A Critique of Mostafa Malekian's View on Religious Deference, by Mir Saeid Mousavi Karimi

In the Name of God, the Exalted

A Critique of Mostafa Malekian's View on Religious Deference

Mir Saeid Mousavi Karimi

Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Mofid University

Farvardin 1400 [March-April 2021]

Preamble

The story of this article began when, in a WhatsApp channel belonging to the professors of a certain university, one of the respected professors sent the following text from Mostafa Malekian's booklet Faith and Rationality, titled "Why is the power of persuasion more important than the greatness of personality in the contemporary world?" to this channel:

In the past, if someone said, 'Grand Ayatollah Golpayegani has said such and such'—actually, why should I use Grand Ayatollah Golpayegani as an example? If the local mullah said something, he had the right to intervene in our wealth, life, and honor, let alone if Grand Ayatollah Golpayegani or Grand Ayatollah Khoei said something, and anyone dared to oppose it! But now, go to most of the gatherings you deal with and say, for instance: 'Sir, do not say that, because Ayatollah So-and-so has said such and such.' As soon as you say 'has said' and use such terms, they burst out laughing and say, 'Has said? What does that mean?!' What do you think is the reason for this reaction of theirs?

What a difference between then and now! At that time, could you even imagine that Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi would say something and others would not listen? Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi was someone whose opinion, or fatwa and decree, caused Allameh Tabatabai—as soon as he understood that Mr. Boroujerdi's view was that a certain thing should not be done—to set it aside. Who was he himself? He was Allameh Tabatabai. Yet he said, how could one disregard the word of Haj Agha Mohammad Hossein Boroujerdi, Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi? Now, if Grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi were to appear, he could not have authority, not even over a twenty-year-old youth, let alone over Allameh Tabatabai. Why has this happened? Why has this authority been lost?

... For most of our youth, the matter of emulation (taqlid) in jurisprudence has completely vanished from the lexicon of their existence. Because authority does not exist. Why? In my opinion, the main reason is that modernity either does not accept authority at all or reduces it to a minimum. This way of speaking—'I say such and such, so you accept it!'—is truly unacceptable to modern man. I remember some time ago, one of the gentlemen said: 'Mr. President, meaning Mr. Khatami, has said you must follow the word of Mr. So-and-so. So why, now that Mr. So-and-so has said something, has he not accepted it?!'

When I heard this, I told my friends: Now, never mind that this statement is not true at all, let's set that aside; but a wise person, even if his words are not true and he says something false, at least says something that creates some acceptance in his audience for that word. But anyone who hears this statement simply laughs that a certain gentleman must heed the word of another gentleman! Heed the word? What does that mean?! Why does he speak like this? Because his intellectual atmosphere is the same atmosphere of authorities, where if a certain authority gestures, or even says something with a glance or a raise of an eyebrow, the person abandons all his own words and says: 'If I made a mistake before, I was drunk.'

Now, the one who truly has authority is the one who can persuade the mind of the audience. To the extent that one can persuade the mind of the audience, one has authority. Today, to possess authority, you must meet this threshold and standard (i.e., the ability to persuade the mind of the audience).

In response to the above, I wrote the following text and sent it to the same channel:

Although I have not yet managed to read many of Mostafa Malekian's works, the more I read of him, sporadically here and there, the more I become convinced that, despite the wide and diverse range of his studies, his writings and especially his talks, particularly in the field of religious knowledge, lack sufficient precision and depth. For this reason, at least the portion of his writings that I have read have mostly been a mixture of correct and incorrect, ambiguous, and fallacious material. The text sent from the booklet Faith and Reason is evidence for this claim. In a significant part of this text, he contrasts "persuasive power" with "the word of authoritative individuals," under the incorrect assumption that if, in the past, the word of authoritative persons justified beliefs, now, persuasive power has taken its place.

Malekian has probably imagined that the way to persuade individuals to hold a justified belief is through, for example, presenting rational argument or empirical evidence by the claimant, with the clearly incorrect presupposition that the two categories of "persuading individuals" and "trusting the words of persons" are opposed to one another and we must necessarily choose only one of them.

But Malekian surely knows that one of the most important approaches in the field of "belief justification" is the externalist approach, and its important branch, reliabilism. Based on reliabilism, in simple terms, a belief is justified if it has been obtained through a "reliable process." This reliable process can be one's own sensory perceptions, introspection, rational reasoning, the spoken or written word of authoritative persons (testimony), or so on.

Therefore, the two categories of "persuading individuals" and "trusting the words of persons" are fundamentally not opposed to one another; rather, one of the most widespread and important methods of persuading individuals to form a justified belief is citing the word of authoritative and reliable persons. In fact, and without exaggeration, it can be said that with few exceptions, almost all of our beliefs in the achievements of the empirical and human sciences are justified because we have obtained them from reliable persons. Which of us has performed Galileo's inclined plane experiment or observed the deflection of light in a gravitational field? How many of us have been direct observers of events at the North Pole or the past events of history? In reality, if trusting the word of authoritative persons does not justify belief, we will encounter problems even in the conduct of everyday life.

Stranger still is that Malekian considers his clearly incorrect claim to be one of the characteristics of modernity. Let alone the modern era, even in the contemporary era, not only has trust in the words of persons not been abandoned, but due to the astonishing diversity and expansion of sciences, knowledge, and specializations, it is utilized with greater clarity and power.

But what has changed are the "instances of trusted and authoritative individuals," not the principle of citing the words of persons. In the modern world, people have arrived at the correct belief that they should trust the claims of persons who are, in some way, specialists in that field. For this reason, if in the past, ordinary people (and not, of course, scientists and thinkers) would go to a priest to determine the Earth's place in the solar system, today they cite the word of a physicist. Now, on this basis, judge how irrelevant and incorrect Malekian's comparison between the past and present regarding citing the words of persons, the issue of imitation, the evidence he has cited, etc., are.

In response to the above matter, some university colleagues in the same channel pointed out that Mr. Malekian claims that in the past, the authority of individuals, especially in the domain of religion, had taken the place of reasoning. Trust in the word of a specialist can be of two kinds; sometimes it is due to scientific trust and his area of expertise, and sometimes it is due to the authority that exists in the person. Malekian's words refer to the charismatic personality of some individuals who also express opinions in non-specialized areas, and people follow them. Mr. Malekian wants to say that many of these authorities have been broken in this day and age.

This note sent by friends prompted me to review what I had written about Malekian's remarks. I must confess, of course, that what I had written in the channel was not based solely on Malekian's words in the booklet Faith and Reason, but I also had a kind of mental background from his other writings and sayings that led to writing such a note. However, to reassess the accuracy of my own impression, I conducted another simple search. The sentences in quotation marks below, all selected from a text titled "Mostafa Malekian's Responses to Some Questions from Critics," published on the Sedanet website, show that my impression of Malekian's statements was closer to the truth:

"My claim, precisely stated, is that modernism has as one of its components argumentativism ... whether the argument is a rational argument or an empirical argument."

"If someone says that I demand proof for every single sentence of the Quran and will not accept any of it until a convincing argument is presented in its favor, would people call such a person a Muslim or not?" [Malekian's answer, of course, is no].

"Deference is an inescapable component of religiosity and ..... the deference I speak of means accepting the word of someone or some people without question."

"I consider Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi the only philosopher in the Islamic world because everyone other than Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi would sometimes say something as if A is B because X says A is B, and that is correct."

"Suppose I am also a philosopher who believes 'God exists.' I believe 'life after death exists.' But I do not believe that 'ʿalayhā tisʿata ʿashar,' I do not believe that 'Hell has nineteen gatekeepers.' If I want to be deferential, I must also accept 'ʿalayhā tisʿata ʿashar.'"

"I tell the religious intellectual ... you must also prove the existence of jinn. You must also prove the existence of Satan. You must also prove the existence of angels, you must also prove the prophethood of the prophets, you must also prove the barrier of Gog and Magog, you must also accept the Companions of the Cave, prove these things, then say you are religious. Which religion are you?"

"I say, very well, right now let Dr. Soroush present a reason for this claim that the number of the gatekeepers of Hell is nineteen. He says they have reasons. Well, let him present the reasons. Present reasons for the existence of Satan. I demand reasons right now. Present reasons for the existence of angels. Present reasons for the prophethood of the Prophet of Islam. If you do not present reasons or your reasons are undermined, if you are a philosopher and rational, you must abandon the claim itself."

But the more interesting point was that by reading the text of Malekian's interview published on the Sedanet website under the title "Mostafa Malekian's Responses to Some Questions from Critics," I became more steadfast in my previous claim about his views. Here, I want to cite evidence from this very interview text, with great brevity, to consolidate my claim, and critique them. (The material in quotation marks "" is from Malekian.)

I must note here that in writing the following, I have referred solely to the text of this interview, and not to Malekian's other writings and sayings. Moreover, since the interview is not very old, Malekian's statements in it, especially considering they were made in response to critics' objections, can be considered both his latest views and his most important and strongest reasons. Furthermore, here I will only critique his claim that the religious deference of believers to religious teachings is unjustified and contrary to rationality, and that believers, for the epistemic justification of their deference, must prove each and every religious teaching by presenting arguments.

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Critics have objected to Malekian that many of our beliefs are not based on argument. For example, many of our beliefs in the claims of empirical sciences are also formed based on consulting and trusting a specialist, and something similar occurs with our religious beliefs. Malekian responds as follows:

In modern science, we have two other phenomena, neither of which is deference. One phenomenon, of course, is consulting a specialist. There is no doubt that in science, fundamentally, we do consult specialists. It also exists in ordinary life ... but consulting a specialist is different from deference ... there are three differences between the two .... I say this to the clerics as well, who always say that we, the clergy, are specialists in the religious sciences, so you should heed our words. We say that you are not specialists in the religious sciences in the sense I just described. You demand deference from us ... These three things make a person a specialist. One is that we know that those who have come out from under his [i.e., the specialist's] tutelage have themselves become specialists [in that field] ... Second, that colleagues confirm [that he is a specialist], and third, that we try other paths [other than the path favored by the specialist] but do not reach the [result claimed by the specialist].

The first objection to Malekian's claim is that, contrary to his own principle, he offers no reason for his claim regarding the three characteristics of a specialist. He, who always asks opponents to provide arguments for each and every one of their claims, apparently does not consider himself subject to this rule and presumably expects us to accept his criteria

In support of this interpretation, he goes even further and claims that “when you refer to the founders of religions and sects, we cannot say you have consulted a specialist .... [because] I have also seen other ways of life where those who did not heed Muhammad ibn Abdullah [PBUH] pursued those paths, and we have not seen anyone claim that these people were unsuccessful.” In other words, the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) is not among the specialists, because through paths different from the one he proposed, one can achieve the same results he intended.

But the problem with this kind of explanation of “path” and the comparison of various paths is that it excludes many scientists and researchers from the circle of specialists. To explain, let us assume that the result and goal of every physicist in presenting their own proposed path is the physical explanation of natural phenomena. Many historians of science believe that in the shift from, to use Thomas Kuhn’s term, one paradigm to another, many of the theoretical foundations, practical methods, and even accepted values of scientists change. Nevertheless, the result of the activities of all physicists in different paradigms has been the presentation of theories for the physical explanation of the universe.

In practice, too, all these theories have been more or less successful. For example, the phenomena of lunar and solar eclipses can be explained and correctly predicted both on the basis of Ptolemaic physics and on the basis of Newtonian physical theory. By the same analogy, both Newtonian and relativistic theories have successful and identical predictions for many phenomena in the universe.

In fact, based on the first premise of an argument known as the “Underdetermination Argument,” which has been formulated in the dispute between realists and anti-realists in the field of the philosophy of science, it is shown with powerful reasons that for every theory in science, an infinite number of rival theories can be constructed, such that all those theories are identical to one another in observational results, but in theoretical foundations are not only conflicting but contradictory.

For example, the three interpretations presented in the field of quantum mechanics—namely the Copenhagen interpretation, the David Bohm interpretation, and the many-worlds theory—are three examples of actual theories presented by physicists that are completely different and even conflicting in their theoretical foundations, yet entirely consistent and identical in their observational results. Therefore, in the empirical sciences, identical results can be achieved with different foundations, methods, beliefs, and values.

Now, according to Mr. Malekian’s third criterion, he must answer which of these physicists he considers a non-specialist: does he consider physicists in the Newtonian paradigm, such as Newton and Maxwell—who were selected as the second and third greatest physicists of all time by physicists in the 1999 poll by the prestigious journal Physics World—as non-specialists, or a physicist like Einstein with completely different foundations and paradigm, who was selected as the greatest physicist of all time in the same poll? Or perhaps, since all of them achieved the same results through different paths, none of them are specialists?

Malekian might respond that his intention with the third criterion is this: “Person A is a specialist if, by changing their proposed path, one cannot achieve exactly the same specific result they intended.” Therefore, it is true that both Newton and Einstein provided a physical explanation for the phenomena of the universe, and both of their theories achieved successes in practice, but with Newtonian foundations, one cannot achieve exactly the same relativistic explanation, with the same specific concepts and meanings intended by Einstein, and vice versa.

But this response, besides still being ineffective and powerless against the Underdetermination Argument, turns the third criterion into a tautological and tautologous claim devoid of any content. Because in this case, the formulation of the third criterion becomes: “Person A is a specialist if, by changing their path—in which case the specific results they intended cannot be achieved—one cannot achieve the specific results they intended.” With this criterion, in fact, all claimants become specialists, and no individual will fall outside the circle of expertise.

A closer examination of the first and second criteria also shows that they fare no better than the third. The history of science and art demonstrates that, contrary to the first criterion, there are many eminent scientists and artists who trained no students at all. The problem with the second criterion is that it is unclear by what standard the endorsement of peers can be identified and determined.

Some specialists in philosophy consider Hegel and Heidegger to be among the greatest philosophers, while others regard them as charlatans. Superstring theory is one of the most important new theories in physics, on which some of the greatest contemporary physicists are engaged in research. Yet Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate and voted the seventh greatest physicist of all time, considered this theory nonsense and those working on it a kind of fool and charlatan. In this situation, which view should be accepted, and by what criterion?

Moreover, given that Malekian does not ascribe an independent reality or identity to society beyond individuals, the second criterion is also circular. For, according to this criterion, person A is a physicist because physicists like B, C, D, and so on have endorsed their expertise; person B is a physicist because physicists like A, C, D, and so on have endorsed their expertise; and so on ad infinitum... Ultimately, and in an unstated way, each person's being a physicist is in fact endorsed by themselves.

These three proposed criteria are so baseless and ineffective that even Malekian himself does not adhere to them in practice. Evidence for this is that he considers a philosophical ignoramus like Zakariya al-Razi to be "the only philosopher of the Islamic world." Yet anyone with the slightest familiarity with the history of philosophy knows that Razi neither trained any philosophical students, nor is he considered a philosopher by the majority of philosophers.

But despite all these flaws, what is Malekian's aim in presenting such an incorrect and ineffective criterion? It is because he tries to show that referring to the sayings of prophets and religious scholars is not of the type of referring to a specialist, and that accepting their teachings is a form of "deference" (ta'abbudi). Therefore, one cannot justify belief in their teachings based on what we discussed under the title of "trust-based epistemology."

However, this claim is also flawed. First, we showed that since Malekian's criterion for distinguishing between specialist and non-specialist is ineffective and incorrect, he cannot, with such a criterion, exclude prophets and religious scholars from the circle of specialists. Second, according to trust-based epistemology, if a person is a reliable source for acquiring knowledge, belief in their teachings is justified. But nowhere in this rule is it stated that the reliable source must necessarily be a specialist of the type that meets Malekian's criteria. For example, based on the statements of a non-specialist whose honesty and truthfulness we trust, and whose five senses we know, for instance, to be functioning correctly, we can acquire justified beliefs about certain phenomena.

Furthermore, the definition Malekian provides for deference (ta'abbud) cannot lead him to his intended conclusion. His definition of deference is as follows: "Deference, as I mean it, is accepting the word of someone or some people without question... I consider Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi the only philosopher of the Islamic world because everyone except Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi sometimes said something as if A is B, because X says A is B, it is correct." In simpler terms, according to his definition, deference means accepting that "A is B, because person C says so."

But this definition is ambiguous and could have one of the following multiple meanings: (1) "A is B because person C says so"; that is, from an ontological perspective, the cause of A being B in the real world is that person C has said so. Although the surface meaning of Malekian's phrase suggests such a meaning, it is clear that this meaning is incorrect, and what believers in the teachings of monotheistic religions mean by deference is not this meaning.

Another meaning is to say: (2) “A is B, because person C says so.” One interpretation of this statement is to say: “The truth of the proposition ‘A is B’ is conditional upon the statement of person C.” This meaning is also incorrect. For, according to a principle known as “The Principle of Transcendence,” a proposition is true (or false) independently of whether anyone is aware of its truth (or falsity), or has discovered its truth (or falsity), or even if the truth (or falsity) of the proposition is fundamentally undiscoverable. In other words, what makes a proposition true (or false) is its correspondence (or lack thereof) with reality (according to the correspondence theory of truth, of course). Therefore, a proposition does not become true or false by a person’s saying or not saying it.

Finally, Malekian’s definition of deference can be interpreted as follows: “An individual’s belief in the truth of the proposition ‘A is B’ is justified because it is based on the statement of an authoritative person C.” Malekian has labeled this approach “deference” in order to saddle it with a kind of negative value judgment, but this definition is nothing other than a statement of the valid rule of reliabilism and, as I explained earlier, is one of the very common approaches in the discussion of justification in epistemology.

Here, one must be careful to note that “the justifiedness of belief in the truth of a proposition” is not the same as “the truth of the proposition.” As previously indicated, if proposition A is false, my belief, or the statement and belief of any other person, in the truth of proposition A does not make it true. However, if, based on valid and available evidence, I “believe in the truth of proposition A,” this belief of mine is “justified.” An example of this situation is the case of a person within the Ptolemaic paradigm who, based on the valid and available evidence of their time, believes that the Earth is stationary and the Sun revolves around it.[1]

In this vein, Malekian rejects the claim that his approach is simply evidentialism: “You think that I have accepted only one account, namely evidentialist accounts... I do not accept this.” Evidential justification is divided into various types. For example, in a narrow definition, the evidence considered for justification must be solely of the propositional or doxastic kind. But in a broader definition, the evidence considered for justification can be non-propositional and non-doxastic, such as sensory perceptions, empirical evidence, memory, and the like.

In any case, the definition of evidentialism, in simple terms, is: “Person A is justified in believing proposition B at time C if and only if their belief at that time is based on appropriate and good grounds, foundations, or reasons.” This principle is, in fact, based on a famous statement by Clifford in his essay “The Ethics of Belief,” published in 1879, which has become known as “Clifford’s Principle”: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”

Numerous objections have been raised against the evidentialist approach; among them is that it is self-contradictory, because it cannot be applied to itself. Of course, some have responded to this objection by saying that evidentialism is a kind of rule, not a kind of belief. But in any case, belief in this rule itself is not subject to the rule. In other words, it is not the case that all our beliefs are based on evidence.

However, when Malekian says his approach is not evidentialism, he is correct. For, in reality, his approach is far more extreme than evidentialism. While evidentialists accept various types of justification, Malekian constantly insists on accepting a specific type of justification, namely argument, and only deductive argument at that, and emphasizes that every religious claim must be proven.

But when Malekian is objected to that his extreme approach faces numerous problems and confuses justification with argumentationism, he responds that, firstly, besides deductive argument, he believes in two other types of argument, namely inductive argument and inference to the best explanation (IBE); secondly, he adds: “Time and again, when I listed the sources of knowledge, I said we have six sources of knowledge: sensory perception, introspection, memory, intuition, testimony, and argument.”

Of course, Malekian does not mean by this final sentence that introducing these sources of knowledge is his own invention or discovery, for such a sentence can be found in any introductory book on epistemology. Rather, the important point here is that, following those very epistemological teachings, he explicitly states that testimony is among the reliable sources of knowledge.

The reliability of testimony as a source of justified knowledge, in simple terms, means that believing a proposition based on the testimony of a reliable witness is justified. Therefore, if a truthful and trusted witness has testified that the barrier of Gog and Magog, the Companions of the Cave, jinn, Satan, angels, and the like have existed and do exist, or that the guardians of Hell are nineteen in number, belief in these propositions is entirely justified and valid, and there is no need for any other argument to prove (?! ) them; even if Malekian would like to label these beliefs based on a reliable source as "deference."

In the same interview, Malekian has repeatedly emphasized that a philosopher is someone who, upon seeing powerful reasons against their claims and beliefs, abandons them. On this basis, if Malekian truly believes that he has adopted the disposition of philosophers, he must humbly accept that everything he has said against deference in religion and the irrationality of religiosity was incorrect and must be abandoned. But to our great surprise, he takes another path. This time, his claim is that although the reliable sources of knowledge are multiple and we have various types of reasoning, the reasoning of deference (sic?!) actually takes a deductive form: "Well, we don't have induction there [i.e., in deference], there we only deal with deduction."

This claim is now very strange! Up to this point, all of Malekian's statements were based on the claim that one of the main components of modernism is rationalism, whereas in religiosity and its essence, i.e., deference, reasoning has no place. But now he says no, there is reasoning in deference too, even the most certain type of it, namely deductive reasoning, but this reasoning is not valid. Well, so be it; are all the reasonings used in modernism valid? The very fact that you have accepted that deference is a type of reasoning means you have, in effect, retracted all your previous claims on this matter.

In fact, the correct view is that in deference, there exists a general deductive reasoning of this form, which is completely valid: (1) Belief in a doctrine is epistemologically justified if it is based on a reliable and trustworthy source; (2) Reliable religious doctrines are based on a reliable and trustworthy source; Conclusion: "Belief in reliable religious doctrines is epistemologically justified because it is based on a reliable and trustworthy source." Therefore, a person deferring to a religion does not need to provide reasoning, let alone of the deductive type, to justify each and every proposition of that religion.[2]

But this is not the whole story. In this interview, Malekian finally accepts that deference exists even in science. The interviewer says, consider a completely illiterate or uneducated person who has no aptitude for understanding physical matters and issues and can never understand the theory of relativity until the end of their life. Well, in that case, they can do one of two things: either give up trying to understand relativity or accept it deferentially. If such a person accepts the theory of relativity, we cannot consider their action irrational.

Malekian confesses that yes, "that is completely correct, they must practice deference. I, who do not know physics, must defer to the physicists, there is no doubt about that. Why? Because the physicists have said our colleague Albert Einstein's theory is correct, and I accept it." But the strange thing is that in response to the interviewer's question, "Meaning you do not see this as contradicting your own words?", he answers, to our utter astonishment: "No, I do not."

But why? What is the difference between physical doctrines and religious ones that one can defer to the former but not the latter? According to Malekian, in the former, which is the product of the physicists' work, "other physicists can and have confirmed a physicist." But regarding the latter, if other prophets had confirmed the Prophet of Islam (PBUH), we too would have accepted his doctrines; but such an event has not occurred.

Here again, based on the same criterion for distinguishing a specialist from a non-specialist, Malekian judges that since prophets are not specialists, deference to the words of prophets is not of the same kind as deference to the words of specialists, and therefore, while the latter—that is, deference to the words of specialists—is justified, the former—that is, deference to the words of prophets—is not justified.

But this claim has two flaws. The first flaw is that the denial of prophets being specialists has been carried out based on criteria whose incorrectness and baselessness we demonstrated earlier. The second flaw is the commission of another fallacy here. This fallacy arises from the fact that from the difference between a "specialist" and a "prophet," it is concluded that there is therefore a difference between "deference to a specialist" and "deference to a prophet."

By way of comparison, the characteristics of a car and an airplane are clearly different from one another. But one cannot conclude from these differences that the initiation of movement from point A and arrival at point B in these two vehicles is completely different from each other. Because in both vehicles, the average displacement vector is exactly the same.

By the same analogy, although the characteristics of a prophet can be completely different from the characteristics of a specialist, one cannot conclude from this that "deference to the sayings of a prophet" is therefore different from "deference to the sayings of a specialist." Because both can be considered a reliable source, and deference to both can be regarded as epistemically justified.

Regardless of these two problems, what evidence does Malekian have to show that other prophets did not confirm the Prophet of Islam (PBUH)? He first adopts a heading under the name "Founders of Religions and Sects," and then claims, "Buddha does not confirm Muhammad [PBUH]. Muhammad [PBUH] does not confirm Buddha." But this statement, whatever it is, is not an argument. According to some statistics, there are about 4,300 religions in the world today, and their number in the past was probably much higher. That is, does Malekian really expect the founders of all these religions to confirm each other's prophethood?

But if the meaning and referent of religion is so unregulated, why not consider polytheism, Nazism, fascism, or ... as a type of religion as well, and then rule that we would accept the claims of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) only if, for example, the chief of the polytheists of the time, namely Abu Sufyan, also confirmed him.

Interestingly, Malekian has committed another fallacy here. According to the criterion he himself introduced and accepted, he should in fact request that the "founders of religions and sects" confirm the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) not as a prophet, but as a "founder of a religion and sect"; he certainly knows that this title is different from the title of "prophethood."

On this basis, was Buddha one of the prophets, or did he claim prophethood, that we should expect him to confirm the prophethood of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)? By way of comparison, wouldn't it have been better if Malekian had said he would accept the claims of the Prophet (PBUH) if Musaylima the Liar had confirmed him? After all, compared to Buddha, Musaylima the Liar at least claimed prophethood!

It seems clear that if we asked the founders of religions and sects to confirm the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) as the "founder of a religion and sect," this would most likely happen. But regarding the confirmation of the prophethood of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), how does Malekian know that such a thing did not happen? Perhaps the prophets did confirm one another.

But Malekian denies such confirmation. His evidence for his claim is that: "They [the prophets] do not confirm [one another] because their claims are incompatible with each other. [For example,] Muhammad believes in resurrection, Buddha believes in reincarnation ... Even in the religious traditions of Western religions, which seem to have some similarities, they do not accept each other's claims. The Trinity that exists in Christianity was not accepted by the founder of Islam. The monotheism that the founder of Islam accepted is not accepted by Christians."

But the claim that “if the assertions of individuals differ from one another, one must necessarily conclude that they have not affirmed one another” has numerous counterexamples. As one instance, the assertions of physicists also differ from one another; so why does Malekian not conclude from this evidence that physicists, too, have necessarily not affirmed one another as physicists?

His answer to this objection might be that “we call everyone a physicist and say that physicists disagree with one another. Because they all accept a vast common context, but they also have some disagreements on the peripheries.”

But anyone with even a slight familiarity with the foundations of physical theories knows that the differences in physicists’ assertions are not on the peripheries. Aristotelian physics is incompatible and even contradictory with Newtonian physics, Newtonian physics with relativistic physics, and relativistic physics with quantum physics. In other words, for example, accepting relativistic physics entails the rejection of Newtonian physics.

These theories are incompatible and conflicting with one another not on the peripheries, but in the definition of the most fundamental concepts and categories of physics, namely space, time, energy, mass, and even causality. Yet none of this means that the specialized practitioners who adhere to those different foundations are not physicists. The conclusion is that there is no necessary connection between “conflict in assertions” and “not affirming one another as a specialist in that field.”

By the same analogy, even if we set aside the claim of the distortion of the scriptures and accept that the assertions of the prophets differed from one another, Malekian cannot conclude that they therefore did not affirm one another’s prophethood. In fact, according to that same trust-based approach, we must accept that at least the prophets of the Abrahamic religions affirmed one another entirely, because the truthful and trusted one has given such testimony.

What has been said so far is only a critique of a small part of Malekian’s lengthy interview in defense of his positions against critics. Of course, I emphasize again that one cannot critique an author’s views based solely on one interview. But since Malekian has, in this relatively recent interview, expressed his latest views and strongest reasons in a way, it can be said with great confidence that the critique presented in this writing against his view on the unjustifiability of religious believers’ deference to religious teachings is valid. Of course, there are many other ambiguous, incorrect, and fallacious sentences in the interview that the astute reader can refer to and observe in that text.

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[1] It is obvious that if it becomes known one day that the available evidence was not reliable, or if it becomes clear to the believing person that proposition A is no longer true, then the belief in the truth of that proposition will no longer be justified. But this is a minor-premise discussion and outside the subject of this writing (in this case, individual beliefs must be examined to see whether they are supported by reliable evidence and whether they are true or not.)

[2] At this point, I must note that the aim of this article is not a minor-premise discussion of the second premise of the above argument, so that, for example, an objection could be raised that the reliability of authoritative religious sources is itself a matter of debate, and the like; rather, as stated, the subject of this writing is merely to explain religious deference and to establish the claim that religious deference is compatible with epistemological justification.

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