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The passage states, “Read in the name of your Sustainer, who has created — created
man out of a germ-cell. Read — for your Sustainer is the Most Bountiful One, Who
has taught (man) the use of the pen; taught man what he did not know.”
Thus, knowledge has been at the centre of the Islamic worldview from the outset.
The Quran recognises multiple sources of knowledge amongst which the following are
particularly important revelation, sense perception, history, reasoning and
intuition.
History, to which the Quran refers as 'the Days of God', is the third source of
knowledge. As Iqbal pointed out, “It is one of the most essential teachings of the
Quran that nations are collectively judged and suffer for their misdeeds here and
now. In order to establish this proposition, the Quran constantly cites historical
instances, and urges the readers to reflect on the past and present experience of
mankind.”
For instance, the following two verses refer to the lessons that can be learnt from
history “Of old did We send Moses with Our signs, and said to him 'Bring forth your
people from the darkness into light, and remind them of the Days ofGod'. Verily, in
this are signs for every patient, grateful person.” (145); And then “Already before
your time, have precedentsbeen made. Traverse the earth then and see what has been
the end of those who falsify the signs of God.” (3137)
Citing the above-mentioned verses, Iqbal observed “The point of these verses is
that man is endowed with the faculty of naming things, that is to say, forming
concepts of them, and forming concepts of them is capturing them. Thus the
character of man's knowledge is conceptual and it is with the weapon of this
conceptual knowledge that man approaches the observable aspect of reality.”
Intuitionis a mode of knowledge in which a direct revelation is made to the mind
similar to a direct revelation made to the eye when it sees a physical object. In
Quranic terms, intuition is called fuad or qalb, andmystics often refer to it as
the 'heart'.
The noted scholar R.A. Nicholson pointed out that though qalb is connected to the
physical heart in some mysterious way, it is not a thing of flesh and blood but “is
rather intellectual than emotional ... whereas the intellect cannot gain real
knowledge of God, the qalb is capable of knowing the essences of all things, and
when illuminated by faith and knowledge, it reflects the whole content of the
divine mind, hence the Prophet said, 'My earth and my heaven contain me not, but
the heart of my faithful servant contains me'.”
Iqbal believed that God was known through an intuitive or mystic experience, and
said “The heart is a kind of inner intuition or insight which, in the beautiful
words of Rumi, feeds on the rays of the sun and brings us into contact with aspects
of reality other than those open to sense perception. It is, according to the
Quran, something which 'sees' and its reports, if properly interpreted, are never
false. We must not, however, regard it as a mysterious special faculty; it is
rather a mode of dealing with reality in which sensation in the physiological sense
of the word does not play any part. Yet the vista of experience thus opened to us
is as real and concrete as any other experience.”