secularism
I do not mean by “secularism” every person who believes in separating religion from the state, nor every Westerner, nor every scientific institution.
I mean secularism when it moves from being a political arrangement governing the relationship between religious institutions and the state to becoming a comprehensive philosophy that excludes divine reference from its understanding of humanity, values, history, and ultimate purpose.
On the surface, this form of secularism appears profoundly humane. It speaks of freedom, justice, equality, human rights, development, peace, science, and progress.
As slogans, it is difficult for any reasonable person to object to these values.
But the question is not:
What do the slogans say?
The deeper questions are:
Who determines their meaning? Who applies them? To whom are they applied? And who possesses the power to determine their boundaries?
This is where the problem begins.
Freedom, when raised as a slogan, can become the freedom of major corporations to control markets.
Human rights can become selective when they conflict with the interests of major powers.
Science, which is supposed to be a tool for discovering truth, can become an institution financed by centers of power that influence certain research priorities according to their interests.
Technology, which was promised to increase human freedom, can become a tool for monitoring and directing behavior and consciousness.
And the global economy, presented as a network of cooperation among human beings, can become a fierce arena of competition over energy, resources, markets, and supply chains.
The problem, therefore, is not the words.
The problem is the distance between the words and reality.
The Sadistic Distribution of Resources
How can we speak of saving humanity while resources, wealth, and power remain so severely unequal in their distribution?
If the Earth belongs to all human beings in the sense that they all inhabit it, why do strategic resources become sources of power that enable limited numbers of states, corporations, and financial centers to influence the destiny of millions of people?
We are facing a civilizational contradiction:
A global system speaks of human equality while economic, political, and scientific power is not distributed equally.
This raises a legitimate question: Is the problem merely a lack of laws, or does it lie in a structure of power that can sometimes cause the law itself to operate differently depending on the position of the individual, state, or institution?
The Brutality of War in the Name of the Global Order
More troubling still is that modern civilization, despite all its discourse about peace and human rights, has not succeeded in ending wars.
Indeed, modern science itself has produced the most devastating instruments of destruction in human history. The concentration of scientific knowledge and technological capabilities has also become a potential instrument through which a minority can concentrate power over the majority, without necessarily subjecting itself to the same ethical standards it advocates.
Humanity’s technological capacity to kill has become vastly greater than in any previous era.
This places us before the real question of the humanities:
If our ability to manufacture instruments of power develops faster than our ability to cultivate the human being who possesses them, can we call that complete civilizational progress?
Science can give human beings power.
But science alone cannot guarantee that human beings will be compassionate.
Here the need for ethics and guidance becomes apparent.
Economic Competition and the Pollution of the Earth
The modern global economy has achieved enormous advances in production, technology, and communication. Yet it has also produced a consumer model based on the continuous expansion of production and consumption.
Here another question arises:
If economic success is measured primarily through rates of growth, consumption, and production, what happens when continued growth becomes dependent on exhausting resources, generating waste, and expanding consumption without limit?
Humanity has begun to discover that its capacity to produce can simultaneously become a capacity to damage the environment in which it lives.
Therefore, “saving the planet” requires more than environmental laws.
It requires redefining the very meaning of economic success.
Here the Islamic vision intersects with the contemporary civilizational question concerning sufficiency, avoidance of excess, and responsibility for the Earth.
Technological Disorder: When the Human Being Becomes the Product
The problem does not stop at economics.
We have entered an age in which technology can influence human attention, habits, choices, self-image, and relationships with others.
Social media, algorithms, and digital platforms can be powerful tools for knowledge and communication, but they can also transform human attention into a commodity.
The question therefore becomes:
Does technology serve the human being, or has the human being begun to serve the technology economy?
If the humanities do not possess a clear ethical standard, we may reach a stage in which everything that can technically be done becomes justifiable merely because it is possible.
This is more dangerous than ignorance. Ignorance is limited in its capacity; a technologically advanced human being without wisdom can be far more dangerous.
Secularism When It Forgets the Divine Dimension
One of the most dangerous consequences of certain secular trends is that they do not merely distinguish between scientific and religious explanations. They move toward a broader philosophical conclusion: if something can be explained materially, then there is no need for any metaphysical meaning beyond it.
Here we must distinguish between science and philosophical materialism.
Science can study how something happens.
But questions concerning purpose, meaning, and value cannot be settled by the laboratory alone.
Science can explain the mechanisms of thought in the brain, but it cannot by itself determine whether a human being ought to be truthful.
It can explain the emergence of a social phenomenon, but it cannot by itself establish whether that phenomenon is morally right or wrong.
It can describe what human beings do, but it cannot by itself answer the question:
What ought human beings to do?
Here revelation is not a competitor to science, but a complement to it in a different domain.
When Categorical Theories Enter the Humanities in the Name of Science
There is another problem that we should not be afraid to discuss: some social, psychological, and cultural theories begin as useful explanatory hypotheses and then gradually become almost closed frameworks through which the entirety of the human being is interpreted.
This unscientific generalization is the greatest act of deception in human history when carried out under the cover of science.
And this can happen in any intellectual direction, not just one.
The problem begins when a theory changes from being a tool for understanding one dimension of humanity into a comprehensive explanation of the human being.
The human being is greater than a social class, greater than an economic structure, greater than his instincts, greater than his sex, greater than his political identity, and greater than his biological constitution.
The human being is multidimensional.
Therefore, the Islamic humanities that I advocate do not seek to abolish sociology, psychology, economics, or other disciplines. Rather, they seek to prevent the reduction of the human being to a single explanatory framework.
But Does This Mean That Human Beings Are Not Responsible for Their Actions?
Here I reach the essence of Dr. Abdelalim’s objection.
He fears that divine reference may lead to an escape from human responsibility.
I believe the opposite is true if Islam is understood accurately.
Believing that God guides the human being does not mean that the human being is not responsible.
Rather, the Qur’an makes responsibility even clearer:
«“And that there is not for man except that for which he strives.”
(Qur’an 53:39)»
The human being acts, plans, strives, makes mistakes, bears the consequences of his mistakes, and is accountable for his intentions and actions.
But there is a difference between saying:
“I am responsible for my actions.”
and saying:
“I am the ultimate source of truth and do not need any guidance beyond my own knowledge.”
The first is responsibility.
The second is a claim to complete epistemic and moral independence—something I do not believe a limited human being can possess.
Even Good Deeds and Projects Can Fail
Guiding action through divine guidance does not mean that every religious project automatically succeeds.
This is a point that must be clearly acknowledged.
A believer may make mistakes.
A religious project may fail.
A person may misunderstand revelation.
A religious institution may become corrupt.
A politician may raise a religious slogan while practicing injustice.
None of this becomes true merely because its author speaks in the name of God.
But this does not mean that divine guidance itself has failed. It means that the human being who received, understood, or applied it made a mistake.
Conversely, a human project may achieve material success at a particular stage while carrying within itself the causes of its later collapse.
Here the importance of the divine laws and patterns governing history becomes apparent.
A society may advance economically and then collapse socially.
It may achieve military victory and then decline morally.
It may possess advanced technology and then become enslaved by it.
It may achieve wealth and then lose meaning.
Therefore, genuine civilizational success is not merely surviving one crisis. It is the ability to maintain a lasting balance between matter and spirit, freedom and responsibility, science and ethics, power and mercy.
Why Do I Describe This Model as the Most Brutal and Deceptive Form of Secularism?
Because the most dangerous forms of domination are not necessarily those that tell human beings:
“I control you.”
They may instead tell them:
“I am liberating you.”
And then make that freedom dependent upon an economic, media, and technological system capable of directing their choices.
The most dangerous forms of exploitation are not necessarily those that say:
“I am exploiting you.”
They may instead say:
“I am acting in your interest.”
And the most dangerous forms of authority are not necessarily those that say:
“I rule you by force.”
They may instead say:
“I am protecting your freedom and your rights.”
This is where deception becomes more complex, because control does not always appear in the form of repression. It may come in the form of a market, an algorithm, a law, an institution, an academic standard, a human-rights discourse, or an economic model.
This is not an accusation that every scientist, academic, liberal, or secularist is engaged in a conspiracy.
It is a call to study the structures of power that can sometimes hide behind beautiful rhetoric.
Returning to Dr. Abdelalim’s Question
Do we need the “Islamization of knowledge” or the “humanization of knowledge”?
I would say: we need both, but not in a way that makes either one a substitute for the other.
We need to humanize science so that it does not become a tool for destroying humanity.
And we need to guide the human being so that humanization itself does not become a slogan susceptible to manipulation.
We need to “Islamize” knowledge in the sense of reconsidering our conception of the human being, the universe, purpose, and value—not in the sense of placing a religious label on scientific findings.
My project does not say that everything coming from the West is false, nor that everything coming from the East is true, nor that everything carrying the slogan “Authentic Muhammadan Islam” is sacred.
Rather, it says something simpler and deeper:
Let us not sanctify any of humanity’s projects.
Not communism.
Not capitalism.
Not liberalism.
Not nationalism.
Not secularism.
What we must do is hold firmly, with all our strength, to true values, despite all the slogans filling the world.
Let us leave it to God to bring His project to success on Earth, through whomever He wills among His friends and chosen servants.
What is sacred is the divine truth and God’s affirmation of the success of His map and plan for saving humanity. But human understanding of that truth remains a domain for reason, ijtihad, criticism, and correction.
Therefore, the coming bright global civilization, as I envision it, does not need a less knowledgeable human being, but a more knowledgeable human being—one who is more humble before truth and more firmly committed to those truths.
It does not need the abolition of freedom, but the liberation of freedom from the servitude of desire, wealth, authority, and power.
It does not need the abolition of science, but the liberation of science from becoming a servant of power.
It does not need the abolition of human institutions, but rather their transformation into servants of justice and dignity.
The real danger is not for a human being to say:
“I am responsible for my world.”
The danger is when he says:
“I am responsible for my world, and therefore I do not need any truth beyond myself.”
Here, precisely, begins the question that Islamic Humanities seeks to return to the heart of the civilizational project:
Can humanity save the human being from himself if the human being makes himself the ultimate authority for determining the meaning of good and evil, freedom, justice, and truth?
We do not reject the human being.
Rather, we reject the transformation of the human being into a small god who legislates for himself, then uses science, economics, politics, and technology to implement what he has legislated for himself, and afterward calls the result “progress” and “civilization.”
For this reason, the “coming bright civilization” is not a project of religious domination over the world. Rather, it is an attempt to escape the predicament of a civilization that has acquired the most powerful tools in history without necessarily acquiring sufficient wisdom to use them.
Thus, criticizing secularism is not a rejection of science; criticizing the West is not a rejection of the West; and criticizing modernity is not a call to return to the past.
It is one civilizational question:
What happens when the human being becomes master of everything—except himself?
Perhaps the answer is that civilization can become more technologically advanced than ever before while becoming, at the same time, more brutal and deceptive.
Hence the need for a new civilization begins: one in which science is not without ethics, freedom is not without responsibility, the human being is not without guidance, power is not without mercy, the economy is not without justice, and technology is not without wisdom.
And that we believe that God has friends and chosen servants on Earth, among the human beings who embody the Perfect Human Being, striving to implement Authentic Muhammadan Islam, even if the disbelievers oppose it, even if the polytheists oppose it, and even if the rulers of the world oppose it.
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