The best thing I’ve read is that “Therational intellect is an instrument that leads you to an audience with the King, after which it doesn’t follow you.❞
MoḥammedMutawalli ash-Shaʿrawi.
If this confused you, then allow me to explain a little:
This statement comes in tafsir of ayah 24 of suratar-Rum,
“Indeed in that are signs for people who use reason”.Ar-Rum:24
The reason is used to comprehend the signs of Allah that He shows us. It is used to reach a state of belief in Him; do I believe in Him after having seen and heard so many signs that point towards Him?
Once you arrive at that belief, you submit to Him. Once you are sure that Allah has commanded it and decreed it, you do not question it.
You do not use logic to obey Allah.
You do not use logic to analyze the ordainments of Allah;
Why do we have to do this?
Why this number of times?
Why was this decreed?
Why did this happen?
Why doesn’t God just do such and such?
Why do women have to do X and not the Y that men get to do?
And so on.
These are questions that minds cannot fathom nor answer completely; the people who insist on answering these questions live a life of hypothesizing and building their beliefs on weak assumptions. In the worst-case scenario, they end up following the path of misguidance as is evident in many cases.
We are conditioned by the widespread secularist culture to believe that our Rational intellects are supreme. That our Rational intellects know no bounds and cannot and should not be restrained.
To think in this manner is the epitome of following hawa (desire) which Allah warns us against repeatedly in the Qurʾan.
It is the following of this hawa that leads to misguidance.
The disbelievers that Allah tells us about in the Qurʾan, didn’t disbelieve because they were unconvinced. They disbelieved because they venerated the ways of their forefathers, or they venerated sacred men amongst them, or they venerated the ones they believed were protecting them, and yes, some disbelieved because they venerated their rational intellect over and above the instructions of Allah.
When we submit to Allah, we submit even our rational intellect to Him, and because of this we do not question Him nor do we try to fathom matters that are beyond us.
Human beings, unarguably, have limitations. These limitations are either unique to us or ‘individual limitations’ or they are limitations that are common to the entire human race.
All of our minds without exception have absolutely no way of comprehending what Allah does or why He does it or HOW He does it; what is going to happen and how it will happen; how the matters of the heavens and the earth are run. The one who tries to use rational intellect here is no different from the one who jumps off a high platform and then promptly flaps his arms the only direction he will be headed is south.
COMMENTS