As a matter of fact one of the great services that Islam can render to the modern world, in which the dichotomy between reason and revelation or scie… - Hossein Nasr

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As a matter of fact one of the great services that Islam can render to the modern world, in which the dichotomy between reason and revelation or science and religion has reached such dangerous proportions, is to represent this possibility of the union between revelation and reason as found in the Quran. The source of revelation in Islam is the Archangel Gabriel or the Universal Intellect. Intellect (al-‘aql al-kulli in the language of hadith) and the word ‘aql itself signify etymologically both that which binds or limits the Absolute in the direction of creation and also that which binds man to the truth, to God himself. In the perspective of Islam it is precisely ‘aql which keeps man on the straight path (the sirat al-mustaqim) and prevents him from going astray. That is why so many verses of the Quran equate those who go astray with those who cannot use their intellect (as in the verses wa la ya‘qilun, ‘they do not understand’ or literally ‘use their intellect’—the verb ya‘qilun deriving from the root ‘aqala which is related to ‘aql; or the verse la yafqahun, ‘they understand not’, the verb yafqahun being related to the root faqiha which again means comprehension or knowledge.)

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About Hossein Nasr

(Persian: سید حسین نصر, born April 7, 1933) is an Iranian philosopher, theologian and Islamic scholar. He is the University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University.

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Islamic science came into being from a wedding between the spirit that issued from the Qur'anic revelation and the existing sciences of various civilizations which Islam inherited and which it transmuted through its spiritual power into a new substance, at once different from and continuous with what had existed before it.

For Muslims the Islamic Shari'ah, or Divine Law, is the concrete embodiment of the Divine Will as elaborated in the Quran for the followers of Islam; and from the Islamic point of view the scriptures of all divinely revealed religions, each of which possesses its own Shari'ah, have the same function in those religions. For Muslims, who accept the Quran as the Word of God, therefore, following the Divine Law is basic and foundational for the practice of their religion.

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The reduction of the Intellect to reason and the limitation of intelligence to cunning and cleverness in the modern world not only caused sacred knowledge to become inaccessible and to some even meaningless, but it also destroyed that natural theology which in the Christian context represented at least a reflection of knowledge of a sacred order, of the wisdom or sapientia which was the central means of spiritual perfection and deliverance.

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