Reason and faith
By Asghar Ali Engineer
Friday, 29 Jan, 2010
ARE reason and faith antagonistic or complimentary? It depends from what perspective you look at them. The 19th century was a century of reason and faith came to be challenged by rationalists. Even today rationalists reject faith as mere superstition.
The Quran, however, treads the middle path and emphasises the importance of both — faith as well as reason. Today, this truth is dawning upon us that neither faith alone nor reason by itself can suffice. Both are needed for a successful and meaningful life.
Reason alone can make us sceptical and faith alone can make many superstitious. Since rationalists were severely persecuted by organised religion, they adopted the extreme position of denouncing faith altogether and stressing the sufficiency of reason. The Quran invites human beings to have faith as well as to reflect and think.
While reason gives us light, faith gives us deeper conviction and, it should be noted, no action is possible without deeper conviction (imaan). The synthesis of reason and faith (aql and imaan) can be called ‘rational faith’. As escapticism (reason without faith) can paralyse action, blind faith (faith without reason) can reduce us to the level of unthinking zealots. And both trends can be harmful to society.
Islam arose amongst Makkah’s Arabs to begin with, who were quite a practicable people. The creamy layer in Makkah was indulging in trade and commerce and hence they tended to be practical in outlook, unlike the agriculturists who tended to be more superstitious as their life depended primarily on natural forces. Thus Makkah’s Arabs believed in practical rationality.
They did not have much time for reflection and the finer values of life and otherworldly matters. For them everything was here and now — profit, accumulation of wealth and the comforts of life. Achieving these objectives was the main purpose of life for them. They were least bothered that their way of life was causing misery to the lower classes that were immersed in superstition.
The Quran stressed on values like equality, human dignity, compassion and caring for the poor and downtrodden, something neglected and ridiculed by this creamy layer of Arabs. Thus Quranic teachings meant a revolution for them. It gave them light of reason as well as of faith to give their lives a new meaning and direction.
However, when Islam spread to other countries like Iraq, Iran and Egypt, it came face to face with more complex cultures and weltanschauung. Also, unlike the Umayyads, the Abbasids depended more on the newly emerging Iranian middle class for administrative support and hence the Mutazillites acquired primacy during their rule. And translation of Greek tomes of philosophy deeply influenced Muslim intellectuals, as Darul Hikmah in Baghdad became the storehouse of wisdom.
Thus reason began to acquire primacy in the Islamic world and philosophers like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and others, mostly of Iranian origin, rose to great prominence and prestige; so much so that their books became valuable sources of study in European universities also. This caused unrest among a section of Muslim ulema and orthodox scholars.
Many prominent ulema refused to accept the Mutazila doctrines which the Abbasids rulers tried to enforce with the might of the government. The bitter controversy about the createdness of the Quran (the belief that the Quran was created and not co-eternal with Allah) divided the Muslim scholars at the time. The Sufis were also not comfortable with emphasis placed on reason as against spirituality.
Also, there was an interesting controversy that while the Mutazillites maintained that something is good because reason says so and hence it becomes good in the Sharia law, the orthodox ulema maintained that something is good because the Sharia says it is good. Thus, the Sharia is absolute and God-given, according to the latter.
The Sufis in general, and Ghazali in particular, were quite uncomfortable with the widespread influence of reason in the Islamic world at the cost of spirituality and orthodoxy. An interesting debate took place between Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Ghazali. Ghazali wrote the book Tahafut al-Falasifa (bewilderment of philosophers) to which Averroes replied by writing Tahafut-Tahafut al-Falasifa (bewilderment of the bewilderment of philosophers).
This debate between reason and faith is a milestone in the intellectual history of Islam. The masses went with Ghazali, not with Averroes. Averroes is known only to a few intellectuals and philosophers whereas Ghazali, like other Sufis, has a great following among Muslim masses. Ghazali maintains that reason leads only to doubt and uncertainty whereas faith leads to a deeper conviction.
Well, philosophers may be comfortable with uncertainty and consider this a price worth paying for a better understanding. But, many others, with a spiritual bent of mind, opt for a deeper conviction which faith alone can provide. The Quran emphasises both, for one without the other leaves us either intellectually blind or unable to act.
The writer is an Islamic scholar who heads the Centre for Study of Society& Secularism, Mumbai.