Religion

Rationalist Islam is a branch of Islam that grounds Muslim identity, views and practices in a set of independently justified rational principles. It is an epistemic-led, principle-first, rational-empirical continuation of the Muhammadan project that integrates reason and evidence with the aim of maximising the wellbeing of all sentient inhabitants of the world.

On this view, “Islam” and "Muslim" are adopted as an identity only after critical assessment of historical evidence suggests that Muḥammad substantially aligned with these principles. The guiding maxim often associated with Rationalist Islam is “Religion as movement — not monument,” emphasising an ongoing, adaptive, principle-led, evidence-based, ethically purposive project rather than static veneration and dogma.

Proponents describe Rationalist Islam as a continuation — and internal reformulation — of the broader Near Eastern and Mediterranean “wisdom tradition,” drawing a conceptual lineage from classical philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus), biblical and late antique sapiential currents (including the Jesus movement’s emphasis on justice and inner transformation), through Muḥammad’s proclamations and the early Islamic sciences (Qurʾān, law, theology, falsafa, taṣawwuf/ʿirfān), and extending into modern historical-critical and scientific methods.

Epistemology

The Five Prior Rational Commitments

The only prior rational commitments Rationalist Muslims make are:

1. The Law of Identity — every entity or proposition is self-identical and distinct from its negation.

2. The Law of Non-Contradiction — nothing can both be and not be in the same respect.

3. The Principle of Sufficient Reason (minimal intelligibility form) — every real state of affairs is intelligible; it has some reason, ground, or explanation for why it is rather than not, even if that reason is intrinsic.

4. Recognition of Contingency — there exist beings whose non-existence involves no contradiction.

5. Denial of Vicious Circularity and Infinite Explanatory Regress — explanation cannot be self-grounding or infinitely deferred; every chain of dependence must terminate in something self-sufficient.

classical logical norms: non-contradiction, identity, and valid inference.

Explanatory adequacy: principle of sufficient reason, parsimony, coherence with well-established findings.

Public reason: justifications accessible to any competent inquirer; aversion to special pleading.

Domain-specific empiricism

Nature and technology: experimental method, peer critique, replication.

History: source criticism, chronology, philology, intertextuality, external controls (epigraphy, archaeology), and context.