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| The Role of Human Intellect
in Islam M. F. Zein The principal cause of human suffering is
shown -in the Qur'an- to be due to blind imitation of absurd beliefs and
customs of one's erring predecessors, with disregard of all evidence of
truth supplied by both reason and divine guidance: On the significance of our human life the
Qur'an states: On the message of the Qur'an: On worshipping other than God: Urging people to contemplate on the miracle of life: And He who grants life and deals death; and
to Him is due the alteration of night and day. Will you not, then, use
your reason? (Qur'an 23/80). The Qur'an urges man's intellect to ponder
on the miracle or re-creation: Telling the Prophet that he could not be
held responsible for the kind of man who chooses to follow his own whims
and desires: Urging man to use reason before he is
overcome by old age and possible senility, the Qur'an states: Thus people are advised not to postpone the
exercise of moral choice, given that one's lifetime is limited with not
much time left at one's disposal. Humans are superior creatures inasmuch
as they have been endowed with the faculty of discernment, and a wide
measure of free will, but are soon liable to decline in old age. As a result of Islam's appeal to the
intellect and reason, the Islamic civilization flourished with the
beginning of the seventh century. Within less than one and half centuries
of the Prophet's death, Islamic civilization reached peaks unknown to the
world of that time. Unlike Christian Europe of the time, intellectualism
in the Islamic world was a highly admired quality and was encouraged in
places where Islam spread. In addition, Islam restored religious tolerance
in those parts of the world long under repression by the Western Church. In comparison, Rome fell to the barbarians
a few decades after the Roman Empire decreed Christianity as the sole
religion permitted for practice by individuals. Only very recently, Bishop John Shelby
Spong wrote: 'We are that silent majority of believers who find it
increasingly difficult to remain members of the Church and still be
thinking people'. In other words, Westerners became -and
could become- intellectuals only when they rid themselves of Church
hegemony and repression. This state of affairs explains to a large extent
the fact that Western civilization was able to flourish only after the
Reformation. To this end, human progress and civilized society in the West
is now fully equated with secularism. In sharp contrast Islam has an inherent secular aspect so often repeated in the Qur'an where the spiritual can never be separated from the mundane. Urging humanity to: Seek by means of what God has granted thee,
the good of the life to come, without forgetting thy own -rightful share
in this world. (Qur'an 28/77) |