The Role of Critical Thinking in Islam

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Critical thinking has been developed throughout the past 2500 years. Critical thinking was defined by the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1987 as “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action”. Critical thinking is a part of educational process either in schools or universities. Critical thinking is a skill that has to be developed in order to make it becomes a habit.

                 According to the author Dr. Yedullah Kazmi, “to be critical is to try to understand the world. To understand is to find reasons why things are the way they are”. We have to go through the process of codification in order to find the reasons. Critical thinking involves the process of coding and decoding of meaning. Coding here means an attempt to create new meanings in all different ways whereas decoding means to interpret or understand the world. Usually, it is impossible to be critical without the utopian imagination. A critique aims to give new and different meaning to life. A critique is practical and a necessary moment to understand the world which is to engage with the world.

As the Qur’an is guidance for Muslims, we are encouraged to understand the Qur’an through intellectual exercise namely critical thinking. Critical thinking needs freedom. Muslims have been given freedom by Allah to be critical and creative as His vicegerents on the earth.  However, if Muslims refuse to think for fear of making mistakes meaning that to ignore Allah who is forgiving and kind. To understand the signs of Allah, we have to be critical and creative. The process of understanding the meaning of a sign is a hermeneutical activity where the meaning of the sign is understood in the context of the meaning of the whole with reference to the meaning of a particular sign. The process is continuing in the movement from particular to the general and back and exploring new meanings as well as deconstructing the old settled meaning. The question is about how to understand the truth of which the Qur’an speaks. With the help of a structure of meaning which we possess by virtue of being-in-the-world, we try to make sense of the world around us. The structure of meaning will change when something new is understood in order to accommodate and assimilate it. Whilst, the degree of the structure of meaning to change depends on how different is that which is added.

            A creative mind is a critical mind. Human, whom has been given the mind, has to be creative to take the challenge in order to understand the Qur’an as well as to play his role as a vicegerent of Allah. The challenge of the Qur’an is the general condition for all people at all time and the understanding of the Qur’an is to develop. In order to understand the Qur’an, we have to align our thinking with the truth that the Qur’an speaks of, which in turn requires us making changes in our lived reality. Unfortunately, most of us are fear of accepting the challenge which prevents us from reading the Qur’an in order to understand it.

            The reading of the Qur’an is not only an act of personal piety for one’s relationship with Allah but to be an exercise engaged in to created tools of social critism in order to realize social justice on this earth. To be a vicegerent of Allah in this world means being concerned with the well being of other humans. The personal and social constitute one comprehensive moral and spiritual universe in Islam because both revolve around the axis of tawhid. Thus, social critique and pious life is dependent to each other. Meaning that, social critique is necessary for a pious life and pious life is necessary for engaging in social critique. Tawhid is the axis around which both social and personal existence revolves. On the other hand, taqwa is the process by which tawhid is first internalized and then lived in both spheres.

            A Muslim needs to look critically both at his/her society and other societies of the world to expose  at the individual and social level any deviation from tawhid and falling away from taqwa in Islam, knowledge is a path that leads to Allah. It highlights two things about Islam. Firstly that knowledge in Islam is important for a Muslim’s spiritual growth and development. Secondly, critical thinking is essential for a Muslim to grow intellectually and spiritually because knowledge is acquired through the active process of going beyond what one already knows.

In the Western critical thought, the success of a critique is judged purely on pragmatic and utilitarian grounds. For them, critique is entirely a this-worldy-affair, to bring changes in the world for the purpose of this world. However in Islam, to engage in critical thought is a moral commitment and to be judged on its moral worth independent of its success or failure in this world.  We are required to act morally but the success or failure of our actions is entirely in Allah’s hand. It is the principle of tawhid which is very important in Muslims’ life. Trying to preserve and maintain the principle of tawhid is an unending historical process. Therefore, it is vital to preserve the principle of tawhid in history as to avoid the utopian flavor in Muslim thought.

               As a conclusion, Muslims should be trained to think critically based on tawhid and take the challenge to understand the Qur’an in order to succeed in this world and the hereafter.