Rationalism and religious belief throughout the history of Islamic thought

Kamal Masuod Zabih

Abstract

The question of rationality and religious belief is one of the important and exciting questions. It was and is still of great concern to thinkers and researchers, in the past and the present, in the East and the West, and from different angles. The history of the relation between rationalism and religious belief in the Islamic intellectual sphere is completely different from what it was in the Western Christian world. This history has been rich and exciting, in which this relation has taken different forms, letting to study it once again according to a contemporary epistemological view, an important factor in understanding the nature of this relation, as well as in understanding the solutions that Muslim thinkers have offered throughout the ages to solve problematic relation between rationality and religious beliefs.
Hence, this article attempts - according to an analytical, historical, descriptive and comparative approach - to trace the question of the relation between rationality and religious belief in Islamic culture from an epistemological viewpoint by showing the opinions of some Muslim thinkers, sages, theologian, and hadith specialists throughout history.

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