A Radical Roadmap to Achieve Religious Science

Basically, the subject of religious science has its roots in the fundamental issue of equilibrium between reason and revelation. In other words, it refers to equilibrium between religious cognition, on the one hand, and non-religious cognition (including experiment, reasoning and understanding) on the other. On the basis of this understanding of religious science, from the first century of the advent of Islam great efforts have been made to produce religious science (or determine the equilibrium between religious cognition and non-religious cognition), which was based on a distinct incentive: termination of prophecy. Reviewing the types of encounter of Muslims thinkers with the subject of non-religious cognition and determination of its relation with religious cognition, one may distinguish these three approaches: First approach: In this approach, there is no contradiction theoretically (with regard to science) and practically (with regard to ethics) between non-religious cognition as manifested in the Copernican picture of modern science, on the one hand, and the religious cognition offered by Islam, on the other. Under the circumstance of termination of prophecy, this approach considers cognition through modern science useful and in line with Islam’s appreciation of reason. Both old and new scholars can be categorized in this approach. Abdulrahman Ibn Khaldun is one of them, whose viewpoints will be discussed in this paper. Second approach: This is the main and predominant approach, which is identified with Seyed Jamaluddin Asadabadi, particularly after the encounter of Muslims with modern social institutions in Europe and emergence of the revivalist ideas among the Muslims. While considering the modern science and reason, as the continuance of Islamic appreciation of reason, this approach seriously criticizes the western ethics and culture. The third approach: This approach challenges the method of modern science from the viewpoint of worldview and theory as well as from the perspective of practice and ethic. Muhammad Iqbal Lahori’s viewpoints are discussed for this approach.