Position of Wisdom in Islamic Teachings
This is according to Shadi Nafisi, a lecturer at Tehran University who made the remarks in a seminar titled “Quran and itrat from the viewpoints of Islamologists”. Here is a summary of her remarks:
I am going to discuss the issue of wisdom in the Quran and hadiths with an emphasis on contemporary interpretations. The word 'Aql' and its root form have been used forty-nine times in the Quran and in all cases it is used as verbs only. Here, reason and thinking are considered to be the means of understanding divine signs.
Also, Quranic verses name wisdom and thought as criteria for the evaluation of actions. Those without wisdom have been named as the worst creatures as reasoning has been the essential factor for achieving heaven. If we want to consider the semantic field of wisdom in the Quran, it goes far beyond the references to ‘Aql’, and the number of verses in which wisdom is mentioned will be more than three hundred.
Status of reason in Shia traditions
Wisdom has a wide scope and a high position in Shia traditions. In terms of its importance in hadith books, we can see that Kitab al-Kafi, as the most authentic Shia hadith book, begins with a chapter about wisdom and ignorance with thirty-six narrations. The same can be witnessed in Bihar al-Anwar as Allameh Majlesi opens the book with 330 narrations on wisdom and ignorance.
In narrations, it has been mentioned that those who possess intellect will enjoy God's paradise and divine satisfaction. Wisdom is also considered to be the basis of right and worthy life in this world. In other narrations, all the good qualities are attributed to intellect.
There are many challenges to examining wisdom in narrations and they can be studied from different aspects. In the next step, we will study Tafsir al-Manar which has influenced viewpoints in the contemporary era.
View of Tafsir al-Manar about wisdom
The authors of Tafsir al-Manar believe that Islam is the first religion that has linked wisdom with religion, and if we look at previous divine books we will not see any attention to reason. The Quran not only teaches us what we need to know about God but also provides evidence and reasoning to prove what it teaches. One of the results of the rational method of the authors is opening the path of ijtihad. The second result is to pave the ground for understanding the Quran without imitating others. The third result is the ability to name reasons for divine decrees.
However, the authors do not insist on imposing scientific content on the verses of the Quran. In some challenging cases, they provide no examples and criticize the past scholars for not comparing the verses. What was important for the authors of al-Manar is to prove that the Quran does not contradict science.
