Wings of Faith and Reason

The relationship between two styles of cognitive insight

We all know that faith and reason are the two wings upon which religion flies, together which give a Muslim serenity through yaqeen. Both blind faith and desiccated reason are understood to be the two sides of the same, ultimately deficient coin. But what does that mean for us practically? Are faith and reason polar opposites engaged in a metaphorical tug-of-war?

In truth, faith and reason are not competitors for the same metaphysical space where the presence of one is necessarily absence of the other. It would follow from this assumption that man should strive for a 50/50 split of the two in order to fulfill an idealized archetype. In this frame of thinking, one should fear overextending one in reflection at the expense of the other.

However, these assumptions gloss critical functions of both faith and reason to the extent that the assumptions become contradictory. For example, were someone to witness a professor of chemistry’s expertise in his field, one would not hesitate when opening that professor’s textbook to trust the basic principles that were being taught. A student would not demand evidence for every assertion made by that professor in his book. In essence, because one acknowledged the professor’s credentials, it was *reasonable* to have *faith* in that professor’s teachings.

Reason builds faith, and faith builds reason. Logically, one can easily build a case of why the existence of God is more reasonable to believe than nonexistence; in fact, an entire dialectic of Islamic discourse (kalaam) has been dedicated to entirely doing just that. However, insecurities will creep into the mental conscience, wondering “what if” someday an argument came along that one could not refute. This is where faith comes in; one knows that due diligence was done through reason to justify belief, but afterwards one must have faith in one’s self and in Allah that the belief structure is sound.

What we have here are not antonymic concepts but complimentary ones that serve to bolster eachother. Which is the ultimate conclusion we have to accept, that faith and reason are deficient on their own but together form the composition of imaan. If one’s mental resources were completely exhausted searching for an absolute logical proof of God, he would not find it. There is no syllogism to yaqeen. At the same time, blind faith without the engagement of reason leaves one vulnerable to the vicissitudes of emotion; riding a “faith high” can take one to blissful felicity, while a “faith low” can lower one into dangerous proximity to losing the path. Yaqeen is the fortress of the Muslim, and the stone it is built upon is the composition of faith and reason together.

In Surah An-Nur, verse 35, Allah speaks about his own light as “light upon light”. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, one of the most influential Islamic scholars in history, articulates in his exegesis that “light upon light” is the light of reason upon the light of revelation (al-aql ‘ala al-wahy). Understanding faith and reason to be complimentary gives life to this interpretation, since we all desire to come to the light of Allah. Light upon a complimentary light results in intensification and clarity of purpose, which is analogous to the effort of seeking truth through faith and reason.

Practically speaking, many Muslims tend to denigrate one or the other as an inferior path to Allah. In truth, one cannot have too much “faith” and one cannot employ too much “reason”. A Muslim, in his reflections, should not be afraid to engage either in fear of losing the other. They in fact are synergetic, helping craft the mental state of yaqeen. Light upon light.