Religious Knowledge: Essence, Possibility, and Mechanisms.. a Critical Study

Yassin Bin Jabo

Abstract

The article discusses one of the most important issues that has caused a big tumult in the scientific communities in the Islamic world and beyond, namely the matter of religious knowledge and its possibility. There are those who support the possibility of Islamizing the humanities, and even the necessity of reforming these sciences in a way to be consistent with the Islamic teachings and principles. They argue that the Islamic religion has the necessary competence to be a starting point and a framework for humanities, relying on evidences to support their claim, and then, they offered many methods and mechanisms about how to run this process. On the other hand, there is another trend, opposing the matter of religious knowledge, considering it as impossible and unreasonable. And this is due to the difference between the fields of science and religion and the impossibility of combining them. They see that science is neutral and cannot be ideologized. This study presents the opinions of both trends (those who support and those who oppose religious knowledge), analyzes and criticizes them, and discusses the evidence for each of them, and then the criticisms against each of them. Finally, the study concludes the preference of the first one, and that the possibility of Islamic humanities is a feasible matter, saying that efforts must be made to establish it.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)