The Essence of Islam – Volume I — Page 362
362. Essence of Islam-1. The Holy Qur'ān's Lofty Station-Acknowledged by the. Holy Qur'an itself 195 و كل العلم في القرآن لكن تقاصر منه افهام الرجال. One of the principal causes of people going astray in this age is that in the eyes of most people the greatness of the. Holy Qur'an no longer prevails. One group of Muslims has become the follower of misleading philosophy. They seek to decide every matter by reason. They claim that the highest arbiter available to man for the settlement of disputes is reason. When they find that the existence of. Gabriel, Azrael and other angels that are mentioned in religious books, and the existence of heaven and hell as is established in the Holy Qur'an, cannot be proved by reason, they immediately reject them and begin to have recourse to flimsy explanations. They interpret angels as meaning powers, revelation only as a faculty, and heaven and hell as meaning merely spiritual comfort or pain. . They do not seem to realize that reason alone is not the instrument for discovery of the unknown. Indeed high verities and extreme insights are far above the reach of reason and are established only through true visions. If the touchstone for verities were to be reason alone, the great wonders of Godhead would remain hidden and man's understanding would remain incomplete and imperfect and he would not be rid of doubts and suspicions. . The end of this one-sided understanding would be that in the absence of guidance from above and without any knowledge of the lines of thought that are set in motion by the Power on High, all sorts of doubts would arise with regard to the existence of the Creator Himself. 195 All knowledge is comprised in the Qur'an, but the intellect of people falls short of it. [Publisher]