Posted by Thus Allah makes clear his signs so that you may use your intellect (Qur’an 2:142).
Intellect – the power or faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands, as distinguished from that by which one feels; the understanding; the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge.
Dictionary.com
Reason – the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgements, or inferences.
Dictionary.com
From the Latin intellectus in Latin, and the Greek nous, intellect “is that which is capable of a direct contemplative vision of beyond the material realities, whereas reason—the translation of the Latin ratio and the Greek dianoia—is of an indirect nature; it works with logic and arrives at mental concepts, only, of those realities. With the intellect, then, one is able to contemplate or ‘see’ the Absolute; with the reason, one can only think about it” (Kazemi, Justice and Remembrance p 23). Reason then, “is a mode of the intellect but is not to be equated with it” (Justice and Remembrance p 28-29).
In Arabic, the term aql which translates to ‘intellect,’ is from the root ‘ql meaning ‘to bind.’ It is the faculty which binds humans to God. By virtue of being endowed with al-aql, humans are capable of acquiring knowledge “which ultimately belongs to God alone” (Nasr, Sufi Essays p 45).
Indeed, in the creations of heavens and the earth, and the alteration of the night and day are signs for those of understanding -Qur’an 3: 190.
In Islam, the cosmos is understood to represent an infinitely vast display of the signs of God. The principle of tawhid (Divine Unity) infused all intellectual endeavour, preventing the splitting of subject from object. Tawhid… declares the inter-relatedness of all things… Given that Muslim intellectuals saw all things as beginning, flourishing, and ending within the compass of One Source, they could not split up the domains of reality in any more than a tentative way…the more they investigated the universe, the more they saw it as manifesting the principles of tawhid and the nature of the human self.” (Sufi Essays p 112-113).
Early Muslim intellectuals searched for knowledge in every domain especially when the Qur’an “explicitly commands the study of the universe and the self as a means to know God” (The Muslim Intellectual Heritage p 111). The primary focus was on the nature of things, “describing and explaining the three fundamental domains…God, the universe, and the human soul.” The discussion of these domains took place in three inter-related disciplines of philosophy, which can be called metaphysics, cosmology, and psychology. “Metaphysics deals with ultimate Reality, cosmology addresses the status of the universe… and psychology explains the origin and destiny of the human soul (The Muslim Intellectual Heritage p 8).
The learning dealt with many disciplines that in modern-day are considered separate fields such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, among others. Hence pre-modern Islamic scholars were knowledgeable in a variety of fields rather than in one field, for example, Ibn Sina (d. 1037) was an astronomer, a physician, and the most influential philosopher of his time; Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) a philosopher, jurist, astronomer, and physician who made the earliest descriptions of sunspots.
Hence, all human knowledge, according to early scholars, represents a dim reflection of the limitless divine knowledge, comprising transmitted and intellectual knowledge.
“Transmitted knowledge is passed from person to person, but true “intellectual” knowledge can only be discovered by the human mind from within itself…transmitted knowledge include Koran, Hadith, grammar, and jurisprudence. More generally we find it in everything that we think we know from books, teachers… Its essential content does not depend on being passed down from others… the goal of human life is to harmonize oneself with heaven and earth and to return to the transcendent source. The universe and the human self are viewed as inseparably linked” (The Muslim Intellectual Heritage p 108-109).
Chittick notes that “if we do not understand the world and ourselves as they are we will not be able to know God as He is, and without knowing Him we cannot love Him… Love gives spiritual life to all knowledge. The purpose of knowledge “is not to manipulate and control the world but rather to understand both the world and ourselves” (The Muslim Intellectual Heritage p 108). It would follow that the science and learning that we pick up from our schools, our universities…. can all be given spiritual life” (Ibid. p 15).
S.H. Nasr states that the heart is the seat of intellect and knowledge. “The heart is the instrument of true knowledge as its affliction is the cause of ignorance and forgetfulness. That is why the message of the revelation addresses the heart more than the mind as in the following verse of the Qur’an:
O men, now there has come to you
an admonition from your Lord,
and a healing for what is in the breasts (namely the heart)
and a guidance, and a mercy to the believers (Qur’an 10: 57).
Hence, search for knowledge and understanding plays a fundamental role in any search for God. “In order for the human heart to open itself to God, it must have proper knowledge of what it is opening up to. We cannot love what we do not know…every knowledge of God is built on our knowledge of the world and ourselves” (The Muslim Intellectual Heritage p 19).
“A heart purified can thus begin to ‘see’ Allah and His creation everywhere; seeing not only with the eyes but also with the heart” (Justice and Remembrance Reading Guide p 12).
According to Imam Ali’s teachings, the intellect “must be seen, first and foremost, as a spiritual faculty… (Justice and Remembrance p 34).
Rumi states:
“The light that lights the eye is the light that’s in the heart.
Eye’s light is but derived from what illuminates that part.
The light that lights the heart is the light that comes from God.
Which lies beyond the reach of sense and reason…”
Collected Poetical Works of Rumi
The quest for knowledge is never-ending, and those with the necessary preparedness must pay close attention to the advice that God addresses to the Prophet: ‘Say: “My Lord, increase me in knowledge” (Qur’an 20:114) (The Islamic concept of Human Perfection p 3).”
Mawlana Hazar Imam said:
“The Faith urges freedom of intellectual enquiry and this freedom does not mean that knowledge will lose its spiritual dimension. That dimension is indeed itself a field for intellectual enquiry.”
Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985
Speech
Further reading:
Mohib Ibrahim, Why Faith Must Be Validated With Reason And Knowledge, Ismaili Gnosis
Sources:
Amira Chilvers, Reading Guide, Justice and Remembrance, The Institute of Ismaili Studies
Professor Azim Nanji, Ismaili Philosophy, The Institute of Ismaili Studies
Dr. Reza Shah-Kazemi, Justice and Remembrance: Introducing the Spirituality of Imam Ali, I.B Tauris & Co Ltd, 2006
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sufi Essays, Library of Congress
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Intellect and Intuition: Their Relationship from the Islamic Perspective
William C. Chittick, The Muslim Intellectual Heritage and Its Perception in Europe, Central and Eastern European Online Library (PDF)
William C. Chittick, The Islamic Concept of Human Perfection, The Matheson Trust For the Study of Comparative Religion
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