The Essence of Islam – Volume II — Page 90
90. Essence of Islam II. Some short-sighted people raise the objection that revelation suffers from the defect that it prevents and obstructs its recipient from arriving at complete understanding, which is indispensable for eternal life and everlasting happiness. They explain their objection by asserting that revelation obstructs thinking and cuts short research, inasmuch as those who follow revelation respond to every question by asserting that the matter is either permissible or forbidden in their revealed book, and they do not use their reasoning powers as if they had not been bestowed on them by God and in the end by lack of use those powers decline and almost disappear. . Thus human nature is completely changed and begins to resemble animals, and the excellence of the human soul, which means progress in reason, is destroyed and man is deprived of obtaining perfect understanding. In this way, revealed books constitute an obstruction in the way of achieving eternal life and everlasting happiness of which man stands in need. . The answer to the foregoing objection is that it is the lack of intelligence, obtuseness and persistence in error of the. Brahmūs that prompts them to think that by acting upon the revealed Book of God the reasoning faculty is rendered useless as if revelation and reason were contradictory of each other and cannot subsist together. This suspicion on their part is compounded partly of falsehood, partly of bigotry and partly of ignorance. The falsehood is that despite their knowledge that Divine verities have been fostered only through people who have followed revelation and that Divine Unity has been propagated in the world only through the elect who believe in the word of God, they make a statement contrary to this known fact. Their bigotry is declared by