Where I Stop

Reflections on the Debate About the Existence of God

Over the past few days, I have been surrounded by conversations about God — His existence, His justice, and the problem of evil. Many are calling it a victory of faith over atheism. Scholars, believers, atheists and public intellectuals have all been speaking at once. Emotions ran high. The prevailing sentiment is that faith — and the existence of God — emerged victorious, as Javed Akhtar failed to offer an intellectually sustained counter-argument.

I listened carefully. And, strangely, the more I listened, the more my heart kept returning to the lessons I had learned — not from debate halls, scholarly insights, or philosophical write-ups, but simply from Surah al-Kahf where Quran does not offer me a neat solution to the problem of evil. It offers me something far more unsettling and honest: my limits.

I don’t remember the first time this story unsettled me, but I remember how it stayed. Musa AS walking with Khidr - watching things happen that made no sense - things that felt wrong. And Musa AS — Allah’s messenger, the recipient of wahi — unable to remain patient.

When Khidr kills the child, Musa protests. Instinctively. Morally. Humanly! As a student, he was expected to be patient, yet he could not be. And the story pauses and asks him — and maybe me too:
How can you be patient over that which you do not fully know?

That question keeps returning to me whenever the world feels unbearable.

May be my impatience with evil is not a flaw. May be it is part of what makes me human. Even now, when I think of atheists debating the problem of evil while pointing to the children of Gaza — injustice spreading everywhere, cruelty feeling endless — I see in them the same humanity I see in Musa AS. Though I realize that perhaps no one has an answer that works without faith.

Quran takes me to a place I cannot reach on my own — a place where I begin to see that my demand to fully understand everything is exactly where I cross my limits. I am not Khidr. I can only be like Musa AS, wandering through the events of the world, trying to make sense of them as best I can, while accepting that my understanding will always be partial. It is faith that steadies my heart, even when I cannot fully understand. Faith does not try to justify evil; it gives me trust, and strangely, rather than weakening my faith, it anchors it deeply.

An atheist listening to the story of Musa and Khidr might feel driven mad by it. I understand that. Without belief, it sounds like justification. With belief, it sounds like a reminder: not everything is meant to be known by me.

Again and again, the Quran tells me: you are not meant to hold the whole picture.

So when I say that I stop at Allah, I do not mean that I stop thinking.

This stopping point does not come from infinite regress, contingency arguments, or philosophical necessity. It comes from a deeply internalized Quranic lesson: I am a moral being, not a cosmic auditor.

My intellect walks with me up to a point. My faith takes me the rest of the way — not by answering every question, but by teaching me which questions I am not bound to answer.

And I accept that — consciously, peacefully, and without apology.