Mounir & Joëlle Zakriti,
Anti-Coran Meditations : A Skeptical Essay, 2026
Naturalism and Skeptical Rationalism as Paradigma : interpretation of Deus Sive Natura
The progress of empirical science gave us tools to build solid knowledge, but with different paradigms. Several perspectives and hypotheses co-exists on religions and prophecies, but truth exists, the rational empirical truth. Newton, Einstein, and quantum gravity are not “contradictory”, but complementary. Science and empirical knowledge evolves, but not in a “linear pattern”.
Thomas Kuhn talks about “paradigm shifts”. My point is we now have an empirical knowledge about prophecies, religious phenomena, and the origin of the Quran. I am not a specialist of islam, but I was muslim, I grew up in a Muslim Country, in public Moroccan schools, with indoctrinative islamic catechism inspired by Achaarism and Malekism, I read the Quran in Arabic and French, and I base this research on scholars who master the Quran like Jacques Bercque, Maxime Rodinson, Regis Blachère, and Le Coran des historiens by Moezzi (ed. director).
This book is not exactly about the Quran : it’s about Prophecies and the Philosophy of Prophecy. The paradigm that we adopt here is the naturalist paradigm : the religious phenomenon is a natural phenomenon, at the same time psychological, biological and anthropological, and should be explained by natural facts, natural elements, and by natural knowledge. We explain nature by nature, and nothing exists outside of nature. All what exists is natural, and an immanent part of Nature.
Universal problems : anthropomorphism, ethnocentrism and incommensurability
The religious phenomenon is universal. It’s called the numineux. Durkheim doesnt use the spiritual notion of numineux, but the distinction between the sacred and the profane as anthropological patterns, or principes structrants. In the Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Durkheim shows that the evolution of our logical pattern have a least similarities or homologies with the religious mythologies and religious reasonment. As P. Feyerabend would say, Science and Mythologie have a lot in common.
So what is the Skeptical-Rational criticism of religion as an anthropological phenomenon and as a “fait social total” as Mauss and Halbwachs would say ?
All monotheist gods and all monotheist religions have things in common : ethnocentrism and anthropomorphism. Lets not forget that from an empirical perspective, Islam is first a “jewish-christian nestorian sect” (Cf. Maxime Rodinson, in Mahomet, Chapter 2 & 3, “the rise of a Sect”).
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All monotheist gods and all monotheist religions have things in common : ethnocentrism and anthropomorphism. Lets not forget that from an empirical perspective, Islam is first a “jewish-christian nestorian sect” (Cf. Maxime Rodinson, in Mahomet, Chapter 2 & 3, “the rise of a Sect”).
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All religions start as “sects and cults”, then evolve following certain schemes and patterns, described by Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. For Max Weber, in Sociologie des Religions, the monotheist religions are “sects that succeeded by meeting political, cultural and economic favorables conditions”.
The natural irrationality : Spinoza and beyond
As Spinoza would say, we shouldn’t cry, or get into lamentations or weep on human propensity to superstitions, nor shall we smile and enjoy human phenomena in general, but our duty, as men and women of knowledge and wisdom, is to try and understand, to comprehend human nature as a part of the only Being, the only Substance : Nature. Nothing is outside Nature, nothing is “beyond” Nature, and nothing is unreachable for human Intellect, because human entendement is a natural product of nature, hence capable of communicating with Nature. Humans are not an empire within an empire, not a realm inside a realm, we are, as humans, animals, mammals, and fully produced in the chaotic continuity of Nature and Evolution. Thinking about how much we are one with nature is a spiritual meditation. It makes us think of the mind and spirit as intelligible phenomena.
Humans are not naturally inclined to the modern meaning of rationality. And as Schopenhauer would say humans are not used to thinking by themselves, or to think tout court, because it is more comfortable to arrange or rearrange stereotypes and rumors, and follow what our social groups say. So lets think about the nature of islamic prophecy, by using pure logic, philosophy and academic research. Thinking can be painful, because it can go against what we have been told in our childhood, it can come at a cost, because searching for information and selecting information is exhausting for the brain and the mind, that’s what Nietzsche described as the “spiritual laziness”. Thinking can also become political dangerous : like in the Soviet Union, like in Maoist China, like in the Absolute Monarchies like Morocco or Saudi Arabia, and sometimes like Universities, like Bordeaux-Montaigne in France.
In his Traité Théologico-Politique, the Philosopher Baruch Spinoza consider that irrationality and superstitions are a part of human nature. We can call this type of philosophy a rational panthéiste naturalism, or just a naturalist panthéisme.
We should judge humans for their weaknesses from a “moralisatrice” reactionary/conservative position. However, Spinoza underlines the néfaste rôle of superstitions. Superstitions come from fear, and from the lack of understanding of Natural phenomenon. Religion gives us simple answers for cognitive stability, but the free thinkers like Spinoza or Goethe, look for something more : the clear vision of knowledge and vision […]
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Mounir & Joelle Zakriti
E Pluribus Unum_De Oppresso Liber
The International World Republic of Literature
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