The Qur’ān’s Engagement with Disbelief: A Textual and Philosophical Study

Abstract

This article examines the Qur’ān’s multifaceted response to atheism and skepticism through a textual and philosophical lens. It explores how the Qur’ān articulates rational indications of God’s existence—cosmological, teleological, and moral—by invoking natural and historical āyāt (signs). It also appeals to human nature and conscience (fiṭrah) as an innate epistemic faculty and asserts its inimitability (iʿjāz) and prophetic verification as internal evidence of divine origin. Furthermore, the Qur’ān addresses objections that parallel modern atheist critiques, including the problem of evil, divine hiddenness, alleged contradictions, and perceived tensions with science. Rather than constructing a polemical rejoinder, the study maps how these textual strategies function and how classical exegetes and modern Muslim thinkers have systematized them into formal arguments. Methodologically, the article employs close reading of the Qur’ān in Arabic (with M.A.S. Abdel Haleem’s English translation for selected passages), engagement with classical exegesis—particularly Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr—and analysis of philosophical and apologetic writings, including those of al-Ghazālī and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis. The study contributes to Qur’ānic scholarship by offering a comprehensive account of the text’s engagement with atheistic worldviews and its ongoing relevance to contemporary debates on faith, reason, and skepticism.