Absolute Truth, Fallible Knowers

What the Islamic intellectual tradition offers the university

Amar Murray | Independent Researcher and Writer | Founder, School of Values

Panel: Moral Foundations of the University: Beyond Classical Liberalism

HxCanada Fall Conference, OISE, University of Toronto, 25 October 2026

Complete conference text with additions for the written version

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Geoff, for bringing us together and for raising this important question.

Can faith help restore reason to the university? The Islamic tradition offers grounds for an affirmative answer, but no automatic guarantee.

In Islamic thought, God's knowledge is complete. Human knowledge is not. People are also responsible before God for what they claim to know. The Qur'an tells us not to follow what we have no knowledge of. It reminds us that we will be questioned about our hearing, our sight, and our hearts.

These commitments can support intellectual humility and the courage to accept correction, even at the cost of status or influence. Whether they actually do is a historical question. Three historical practices illustrate the possibilities. A history of coercion reveals the danger.

First, recognised pluralism.

For centuries, multiple schools of law were recognised as legitimate within a shared Sunni legal tradition. They disagreed, not always peacefully, within the same scholarly world and, in some institutions, were taught side by side. Disagreement was built into the system.

A well-known hadith teaches that a qualified judge who makes a serious effort to reach the right judgment can still receive a reward when mistaken.

Second, no reputation above scrutiny.

Scholars developed rigorous methods for evaluating reports and the reliability of their transmitters. This echoes the Qur'anic command of tabayyun: verify a report before acting on it.

Third, rules that bind both sides.

Around 1300, al-Samarqandi helped organise earlier methods of debate into a general discipline. It set rules for asking questions, giving proof, and knowing when to accept an objection. The aim was to reach the right answer, not to win.

These practices did not end disagreement. They gave scholars a shared way to work through it. And a university is a community of scholars.

Now the warning.

Al-Kindi argued that we should accept truth wherever it comes from. He tutored a caliph's son. Yet after he lost favour, historical accounts report that he was beaten and his library was taken away.

Al-Mutawakkil is remembered for ending the mihna, a test of religious belief imposed by the state. Scholars who refused it had been imprisoned or flogged.

But ending that test did not end the power to punish inquiry. The official doctrine changed. The power to enforce it remained.

Principles alone do not protect inquiry. They can be written, taught, and memorised, yet people can still be punished for asking questions.

What matters is whether those principles also limit power. Rules of debate applied to scholars, but they did not always limit rulers and patrons who could influence appointments, funding, and punishment.

To protect inquiry, those in power must answer to people who have the right to say no.

So, do we need roots in absolute truth? Yes, but we must hold two ideas together.

Truth must stand above the institution. And every human interpretation must be open to question.

An institution does not make a claim true by approving it. Nor does a majority make an objection false by voting against it.

Classical liberalism offers principles for free inquiry and fair debate. A university also needs people willing to defend truth when doing so carries a cost. Faith can provide one reason for that commitment: responsibility before God, even when no one else is watching. A secular colleague may have other reasons.

But we also need the second idea: we can be wrong.

Claims to truth become dangerous when people forget this. The mihna shows what can happen when rulers refuse to let others question their views.

Ibn al-Haytham urged the seeker of truth to question what he reads and examine his own judgment as well. A commitment to truth needs openness to correction.

Truth may be absolute. Our understanding is not.

So, these three practices can help, but they must also apply to those in power. A secular colleague can share these practices without sharing their religious grounds.

In any institution, including those within the Islamic tradition, we should ask three questions.

Who has the right to object?

What happens when objections are ignored?

Do the same rules apply to those who control appointments and funding?

If not, an institution may keep teaching its principles long after it has stopped living by them.

Thank you.