Refutation of the claim that learning logic is a communal obligation:
Whoever among the later writers has said, “Learning logic is a communal duty,” only displays his ignorance of the Sacred Law and of the real utility of logic. The invalidity of such a statement is something necessarily known in the religion of Islam. Even more ignorant is the one who goes so far as to call it a personal duty, despite the fact that many of those who make this claim do not even acknowledge the obligations that God and His Messenger have enjoined or the prohibitions they have imposed.
It is common knowledge that the most virtuous members of this Ummah—the Companions, those who followed them with excellence, and the leading Imams—knew their obligations and perfected their knowledge and faith long before Greek logic was ever introduced. How, then, can anyone say that knowledge cannot be trusted unless it is weighed against logic, or that the natural dispositions of human beings are, in most cases, unsound without it?
If they reply, “We do not mean that people need the terminology of logic, but rather the concepts by which the sciences are weighed,” we answer: Undoubtedly the unknown can be known only through the known, and people do need to measure what they do not know by what they do know. This, however, is one of the balances that Allah has sent down, for He says:
“Allah is the One who sent down the Book in truth and the Balance” (Q 42:17),
and He also says:
“Indeed, We sent Our messengers with clear proofs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance” (Q 57:25).
This scale is found among our own community and among others who have never heard of Greek logic, which proves that the nations have no need of it.
Summary of the logicians’ claims and their falsehood:
They do not allege that people need the very Greek words; rather, they claim that people need the logical meanings those words convey—namely, their discourse on the “second intentions.” The subject matter of logic is precisely these second intentions, considered insofar as they serve to acquire knowledge of what is as yet unknown. Logic investigates the conditions of fixed intelligibles—that is, the stable relations belonging to quiddities insofar as they are absolute. These relations arise when the mind is directed toward bringing what is not yet actual into being or toward determining it—not in a particular instance, but according to a universal rule.