Minute with a Muslim #099 – What Is The Role of Reason In Islam

A lot of people want to know what's the role of reason in Islam or how to reason and faith sort of intersect or complement each other or oppose each other. And I would refer people to Dr. Sherman Jackson's book Islam and the problem of black suffering in which he makes a very, very important point, that reason is not just one thing. And this is something that goes back to, you know, even the classical tradition, if you go to a daddy, me and some of his works, and other people like classical Islamic scholars and say, reason is not just one thing, okay? And actually, it's an ideological move to try to portray reason as if it's one thing or to try to portray philosophy, as

if all thinking is philosophy, no, that really kind of conceals a lot of really important differences between traditions of reason, between traditions of philosophy between treasured traditions of thinking, right, and each sort of tradition of reason has certain suppositions and assumptions and values that are behind it right now. Obviously, it's well known for anybody who's gone a little bit into Greek philosophy, they had certain, you know, there's the problem of universals and this kind of idea about well, you have substance and form and, you know, how can the substance in here and the form or vice versa, and all these sorts of problems that came about what

seemed or appeared to be a contradiction is dependent upon the categories is dependent upon the way in which they were framing things? Okay. Is that all reason? Is that what reason is no, that's not that doesn't have an exhaustive monopoly on reason, right? There's other types of reason. And this is maybe the central critique of even Taymiyah when he interacts with the floss the philosophers studies all their works and then arise dattara and other works like that is that there is a different tradition of reason that is inherent to the Islamic revelation. Okay, take the Quran and the Sunnah. There is reason within it, okay? A whole system of reason, an organic, divine system of

reason. Okay. And so the question is not of quantity. Okay, the question is not well, how much reason do we allow in our faith? Or, you know, you hear this a lot, you know, it's like, oh, well, they prioritize reason over revelation, that's not the right way to think about it. The right the right way to think about it is that reason, it's not just one thing, okay? So it's not about prioritizing one versus the other. It's about using the tradition of reason that is inherent and indigenous to our tradition, the one that's communicated by Allah subhanaw taala, and not borrowing a foreign external tradition of reason that has other suppositions, other categories, other sorts of

assumptions that actually end up contradicting our tradition, either the reason that's found within it, or even the claims or conclusions or you know, substantive sort of things that we're supposed to believe in, okay, so that's what I would say is a reason it's not just one thing, but there is reason within the revelation. There's the reason that Allah subhanaw taala revealed and that's the reason that we use in understanding our texts, you know, affirming the things that are lost phones, Allah says, and there's no contradiction between that and true faith.