An Investigation of Ghazali and Averroes’s Conflict Regarding the Relation between Religion and Reason from a Historical Point of View

The conflict between reason and religion in the Iranian medieval history is an issue affected by the scientific sources of Muslims from the early centuries of the Islamic Era. Regardless of their commonalities, reason and religion are generally known to be opposing forces, as the observance of one undermines the other. Rational knowledge and religious science have each been either declining or growing depending on the historical circumstances. Ever since the emergence of Islam and through the course of its solidification, intellectuality, too, underwent an evolutionary process. Such evolution, however, can be interpreted neither as concordance or compromise between reason and religion, nor as absolute disagreement. Rather, it is a course towards supremacy resulting from the historical circumstances. The eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed continuous conflicts between religion and intellect, as it is reflected in Ghazali’s books and Averroes’s rebuttals to them. Regardless of the abstract issues involved, the conflicts between Averroes and Ghazali provide an in-depth understanding of the historical context of intellect and Sharia in the course of the Islamic history. This confrontation is in fact the result of the development of rationality and the socio-political circumstances.