A Magnificent Failure and a Grand Copout…
Faith and Reason in Islam and Christianity
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA

The interface of reason with faith continues to elude humankind. Islam and Christianity have both struggled with this interface since their onset on the world stage. Summarily, the historical encounter of reason with faith in the Muslim world was a magnificent failure. In the Christian world, it was a grand copout. These assertions may startle some and may ruffle the narcissist cultural sensibilities of others. Whatever may be one’s prejudices, it cannot be denied that the encounters of belief and reason have left a lasting intellectual legacy which continues to shape the values, beliefs and perceptions of billions of people around the world.

The Islamic world met up with Greek rational thought in the seventh century. Buoyed by its exactitude and discipline, Muslim scholars adopted it as their own and applied it with vigor to philosophical questions facing them. They overextended their reach when they encroached upon faith and postulated that the Qur’an was created in time. The reaction from the orthodox ulema was fierce. In the first skirmish between faith and reason, the protagonists of faith, the ulema, prevailed (765-846 CE). We have covered the events surrounding these intellectual upheavals in an earlier article in Pakistan Link, “Why Did the Scientific Revolution Not Take Place in the Muslim World.”

The aftermath of this first skirmish saw a flowering of empirical science in the Islamic world (850-1200 CE). The scientific method based on empirical observation and measurement was invented and applied to the natural and mathematical sciences. This age produced world renowned mathematicians like al Khwarizmi, opticians like Ibn Hytham, physicians like al Razi and Ibn Sina. These were the stalwarts who planted the seeds of future scientific revolutions and their contributions are acknowledged by men and women of learning in all civilizations.

The difference between empirical science and rational philosophy must be clearly delineated.
Empirical science is inductive. It starts with observation and proceeds to understanding the general nature of things. Rational philosophy is inductive. It starts with broad generalizations and proceeds to deduce inferences of the particular. What is significant is that empirical science thrived in the Classical Age in spite of the fact that the rational method itself was sidelined. It was not Greek rationalism that produced Islamic empirical science; it was empirical science that sustained continued rational enquiry in spite of the marginalization of the rationalists.

Notwithstanding the triumph of the ulema, the questions raised by the first encounter or faith and reason were too fundamental to be discarded. Faith and reason had to be reconciled and the Islamic civilization struggled with this reconciliation for three hundred years.

Logic and reason are constrained by notions of time. The ideas of “before and after” are basic to rational enquiry. It is the classic chicken and the egg discussion. One can go round and round in circuitous reasoning and never come to a conclusion. An accompanying challenge is to explain where and how in the scheme of “before and after” the will of God intervenes to make things happen.

The first to attempt to break this circuitous reasoning was Al Ashari who advanced the “atomistic” theory of time. He postulated that the flow of time takes place in (infinitesimal) small steps. At each step the will of God intervenes and decides the outcome of events.

The Asharite ideas were absorbed into mainstream Islam. From Al Gazzali (d 1105) to Iqbal (d 1938), Muslim scholars through the centuries have expressed themselves within the Asharite paradigm. Al Gazzali went one step further. He questioned the very premise of cause and effect, postulating that cause and effect take place “side by side”. Ibn Rushd tried to repudiate the cause and effect thesis of Al Gazzali but the Islamic world turned inwards, leaned more towards Al Gazzali than Ibn Rushd and went in the direction of Sufism.

The scientists led by al Kindi and ibn Sina developed the Asharite ideas in a different direction. To maintain the omnipotence of God, they postulated the ideas of the contingent and non-contingent. The world was contingent, changeable and dependent on outside forces for their existence. God was non-contingent, absolute, existing by Himself for Himself. The ideas of contingent and non-contingent were too esoteric for most Muslims and they did not catch on.

The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century (and the simultaneous crusades in Spain) intervened and no giant figure of the caliber of al Gazzali appeared in Islamic history after him. The pursuit of philosophy was a privilege of the elite who were patronized by the ruling classes. The Mongol invasions eliminated both. Astronomy, architecture and artisanship flourished in later centuries but there was little by way of fundamental contributions to a resolution of the reason-faith dialectic.

When we survey the grand vista of Islamic intellectual landscape in the Classical Age, we find that the Muslim scholars waged a valiant battle to accommodate reason within faith but this effort was unsuccessful. Reason became marginalized and the center of gravity of Islamic intellectual pursuits shifted away from nature, and shifted inwards towards the soul and the heart. The archetypes of the post Mongol period were Shaikh Abdel Qader Jeelani, Shaikh Shadhuli, Khwaja Moeenuddin Chishti, Nizamuddin Awliya, Shaikh al Jazuli and Shah Naqshband rather than the likes of al Khwarizmi, al Razi and ibn Sina. Notable exceptions like ibn Khaldun (d 1406) only reinforce our argument. It is for these reasons we maintain that the encounter between faith and reason in the Islamic world was a magnificent failure.

The rational sciences entered Europe through Muslim Spain. After the fall of Toledo (1086), the Latins embarked on a vigorous translation of the works of Greek masters just as the Muslims had done four hundred years earlier in Baghdad. Aristotle, Plato, Galen and others became available to Europe through the translation of their works from Arabic into Latin.

The Latins were faced with the same difficulty as had the Muslims, namely, defining the interface between faith and reason. However, their approach to resolving this difficulty was entirely different from that of the Muslims. Whereas the Muslims struggled for three hundred years to come up with a paradigm for accommodating reason within faith, the Latins decided to separate the domain of faith from the domain of reason. It was a grand copout. Thomas Aquinas wrote: "Some truths can be known only from revelation and belong to theology - for example, the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation. Some truths are proper to philosophy - for example, the physical constituents of bodies." (Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 2, p. 141, 1987, Philosophy and Theology of Saint St. Thomas Aquinas.). Thus the separation of what was religious from what was considered profane received a philosophical foundation. The Church was to be sacred; science and sociology were to be secular. This bifurcated outlook has pervaded the development of Western thought since the twelfth century. Christian thought, despite theological protestations to the contrary, embarked on its journey to comprehend a universe from which the Grace of God was taken out at the outset.

The consequences of this divorce of faith from reason have led humankind to a blind alley. It raises the question: Is the worldview that we have so elaborately constructed using “science” and “logic” a deceptive one? The Nobel Laureate Schroedinger, in his book Mind and Matter (Cambridge University Press, 1958, pp 43), quotes a passage from Sir Charles Sherrington (Man and his Nature, Cambridge University Press, 1940), expressing this predicament: “Physical science faces us with the impasse that mind per se cannot move a finger of a hand. Then the impasse meets us. The blank of the ‘how” of mind’s leverage on matter. The consequence staggers us. Is it a misunderstanding?”

In the eighteenth century, as Europe established its sway over the globe, European thought influenced other cultures. The assumptions of a secular cosmos are now accepted by most people around the world. The consequences of these assumptions have been disastrous. Man finds himself alone in a cold universe that is devoid of feeling, emotion and love. He dangles in the air as if on a ladder which has neither a firm footing on the ground of faith nor an ending in the heavens in the Grace of God.

The grand attempts to reconcile faith and reason failed for two principal reasons. First, there was an insufficient grasp of how the notions of time affected reason. Second, the deductive philosophical approach was inherently flawed; it was inadequate for the task at hand.

In the next article, inshallah, we will make a fresh attempt to accommodate reason within faith. It is our view that the Qur’an offers a perspective that bestows its due majesty upon reason while preserving its function as a servant of faith. In the delineation of this interface lies the Falah (well-being, spiritual progress, peace and prosperity) of humankind.