and deeds; yet it cannot do this independently. Rather, reason is an innate faculty and a power within the soul, comparable to the faculty of sight in the eye. If the light of faith and the Quran joins it, it is like the light of the eye when joined by the light of the sun and fire.

If left on its own, it cannot perceive matters beyond its unaided grasp. If it is set aside altogether, words and deeds performed without it are animal-like: they may involve love, emotional fervor, and felt experience, just as these may occur in an animal. Thus, states experienced without reason are deficient, and statements contrary to reason are false.

The messengers brought what reason cannot apprehend; they did not bring what reason knows to be impossible. Yet those who place excessive reliance on reason have declared things necessary, possible, or impossible on the strength of supposedly rational arguments which they believed to be true, though they were false. They used these arguments to oppose the prophetic messages and what they brought. Those who turn away from reason, meanwhile, have believed false things, entered into corrupt states and practices, and abandoned the discernment by which Allah has favoured the children of Adam over others.

Some of the people of hadith may incline towards either of these two groups: at times removing reason from its proper sphere of authority, and at other times using it to oppose the prophetic traditions.

This deviation concerning discriminating reason among those devoted to letters and those devoted to sound is comparable to their deviation concerning the heart’s emotional fervor. For those devoted to sound have affirmed it, exalted it, and gone to excess