Jaafar Sheikh Idris

Is knowledge possible?
For there to be knowledge at all there must be (a) a source from which it is to be derived; and (b) a human capacity to know; and in some cases (c) a method by which knowledge is obtained from those sources by means of that capacity.

Many writers, old and new, have confused these three conditions of knowledge. Thus some of them speak of perception as a source of knowledge, or put revelation along side reason and the senses. But perception and reason are capacities while revelation is a source. We cannot obtain knowledge either from the world or from revelation without these capacities or means.

Is all knowledge acquired? Or is some of it inborn?
The Qur’anic answer to these questions is most clearly given in this verse: “Allah (SWT) brought you out of the wombs of your mothers knowing nothing, and He gave you sight, hearing and minds.”

The answer to the first question has vexed many Western as well as Muslim thinkers. Western Rationalists claim that man is born with innate ideas or inborn knowledge, while the Empiricists claim that the mind, at the hour of birth, is a mere tabula rasa on which the senses write what they wish.

The first part of our verse tells us that man is born knowing nothing. Does this mean that it supports the Empiricists view? No, because the Qur’an does not say that the mind is a mere passive blank sheet on which the senses write what they wish. Though we are not born with any innate knowledge in the proper sense of the word, yet our minds have a definite structure, called in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, theJitm. And so, just as the senses develop and thus enable us to perceive things, so does the mind develop; and as it does so we come to be aware of certain truths that do not come to us from the outside world, although that world helps us in becoming so aware of them.

These mental truths, in their turn, help us to understand the world; in fact no such understanding is possible without them.

We acquire knowledge of the natural world, of society, of history, of revealed truths, and of any other type of external facts or truths through the medium of the senses as well as the mind. Perception in which the mind takes no part-if that is at all possible-does not supply us with knowledge but with mere sense data. Condemning the unbelievers for not comprehending the words of Allah (SWT) conveyed to them by His Prophet (SAAS), the Qur’an likens them to a herd which understands nothing of what the shepherd tells them but hears only voices.

The senses mentioned in the above quoted ayat, and in many other ayats of the Qur’an, which speak about the acquisition of knowledge, are the most important senses, hearing and sight. The other senses are mentioned in other ayats.

This illustrates that the Qur’an recognizes the authority of the senses in bringing to us knowledge from outside ourselves. This means that everything which is empirically proved becomes a fact which is un-Islamic to deny. One cannot therefore be a Muslim and a complete sceptic about the authority of the senses. We should therefore forget about those doubts which Al-Ghazali cast on the authority of the senses, and which he himself never took seriously any way. This does not of course mean that our senses never err; they do; but it is through them that we discover and rectify those errors.

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