The Cost Of Inherited Assumptions

Surah Muhammad does not ask us to accept. It commands us to know. Two crises on opposite

ends of the world demonstrate what happens when that command goes unheeded.

Quranic Foundation: (Surah Muhammad, 47:19)

“So know that there is no deity except Allah.”

The verse opens with a single command: know. Not believe on the basis of what your fathers believed, not accept because the community accepts, but know through the exercise of your own rational faculty. Alvin Plantinga argued that genuine belief in God is properly basic: it arises from reason and experience, not blind inheritance. Al-Ghazali, the 12th-century theologian and philosopher, went further. His entire philosophical project rested on the principle that certainty in faith requires rigorous discipline of thought. Inherited belief without examined foundations is not knowledge. It is repetition dressed as conviction.

On 17 March 2026, President Mahama met organised labour at Jubilee House and announced the establishment of an Independent Emoluments Commission to replace the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission. The Finance Minister confirmed the structural cause: Ghana's wage bill consumes 44 per cent of tax revenue, forcing the government to borrow to pay salaries. The distortion accumulated across successive administrations that inherited the pay assumptions without examining whether they still held. The question was not asked with the discipline required, at the moment when asking would have changed the trajectory.

Al-Ghazali warned that the person who accepts inherited certainties without examining their foundations builds knowledge on sand. Ghana's Single Spine Salary Structure, agreed in 2010 and designed to harmonise public sector pay, has been described by President Mahama himself using the Akan phrase “Ator Nsuomu” meaning it has fallen into water. The structure that was meant to bring order produced the distortions that now consume 44 per cent of every cedi of tax collected. That outcome was not inevitable. It was the product of insufficient inquiry applied too late.

The US-Israel war on Iran, now in its 19th day, began on 28 February 2026 after nuclear negotiations that Oman's Foreign Minister described as showing genuine progress were abandoned before hostilities began. Reuters reported on 14 March that the Trump administration rejected attempts by Middle Eastern allies to open ceasefire channels. Both Washington and Tehran now publicly rule out talks. The discipline that would have asked what happens if this fails was absent at the moment when it could have redirected the outcome. The consequences are now visible: oil above $100 per barrel, over 2,000 people killed across Iran, Lebanon, and Israel, and the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed.

This is the 29th day of Ramadan and the penultimate article of this series, which began on the first night. The verse from Surah Muhammad carries its instruction into both stories without strain. Know. Earn the knowledge. Do not inherit the assumption and call it understanding. Ghana's wage crisis and the Iran war are separated by geography and scale, but they share the same root: consequential decisions made without the quality of inquiry that would have changed what was decided.

The knowledge the Quran commands is not passive. It is the hard work of examining what you believe you already know.