Principle Twenty-Three: The Quran’s directives are of two kinds.

1. The first kind is that it issues commands, prohibitions, and statements that direct the servant to something already acknowledged—either by the Sacred Law or by common convention, as mentioned earlier.

2. The second kind is that it guides us to draw useful things from established sources and urges the intellect to reflect so as to obtain their benefits.

This principle is noble and of great significance.

As for the first category, most of the Quran’s guidance concerning matters of belief and legal rulings falls under it.

The second category—our focus here—is that Allah, in numerous verses, calls His servants to contemplate the creation of the heavens and the earth, the worlds He has placed within them, and to ponder their reality. He informs us that He has subjected them to our interests and benefits, that He “sent down iron, wherein is formidable might and benefits for people,” and that He has “made subservient to you all that is in the heavens and on the earth—​all of it comes from Him” (45:13). By this He awakens the minds to reflect upon them and to extract from them the various branches of knowledge and advantage.

Thus, when we reflect on these creations—examining their states, qualities, and orderly harmony, asking for what purpose they were created and for what benefit they have been maintained, what signs they contain and what utilities they encompass—such contemplation yields two noble kinds of knowledge:

The first is that we infer from them Allah’s attributes of absolute perfection and greatness, His far-reaching wisdom, and His expansive favors and manifold bounties. We also confirm thereby the truth of what He has foretold concerning the Resurrection, Paradise, and Hell, as well as the veracity of His messengers and the reality of what they brought.

Scholars have written extensively about this branch; each has conveyed what his knowledge enabled him to grasp, for Allah has declared that only people of insight benefit from the signs.

This is the loftier, higher, and more complete of the two branches of knowledge.