Rational speculation is as Muhammad Abduh states the foundation of Islam .As we have seen in order to awaken in man faith in One God, its does not use miracles , but the ordinary faculty of human reason. Later on, when in order to awaken belief in the Prophets and in the divine revelations, Islam presents that great miracle known as the Quran (which is in itself both an understandable science and the intelligible word of God ) it does not expect that man should accept Islam with passive faith, without the active application of his intelligence. Rather, it invites him to understand it, to meditate upon it up to the limit which human intelligence and reason permit and it challenges him to find a way to deny its superiority by finding a work which could be its equal.
The importance which is assigned to reason in Islam is such
that for the majority of Muslims. When there is an irreconcilable conflict
between an alleged tradition and reason, the latter must prevail and the
tradition must be rejected as supious. As a matter of fact, there are only two
paths to follow: either we admit that the way tradition dictates is
unintelligible, or we must interpret it in consonance with reason.
For believers to accept all the mass of tradition just as it
is, some of it verging upon absurdity, is not expected or required in Islam.
Now a religion which has as its basis rational speculation,
and which gives such a broad scop to reason, a religion that orders the use of
all the faculties bestowed upon man by God and consequently also the one which
is the greatest of all, namely, his intelligence how could such a religion be
an obstacle in the way of science and philosophy?
It has been said that modern civilization has achieved such a
happy development in Europe because Christianity has separated the civil power
from the religious one, as well as because the present-day Western states are
free from Church influence, which through centuries was exercised on them,
while in Islamic countries such separation cannot be effected because the civil
power is connected by law with the religious one.
Now Islam is in the fullest sense a religion and a state. In
addition to having revealed God to man, it also establishes rights and duties
and recognizes that authority is needed to have these observed.
