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Rationalist Islam is an epistemic-led, principle-first, and rational-empirical branch of Islam that grounds views, practices, and identity in a set of independently justified and domain-specific rational principles.

Adherents adopt “Islam” and "Muslim" as identities only after critical assessment of historical evidence suggests that Muḥammad substantially aligned with these principles. Rationalist Islam is, therefore, a continuation of the historical Muhammadan movement with the aim of maximising the wellbeing of all sentient inhabitants of the world.

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, early and medieval Islamic philosophy (falsafa) and mysticism (taṣawwuf/ʿirfān), and extending into modern historical-critical and scientific methods.

Terminology

As an entailment of their commitment to intellectual accommodation and rationalist epistemology, adherents identify and describe themselves contextually — modulating terminology and self-designation according to the audience, subject matter, and communicative purpose.

This adaptive self-representation arises from their understanding that linguistic forms are vehicles of understanding rather than static markers of identity. Within this framework, the use of diverse religious labels functions pedagogically: to convey the essence of truth in whichever language resonates most coherently with a given community.

As a result, Rationalist Muslims assume a wide variety of seemingly conflicting names and employ them contextually, including:

Cognitive dispositions

1. The Law of Identity

“whatever is, is; whatever is not, is not.”

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.”

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 has some reason or ground.”

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

“some things exist but could, in principle, not have existed.”

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.

The Rational Entailments

From the cognitive and conative dispositions follows a series of entailments that together constitute the framework of Rationalist Islam. They are not adopted as beliefs, asserted as doctrines, or accepted by tradition, but are said to follow by necessity from the structure of reason itself.

Each entailment represents what any rational intellect must affirm once it accepts the laws of thought and the intelligibility of being: that contingent existence requires grounding, that explanation must terminate in the self-sufficient, and that the pursuit of knowledge within each domain must proceed according to the logic appropriate to that domain. What follows, therefore, are not articles of faith but the logical unfoldings of reason — the positions that reason itself necessitates concerning existence, knowledge, and ethics.

Rationalist Islam proceeds on the principle that no claim is exempt from reason’s jurisdiction. Every position is derived — not asserted — by applying the Five Prior Rational Commitments. What follows is a continuous sequence of conclusions that any rational agent should grant once those priors are accepted.

7) Oneness of consciousness

Monism • Nondualism

9) Gradation of consciousness

Gradation of existence • Gradation of reality • Tashkīk al-wujūd

10) Meta consciousness

Ahura Mazda • Allāh • Aten • Baha • Brahman • 'Ēl • Father • God • God the father • Necessary existent • Necessary existentiator • Necessary reality • Pure consciousness • Shangdi • The divine • The One • Unconditioned reality • Vishnu • Waheguru • Wājib al-wujūd • Yahweh

11) Necessary simplicity

Al-Basāṭah al-ilāhiyyah • Divine simplicity • Monotheism • Oneness • Oneness of Allah • Oneness of God • Tawhīd

13) Conscientiation ex conscientia

Badā'a • Creatio ex deo • Origination

14) Necessitarianism

ʿAdl • Divine justice

17) First conscientiate

First creation • First intellect • First light • Image of God • Imago dei • Mashīyya • Nūr Muhammadiyya • Ontologically first dependent existent • Pen • Perfect creation • Qalam • Universal intellect

18) Intermediary conscientiates

Angels • Immaterial existents • Malāʾika

19) Observable universe

Cosmos • Dunyā • Material dimension • Material realm • Material world • Multiverse • Natural World • Olam HaZeh • Physical world • Sensible dimension • Sensible realm • Sensible world • Universe

20) B-theory of time

Tenseless theory of time

21) Compatibilism

Divine Decree • Divine Predestination • Illusion of Libertarian Free Will • Predestination • Qadar • Soft determinism

23) Physical empiricism

Empirical method • Scientific method

24) Mindfulness

Dhikr • God consciousness • Meditation • Salāh • Taqwā

28) Mysticism

'Ibādah • Islām • Servitude • Submission • Worship

29) Prayer

Ṣalāh

30) Fasting

Ṣawm

31) Charity

Almsgiving • Zakāh

32) Pilgrimage

Ḥajj

33) Resistance

Discipline • Exertion • Fighting • Jihād • Striving • Struggle

34) Heightened consciousness

Altered state of consciousness • Anubhava • Enlightenment • Henosis • Ilhām • Nirvana • Noetic mystical experience • Nubuwwah • Perfect knowledge acquisition • Prophethood • Samadhi • Revelation • Wahī

35) Gradation of Intellect

Cognitive heterogeneity

36) Local cultivation

Messengership • Risālah

38) Noocracy

Imāmah • Perfect manhood • Philosopher kingship • Technocracy

39) Philosopher King

Demigod • High-Conscious Individual • High-Integration Individual • Hujjah • Imām • Infallible • Insān al-Kāmil • Insān ‘alā Khuluqin ‘Adhīm • Integrate • Ma'sūm • Messenger • Meta-Conscious Agent • Nabī • New Man • Perfect human • Perfect rational animal • Philosopher king • Prophet • Rasūl • Transhuman • Übermensch

40) Intellectual Accommodation

Tawriyyah

41) Intellectual Dissimulation

Taqīyyah

43) Motifs and Imagery

Motifs—light, ascent, circle, garden, path—translate abstract truths into memorable forms that shape imagination and action. Repetition builds identity; symbol stabilises norms.

44) Mythos for Most

Symbol and story teach where proof cannot yet reach. Properly used, mythos is not falsehood but imaginal pedagogy—true content rendered in forms accessible to typical abstraction bandwidths. It is accommodation at scale.

45) Repurposing Myths and Legends

Existing cultural materials can be redeemed: stripped of false metaphysics, rekeyed to the Necessary Existent and rational ethics, and redeployed for formation. Continuity with correction preserves social capital while elevating understanding.

46) Metanarratives

Human agents reason within stories. A metanarrative integrates metaphysics, ethics, and destiny into an intelligible arc that motivates virtue and sacrifice. Without a shared narrative, social coordination and long-range projects degrade.

48) Religious beliefs

Arkān al-īmān • Pillars of faith • 'Uṣūl al-dīn

49) Religious laws

Branches of religion • Furūʿ al-dīn • Pillars of practice

50) Need for Dogma

“Dogma” means publicly fixed minima of right belief and practice that coordinate a civilisation. It protects the many from costly error while leaving upper tiers open to demonstration and qualified debate. Dogma is not a substitute for truth; it is a civic guardrail toward it.

51) Confessional identity

Shahāda • Testimony of Faith

51) Need to Encourage and Control Behaviour

Where demonstration alone will not move median behaviour, law, institutions, incentives, and norms are rational instruments to align action with the good. This is an application of PSR to collective life: effects follow causes; therefore, design the causes.

Hagiography

Apotheosis • Deification • Divinisation • Ghulāt / Ghuluw • Heroisation • Legendary accretion • Mythicisation • Myth-making • Mythologisation • Mythopoeia • Sacralisation • Tawallā

Heresiography

Tabarrā

History

Classical antiquity

Socrates holds dialogues

Plato conceives Theory of Ideas

Plato conceives Theory of Soul

Plato conceives Form of the Good

Plato conceives Allegory of the Cave

Plato conceives The Philosopher King

Aristotle develops logic

Jesus begins noocratic revolution

Jesus is arrested by Jewish ethnocratic demonisation

Jesus is executed by Roman timocratic crucifixion

Late antiquity

Plotinus conceives The One

Plotinus conceives Emanation by the One

Plotinus establishes Neoplatonism

Proclus popularises Platonism

Pseudo-Dionysius symbolises Neoplatonism

Muḥammad begins noocratic revolution

Muḥammad establishes noocratic revolution

Muḥammad dies in suspicious circumstances

Ali begins noocratic revolution

'Uthmān ibn 'Affān is assassinated by sword

Ali establishes noocratic revolution

Ali is assassinated by sword

Hasan ibn Ali protects noocratic revolution

Hasan ibn Ali is assassinated by poison

Husayn ibn Ali begins noocratic revolution

Husayn ibn Ali is assassinated by sword in Karbala

Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq begins noocratic revolution

Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq is assassinated by poison

Islamic Golden Age

al-Kindī

al-Fārābī Islamicises Neoplatonism

Brethren of Purity establishes secret society

Ibn Sina conceives Proof of the Truthful

Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi conceives Illuminationism

Ibn ʿArabī conceives Unity of Existence

Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī synthesises mysticism and science

Gunpowder Age

Mīr Dāmād conceives atemporal origination

Mulla Sadrā conceives Transcendent Theosophy

Oil Age

Muhammad Husayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī establishes intra-Qur’ānic exegesis

Morteza Motahhari co-founds the Combatant Clergy Association

Morteza Motahhari is assassinated by Iranian seculocratic gunfire

Ali Shariati writes Red Shi'sm vs. Black Shi'ism

Ali Shariati dies in suspicious circumstances

Information Age

Ruhollah Khomeini begins noocratic revolution

Ruhollah Khomeini establishes noocratic revolution

Hassan Nasrallah begins noocratic revolution

Ali Khamenei protects noocratic revolution

Hassan Nasrallah is assassinated by Jewish ethnocratic airstrike

Ali Khamenei is assassinated by American plutocratic & Jewish ethnocratic airstrikes