Modern science is like a runner who has forgotten where he started from and does not know where he is headed. The Muslims – ah! the hapless Muslims - they did not even join the race as they were looking in the wrong direction when the signal was given. Isn’t it time to start the sprint, this time remembering our heavenly origins, our horizon riveted on Sidrat ul Munteha?
Why Do Muslims Not “Reason”?
By Dr Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Muslims often say, with confidence and sincerity, “Islam is a religion of reason.” The statement is true—but it is also enticingly simplistic. Too often, when we use the word reason, we silently import meanings shaped by modern education, scientific training, or inherited philosophical categories. We then approach the Qurʾān expecting it to speak in the same language.
It does not.
The Qurʾān speaks with extraordinary precision about how human beings understand, reflect, and recognize truth. But it does so using a distinct moral and spiritual vocabulary, not the abstract terminology of later philosophy or modern rationalism. Many misunderstandings of the Qurʾān arise not from ill will or ignorance, but from reading it through a foreign concept of reason.
This article seeks to clarify what reason means in the Qurʾān, how classical Muslim thinkers understood it, how modern usage differs, and why confusing these frameworks leads sincere readers astray.
The Qurʾān Does Not Speak of Reason the Way We Do
One of the first surprises for anyone reading the Qurʾān carefully—especially in Arabic—is that the Qurʾān never speaks of reason as a thing one possesses. The word ʿaql never appears as a noun. Instead, it appears only as an activity: yaʿqilūn – they reason; taʿqilūn – you reason
This is not accidental. The Qurʾān is not interested in measuring intelligence. It is concerned with how human beings respond once truth has become visible.
Linguistically, ʿaql means to bind or to restrain. To reason, in the Qurʾānic sense, is to allow recognition of truth to bind one’s judgment and behavior. A person may be clever, articulate, even learned—and yet, in Qurʾānic terms, fail to reason.
This alone unsettles many modern assumptions.
Reason and the World of Signs (Āyāhs)
The Qurʾān does not present the world as a collection of atoms, electrons, protons, quarks and energy fields. It presents it as a landscape of Allah’s Signs (Ayahs).
“We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and within their own Selves until it becomes clear to them that it is the Truth.” (Q 41:53)
A sign (āyah) is not simply evidence. It is something that points beyond itself. Mountains, stars, life, death, conscience, history—none are self-contained. They are meant to be read. Each Sign (Ayah) opens the horizon to multiple Signs (Ayahs) inviting the human intellect into a transcendent spiral of inquiry, an unending quest for the Truth. It is an unqualified invitation to continuously seek, to ask, to discover and to know. That is true science. (Whatever is in the heavens and the earth asks every moment; Every moment He (reveals His beautiful Names upon creation) with majesty (Q. 55: 29)
Reason, therefore, is the faculty by which Signs in nature and within the soul are recognized as heavenly Signs. This is why the Qurʾān constantly asks: Do they not reflect? Do they not understand? Do they not reason? The problem is rarely lack of data; it is failure to see and understand meaning.
Seeing Is Not Enough: You must Reason and Witness
Many Qurʾānic verses describe people who see but do not perceive, hear but do not understand. This is deeply unsettling, because it suggests that misunderstanding is not always accidental. “They have hearts with which they do not understand.” (Q 7:179)
The Qurʾān uses heart (qalb) here not to sentimentalize understanding, but to locate it at the center of moral responsibility. Understanding is not complete until it becomes witnessed (shahādah). Those who reason say: “Our Lord, You did not create this (the universe – the kawnain) in vain.” (Q 3:191). There is divine purpose in creation; it is not merely games and play, as some secular scientists speculate.
This is reason reaching its destination. It has moved from observation to recognition, and from recognition to acknowledgment, to seeing to witness. This is the pinnacle of human achievement.
Modern reason, by contrast, often stops half-way down the road. It explains how things work but suspends judgment about what they mean. From a Qurʾānic perspective, this is not neutrality—it is unfinished reasoning.
Subtle and Varied Usage of Reason in the Qurʾān
One reason the Qurʾān is misunderstood is that it does not collapse all mental activity into a single word. It uses a family of terms, each naming a distinct function: ʿAql: The intellect (as used by al Ghazzali); Fikr: reflective thought, especially about nature; Tadabbur: deep, consequence-aware reflection, especially on revelation; planning; Fahm: accurate comprehension of meaning; Lubb: purified intellect, free from distraction — subtle baraka in the innermost core of the heart; Nuhā: intellect as moral restraint; Baṣīrah: insight; illuminated by guidance.
Some of these clearly involve the mind—observation, reflection, analysis, modeling and projections. Others involve moral orientation—restraint, humility, responsiveness and meaning which are functions of the heart. The Qurʾān integrates them rather than separate them.
Modern readers often reduce all of this to “thinking,” and then wonder why the Qurʾān is so stern with those who “do not reason.” The firmness makes sense when we realize that the Qurʾān is not condemning ignorance; it is awakening those who refuse to respond.
Classical Muslim Philosophers: A Partial Translation
Classical Muslim philosophers such as al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and Ibn Rushd inherited Greek philosophical frameworks and used them brilliantly. They described reason (ʿaql) as a graded faculty—potential, actual, acquired—capable of abstraction and universal truth.
This was a genuine intellectual achievement, but it also introduced a subtle shift. Reason became primarily a cognitive faculty, ordered toward metaphysical understanding and intellectual perfection.
The Qurʾānic emphasis on reason as moral witness was not denied, but it was no longer central. This tension later surfaced in debates between philosophers and theologians—not because Islam rejected reason, but because different meanings of reason were being used without clarification.
Modern Reason: Powerful, Blind to Heavenly Signs
Modern education trains us to reason in a particular way: to analyze, measure, predict, and control. This kind of reason is extraordinarily powerful—and largely silent about meaning.
It asks: How does it work? Does it repeat? Can it be tested? Is it efficient and useful? It rarely asks: What does this point to? What does this demand of me? What am I accountable for?
When Muslims unconsciously read the Qurʾān through this modern lens, they expect it to behave like a textbook or a philosophical argument. When it does not, they may conclude—wrongly—that it is merely symbolic.
The problem is not the Qurʾān. The problem is category confusion.
Why So Many Muslims Misunderstand the Qurʾān
Several factors converge:
- Modern schooling trains us in instrumental reason, not moral recognition.
- Translations often flatten Qurʾānic terms, rendering many distinct faculties as “reason” or “understanding.”
- Inherited philosophical categories are assumed to be Qurʾānic, without careful examination.
- Moral response is mistaken for emotionalism, rather than recognized as a completion of reason.
As a result, many sincere Muslims read the Qurʾān faithfully yet miss its address to their reason—because they are listening with the wrong definition.
Conclusion: Reason as an Amānah
The Qurʾān does not oppose reason. It demands more of it than modern or philosophical frameworks typically do. It asks reason to witness, to understand, to recognize signs, and finally to bind the self to truth.
Reason, in the Qurʾānic sense, is an amānah—a trust. It is a jewel in the priceless collection of jewels that Allah offered as Amanah to the heavens, the mountains and the earth, which was declined but accepted by the human - a foolish act of a creature drunk with divine love. It is fulfilled not when we have explained everything, but when understanding has reshaped how we see, choose, and live.
Modern science is like a runner who has forgotten where he started from and does not know where he is headed. The Muslims – ah! the hapless Muslims - they did not even join the race as they were looking in the wrong direction when the signal was given. Isn’t it time to start the sprint, this time remembering our heavenly origins, our horizon riveted on Sidrat ul Munteha?
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group.)