Al-Daleel

This article deals with a vital and crucial epistemological issue, about which many theological and polemical debates have been made throughout history, concerning the role of reason in religious knowledge. There are many implications based on this, being on ideological, legislative and moral levels. From our point of view, the cause of the conflict lies in the human’s approach to the authenticity of reason and its scientific limits, and also the authenticity of religious text and its cognitive areas. In this paper, I have put this topic under the microscope of rational examination and scientific research. In order to cover the issues of this study, I have relied on the evidentiary rational approach, along with the documented historical transmission from religious knowledge sources. At the end of the article, I have come to demonstrate the ranks of rational judgments, the subjective authenticity of evidentiary reason, and the deviation of detailed legal issues from reason’s evidentiary limits. Furthermore, I have discussed the central role of reason in proving and correcting the religious ideological vision, deducting legal rulings, and confirming the religious ethical system in the pure Islamic thought.

There is no doubt about the importance of defining the criterion of the truthfulness of knowledge, including religious knowledge that has an essential role in the happiness of human beings. In this study, I present a critical analytical approach to firstly show how to define the criterion of truth in religious knowledge, and by noting that religious knowledge is one of the human sciences, I show that the criterion of its truthfulness is the same as the criterion of truthfulness of all issues. After discussing compatibilism and pragmatism and epistemologically criticizing them, I explain foundationalism in religious knowledge as a true standard for proving its authenticity. I do this by referring theoretical issues to foundational issues, which are axioms. Finally, I attempt to answer some of the problems raised about foundationalism and make use of them in a doctrinal question, which is the question of proving the existence of God, to be an applied example in the study.

There is an attempt made by sociology of knowledge aiming at rejecting social dimensions on the subject of knowledge, trying to offer a field-reading, stemming from accumulated human skills and experiences. Sociology of knowledge stresses that knowledge cannot be shaped without sociological data and social foundations. Many propositions have paved the way for the appearance of the sociology of knowledge and without naming it. In fact, these propositions have worked on an idea showing the effect of external reality on knowledge and awareness, without focusing only on mental data and rational priorities. Our task in this article is to historicize the sociology of knowledge, trying to review the periods of its development, and explore its areas and the level of its relation with epistemology by classifying the most important theories in a set of patterns and contexts, in order to define the level of that relation. In conclusion, we discuss some of the most important criticisms directed to sociology of knowledge.

Illusionary perceptions are what that human self spontaneously obtains without thinking and contemplating. It is well-known to philosophers and logicians that this kind of perception is the perception of the partial meanings related to sensual things, and that, which is responsible for this, is the faculty of illusion. By this faculty, the human self has rulings on perceptible and imaginary things that are often true, such as the laws of ‎geometrics, but by such laws it might go beyond perceptible things to purely rational ones. So that it moves the ruling of perceptible material things to abstract reasonable ones. However, these laws are false and refuted by reason, and this is reflected negatively on the study of theology. This reflection has many applications, the most important of which is that which concerns the study of scriptural divine attributes (al-sifat al-ilahiyah al-khabariyah). Some scholars have taken them for their fixed traditional meanings of perceptible things and applied them to the Holy Divine Essence, relying on one of the illusionary rulings that are denied by reason. This is called the rule of comparing the imperceptible to the perceptible. In this article, I shed light on the problematics of this matter due to the rules of the rational approach that puts each tool or way of knowledge in its place that is compatible with itself constitutionally.

The matter of dealing with the written Islamic heritage and studying it – whether its contents are real or mere imagination – is something that has recently surfaced as an approach in understanding heritage. Some have offered many suggestions as examples on denying the historicity of those contents (that they are not real), showing that this heritage is full of imaginary accounts. The book "The Controversy of History and the Imaginary... Biography of Fatima" is an example on this viewpoint. There are of course several approaches for studying the Islamic heritage, like the textual approach, the rational approach, the inductive approach, the hermeneutical approach, and the approach based on literary texts. However, this particular book describes many items of heritage as imaginary, trying to destroy the Islamic heritage, saying that it is occupied with imagination, and that many opinions, which have accumulated throughout generations, are only the product of the fertile imagination scholars. However, scholars have submitted their studies to jurisprudential and traditional (hadith) standards and patterns that do not contradict reason.

There are many opinions and theories that try to explain the nature of divine revelation and religious texts in scientific and cultural circles. Recently, a modern theory has appeared under the title “historicity of religious text”, influenced by the theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Eric Hirsch, De Saussure, Hegel, Marx and others. It is an amalgamated theory with various sources and origins. The theory of the historicity of religious text focuses on the fact that all texts, especially religious texts, are formed and generated in "reality and culture", and not a phenomenon differing from historical and social reality. As a result, text is a "cultural product" born in its incubating environment. The theory of historicity is based on specific foundations and principles, all of which make the religious text an unsacred and human-made phenomenon, neither above history, nor above time and place. In this article, I will explain the theory of historicity of the religious text, with its principles and requirements, in light of the theory of some modernists, such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid and Mohammed Arkoun. I will then evaluate and criticize this theory in the light of rational and traditional fundamentals.

While the holy Quran is “a clarification of everything, guidance, mercy, and good tidings for Muslims” [Surat Al-Nahl: 89], it is natural, or inevitably, that it includes many concepts and terms leading humankind to the guidance and mercy of Almighty God. Because we as Muslims believe that religious text, represented by the holy Qur’an, has come in this way, it is therefore obligatory for researchers to do their best to explore its verses, in order to get to its cognitive and intellectual implications of the many questions directly related to man’s life and the different stages of his development. Perhaps, the most important of these questions is to know the skill of developing man’s apparent and hidden capabilities. Accordingly, in this study I attempt to discuss the intellectual dimension of the aspects of skill according to the viewpoint of reliable religious text (the holy Quran). This is because I believe that the problem of research lies in identifying the indicators of the special aspects of skill, when these aspects are closely related to man’s movement and action at both theoretical and practical levels. The study hypothesis has tried to fulfill this task through intellectually differentiating between the subjective and objective aspects of skill; in order to know what has already been and what should be.

In this article I will show that there are many sources, through which one can get to religious knowledge, relying on the logical deductive approach, along with the deportments of reasonable people that have been confirmed by reliable tradition. One of those sources is reason, like in knowing the fundamentals of religious doctrines, such as the existence of the Creator, His attributes and oneness, resurrection, prophethood, general imamate, and also some practical rulings, like morals. Other sources are perception and the transmission of traditions (hadith) from the infallibles (authority), because the infallible authority has taken knowledge from its original source, that is revelation and inspiration, and then it has been transmitted from him to us, either directly from him by senses, or through reliable transmission. The sources of religious knowledge are: “sensual, reason, inspiration, revelation, authority.” Through this article, I conclude that these sources are within the circle of the sources of human knowledge, and interrupting any one of them means the interruption of human axiomatic knowledge of human beings; and consequently, nothing shall be safe!.