THE goal of a humanities education, we’ve been told, is to cultivate critical thinking. But if critical thinking involves asking questions, scrutinising assumptions, and setting aside preconceived opinions, why should this be the ultimate end of the intellectual enterprise? The search for truth must offer something more than the inconclusive uncertainty of the critical thinker.

This is not to say that critical thinking is not a valuable ability to have. In any intellectual endeavour, critical thinking is indispensable. But it cannot and should not be the end of that endeavour. Why must a seeker of truth settle for a fleeting state of knowledge, remaining always ready to move to the next truth that comes his way?

The critical thinker who mistakes the mind’s ability to think critically with the epistemic state of critical thinking, in which no beliefs are certain, and then considers this epistemic state as a desirable end goal, deprives himself of the fruits of certainty, without which human life is bound to remain incomplete and unfulfilled.

The true goal of a humanities education, and of any worthy intellectual enterprise, should be the cultivation of a human being of high moral standards. Moral nobility is not possible without moral clarity. And moral clarity needs epistemic certainty. The uncertainty and doubt that are fundamental characteristics of a state of critical thinking can only furnish a human being capable of having opinions, who finds many things ‘fascinating’ and ‘interesting,’ and who is open to all ideas.

Moral nobility is not possible without moral clarity.

But what about the man of conviction, whose moral belief is held with such certitude that it is compelled to turn into action? What was it that caused an outnumbered army to descend onto the field of Badr? What made a Siddiq, answering the call of his Prophet (PBUH), give up all he had ever owned? And why did the Imam of all martyrs refuse to relent before the sword that kissed his neck? Critical thinking can unsettle a man. But only certainty can send him into battle.

Iqbal once tragically proclaimed: “qafila-i-hijaz mein aik Hussain bhi nahin”. In the shadow of Palestine, his words ring truer now than they ever have. The scepticism that has become the hallmark of critical thinking in the humanities has been a formidable weapon in modernity’s assault on the kind of religious faith that cannot help but drip from the eyes of he who has it.

This modern scepticism can be traced back to René Descartes, a philosopher who decided that in order to know anything with any certainty, everything had to be doubted. Descartes’ doubt then seeped into political thought, where our supposed inability to tell a true religion from a false one was used as a justification for the secular agenda of expunging all that is religious from all that is political. The reasoning ran thusly: we cannot know which religion is true, so we’re better off making our political institutions neutral to this question.

In modern education, scepticism rears its head in the form of a humanities pedagogy that teaches children that all they can know with certainty is that they cannot know with certainty. In the classroom, there is no space for the teacher who dares instruct with the force of conviction. The modern teacher is a regurgitator of textbooks. When he comes to the classroom, he leaves his convictions at home, along with his humanity. At a time when young people need examples to emulate, they only find content-delivering instructors who are themselves devoid of all content.

The great trick of critical thinking is to make us believe that we have become critical of all forms of knowledge indiscriminately. But that is not true. Modern doubt first attacks our moral values, the unseen realities of our experience. The humanities, in which great quest­ions are asked about these realities, are dealt the most fatal blow. In the scientific age, there can be no objective truth in what we cannot see. The material world becomes our most real reality — the only reality we can certainly know. Material wealth, the one idol beyond doubt, thus takes its place as the ‘god’ of modern civilisation.

How far removed from the Islamic paradigm is modern critical thinking. The Quran begins by vanquishing the possibilities of scepticism: “this is the Book about which there is no doubt… .” (2:2). The highest stations of ethical knowledge are marked not by epistemic doubt but by epistemic certainty. In his autobiographical account in The Deliverance from Error, Imam Ghazali speaks of a kind of knowledge “to which no doubt clings,” knowledge that comes with the impossibility of its uncertainty. To save ourselves and our world, we must seek this kind of knowledge. We must become critical of critical thinking.

The writer studies law at Oxford.

sksoofi49@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 21st, 2025