Religious people cherish their beliefs, and naturally like to think that their faith is perfectly reasonable; Muslims are no exception. Hence religions tend to work themselves out into rationalized dogma and develop their own philosophical traditions. For Muslims, the fields of Qur'anic interpretation and Islamic law also incorporate logical argument as the basis of their methodology. Thus it may seem natural for believers to assume that their religious outlook is completely rationalist. However, a purely logical framework causes problems within the context of a religion as monotheist as Islam. The glaring example of the unreasonability of monotheism is referred to by Western philosophers as "the problem of evil"; examining it can help us see what the real place of reason in Islam must be. The fact is that religious belief is more than rationalist dogma. For believers, it constitutes an existential assertion which helps them to live well. But "living well" is a subjective experience, not a logical one; hence, faith acquires irrationality. The results of this enquiry will naturally have important implications for the fields of Islamic philosophy and law.
That there is a degree of reason at work in Islam is beyond question. At a basic level, any textually-based religion requires logic. Muslims must by definition extract Islam from the Qur'an, their revealed source. The process of extraction, whether it be for the definition of Islamic theology or law, must be logical. Logic is the only methodology that ensures that the resulting laws and theologies will "make sense", being consistent with their roots in the Qur'an and with each other. So it is difficult to imagine that Muslims would be willing to forsake logic entirely in their religious practice. Suffice to say, then, that much of Islam as we know it is contingent upon the use of reason.
However, the importance of rationalism in Islam ultimately causes problems. The fact is that there are several concepts associated with monotheist religions which cannot be conclusively reconciled with logic. Prominent among these is the classic paradox that Western philosophy refers to as the "problem of evil". The problem is as follows; if God exists and is wholly good and omnipotent, then evil (in the sense of both "moral evil" i.e. human wickedness, and "natural evil" i.e.. innocent suffering due to disease, hunger, death and other generally unsavory facts of the natural world) should not exist. In the case of moral evil, humans should not be able to act immorally in spite of God's will that they be moral. Likewise, if it is wrong to cause suffering, then the divinely-decreed facts of life should not cause people such suffering. And yet in our experience, all these evils very much exist. So far from being an unavoidable rational or scientific conclusion, the existence of God seems to contradict our experience of the world.
From a purely rationalist standpoint, it is impossible to come to terms with the problem of evil without somehow limiting the goodness or omnipotence of God. Such a compromise would allow for evil and suffering, as God could be rendered unwilling or unable to eliminate them. However, such a compromise in the divine attributes is impossible in an Islamic context. The Qur'anic concept of God, as expressed in the "divine names", emphasize repeatedly the divine attributes of goodness and power. Presumably, if God was not entirely good and omnipotent, then the divine names which we associate with those qualities would appear with some qualification. But in names such as al-Barr (the Beneficent) and al-Qadir (the Powerful) and many others of similar effect, there is no apparent dilution of goodness or power. So the divine attributes maynot be compromised; this cripples any attempt to resolve the problem of evil.
Things would be most convenient for believing monotheists if the problem of evil could be simply and finally worked out rationally. Unfortunately, this is not easily done.
The only way that one can hope to resolve the problem of evil is to claim that evil is necessary for our perception of good. According to this argument, we can only comprehend qualities such as good and evil through contrast between opposites; hence evil and suffering are necessary if we are to experience goodness and pleasure. But even if our current mental state is such that we would not appreciate good without evil or happiness without suffering, the fact is that our current mental state was itself the work of the divine creator. Could not an all-powerful God enable humanity to appreciate good without ever having to experience bad? If so, then God's refusal to do so indicates an indifference to evil and suffering. So we are stuck again with an Islamically unacceptable God whose goodness is compromised.
A second objection to "solving" the problem of evil through asserting the importance of good-evil contrast is more telling. Even if we allow that evil creates a "higher-order good" (for example, an increased awareness of good through the presence of evil) which would otherwise not be possible, we still have not conclusively shown that the overall good is increased. This is because the combination of good and evil which allows for a greater good similarly allows for a greater evil. To be more precise, the presence of both evil and good may enable a "higher-order good", namely good amidst evil. It may be that this "higher-order good" is better than the "first-order good" which would be possible without evil. However, once we allow for higher-order good, we also open up the possibility of higher-order evil. If good is better in the presence of evil, then evil should also be worse in the presence of good. If we examine the idea of moral choice, this becomes apparent. A decision to do good may be more laudable if there is a possibility to do evil; but likewise an evil decision is more reprehensible if there was the possibility of doing good instead. So we are left with no conclusive way to say that evil has enabled some greater good. The problem of evil is still unsolved.
The above objection is very broad in the sense that the precise nature of the first and second-order goods and evils are very flexible. In fact, it is hard to even imagine how one could try to solve the problem of evil without somehow running afoul of higher-order evils in the process.
So there is no argument known to us which will resolve the problem of evil completely. As a result, we must accept that for monotheist frameworks generally, and Islam in particular, logic can give us only a limited understanding of reality. Once we accept this, our inability to resolve the problem of evil becomes a failure in the logical methodology available to us rather than a refutation of our religious beliefs.
So monotheist faith requires us to ultimately give up on rationality as a means of understanding reality. This may seem like a high price to pay, but the only thing that we actually lose is metaphysical speculation; metaphysics being the philosophical investigation of reality through pure logic. However, the fact is that metaphysics never had a strong basis to begin with. All that can be said of any rational system is that its definitions are internally consistent. This says nothing about its "truth" or "reality" or lack thereof, since there is no necessary connection between reality and reason. Logic could very well be a human construct with no bearing on any aspect of ultimate reality; since we can only analyze problems logically, the logical method itself becomes axiomatic for us and we can never prove or disprove it. The only purpose in assuming that there is anything rational about reality is that one is then left with a comprehensible universe.But this is an assumption made for our convenience, and nothing more.
Certainly in the Islamic context, metaphysics has been somewhat less than worthwhile. The Mu'tazilites, a "rationalist" branch of Islamic philosophy which was prominent during the Abbasid Caliphate, were of course very fond of metaphysics. As a result, they concluded that though humans must have free will if they are to be morally responsible, God cannot have free will as the divine will has no choice but to be good. This is only one illustration of how unproductive logic and metaphysics are in a monotheist context.
But the problems of religious faith are more immediate and existential than metaphysical speculation. It may well be that many Muslims would be greatly relieved to put the interminable arguments of speculative theology behind them. This was essentially admitted by medieval Muslim philosophers and embodied in the Ash'arite idea of accepting certain beliefs as being true bi la kaifa, (without asking 'how?'); there is the same concept of aspects of reality being beyond the scope of rational enquiry. Historically, the Ash'arite position became the mainstream view precisely because of the inability of philosophers to reach any acceptable conclusions regarding metaphysics, which in the context of Islamic philosophy often took the form of a determinism versus free will debate. In a real sense, the loss of metaphysics implies the end of traditional Islamic philosophy; we can not speculate on the nature of God, free will, etc. without speaking metaphysically. All that is left to us is a plain faith in a Qur'anic monotheism, which was the important thing anyway. Mercifully, metaphysics has little to do with everyday life; so believers can conveniently continue acting as if the world of our everyday life is logical, even if religious belief says that reasonability is only skin deep.
