Reason, Faith & Authority: a Shiite Perspective

[Introduction]

From a Shi'a point of view, there are four sources on which any investigation about Islam has to be based: the Glorious Qur'an, the Sunnah (including sayings, actions and tacit approval of the Prophet), reason, and consensus. After a careful consideration of these four sources, it becomes clear that the Qur'an and the Sunnah both originate from revelation and that consensus is reducible to the Sunnah. Therefore, there are two types of sources:

-the Qur'an and the Sunnah that constitute the revealed or the transmitted sources*(al-adillah al-naqliyyah)*

-  reason or intellect that constitutes the rational source (al-dalil al-'aqli ).1

It has to be noted that what has been said above does not mean that every single enquiry must be based on all the aforementioned sources; rather it means that there is no way to establish the truths about Islam other than referring to one or more of the above sources. There are fields of studies that are completely intellectual such as natural theology or philosophy, and there are fields of study that are purely based on revealed information such as revealed theology, and there are fields that rely on both, such as law and morality.2

It should also be noted that when Muslim scholars mention the Qur'an and the Sunnah as revealed sources this does not mean that they do not believe in previous revelations. Indeed, it is part of Islamic faith to confirm all the previous prophets and revelations. The only problem here is how to identify what was actually revealed to them. Therefore, whenever something is known to represent a fact or a universal or unconditional rule revealed previously by God, that too, is certainly accepted.

Thus, we can conclude that there are two major common ways to understand and discover religious truths: revelation and reason.3 The Shi'a believe that reason is a reliable source of knowledge and that it is in complete harmony with revelation. According to some hadiths, God has two proofs (hujjah) through which humans can understand His will: the internal one, reason (al-'aql), and the external one, the prophets. Sometimes reason is called, “the internal prophet” and the prophets are called “the external reason”. There is an established rule among Shi'a jurists that whatever judgement is made by reason is the same as that made by religion (shar') and vice versa.

In what follows, I will try to explore the status of reason in Islam and then I will refer to different roles of reason in general and in understanding moral values in particular. Having studied revelation and reason as two sources of understanding Islam, I will briefly refer to the Shi'a understanding of faith and authority.