And to elaborate on it, I can put forth the case of a man who owned nothing in this life but an expensive house, and he sold this house and got paid in cash.
In one pocket he had the counterfeit money detector and in the other one the numbers of the counterfeit banknotes, but he failed to make use of either.
If this man, after having sold the house, had found out that all the money he had received was counterfeit, his loss would be tremendous but he would be the only one to blame because he used neither the detector nor the list of counterfeit banknotes.
The numbers, in our case, represent the orders of the deen, whereas the detector is the faculty of reasoning.
Hence, reasoning is considered the second essential element of the Mandate and its objective.
The principles of the faculty of reasoning
That means that, being human, you can't comprehend anything using your faculty of reasoning unless there is a cause for it, an objective and harmony in it.
Man can't be in two places, say Makkah and Riyadh, at the same time; it would be irrational, but the point here is that the Universe has a cause, so nothing takes place in it without a reason or an objective, and without being in complete harmony.
The principles of cause, objective, and harmony are within your reasoning; so the faculty of reasoning is the second element.
The role of reasoning in knowing Allah:
The mission of reasoning is to verify transmission
What is the role of reasoning in knowing Allah? Its task is twofold.
The gist of the deen is transmission: We have the Qur'an, which is the recited revelation and the sunnah (all acts and sayings of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace), which is the revelation that is not recited.
The essence of the deen is to get to know Allah, so reason comes before transmission to verify its truth, and then after verification, the task it has to carry out is to comprehend it. Reason is not meant to judge the transmission –the main part of the deen.
Accordingly, 50 years ago reason couldn't have comprehended the possibility of recording 7000 books on a disk, given the fact that each title consists of 40 chapters, every chapter consists of 400 pages, every page contains 80 lines, each line has 15 words and every word 5 letters.
Reason is reality-oriented, while Revelation is related to the Creator. Hence, Revelation is the source, whereas reason is the verification tool of transmission in the first place, and comprehension tool in the second place.
To be continued...
In Sha Allah
May Allah (SWT) Bless us and guide us in all our affairs
Aameen
