On December 20, 2025, a debate meant to revisit a tired question—Does God exist?—ended up exposing something far more contemporary: the fault lines of South Asian intellectual culture in the age of clips, algorithms, and performative certainty.
Across YouTube shorts, X timelines, and Reddit threads, one consensus quietly crystallized: Mufti Shamayl Nadwi did not win by scripture, volume, or outrage—but by refusing to leave the terrain of logic.
His opponent, the celebrated lyricist and public intellectual Javed Akhtar, chose a different battlefield altogether.
That divergence is why the debate went viral—and why it split audiences so sharply.
Nadwi’s Core Strategy: Remove Scripture, Remove Science, Leave Logic
From the outset, Mufti Shamayl Nadwi disarmed the usual debate traps.
No Qur’anic citations.
No scientific name-dropping.
No emotional theatrics.
Instead, he narrowed the arena to metaphysics—the branch of philosophy that asks why anything exists at all, not how it functions.
