From 11 to 14 December 2025, Al-Salam Institute held its Winter Student Retreat in Leicester. The retreat was not a routine academic programme; it brought students together in an environment of focused reflection and serious inquiry into one of the most urgent issues facing Islamic thought today. These students came not only from across the United Kingdom but also from the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. They brought with them thoughtful questions and a deep-seated eagerness to learn.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp Channel
The faculty of Al-Salam Institute led sessions on various subjects. They offered academic training, engaged students in meaningful dialogue, and conducted the samāʿ of al-Muwaṭṭaʾ of Imām Mālik (in the narration of Qaʿnabī). This reminded us that our intellectual heritage is not just a collection of preserved texts but a living tradition, transmitted through oral narration.
I contributed to the retreat by teaching Sūrat al-Fatḥ and selected passages from Madārij al-Sālikīn by Ibn al-Qayyim. In addition to the teaching sessions, I delivered several talks. One of these addressed the relationship between fiṭrah (human nature), ʿaql (reason), and dīn (religion). I emphasised that the foundation of Islam does not rest on a faith that disables the intellect. Rather, the Qur’an calls for a kind of faith that depends on the awakening of reason, the clarity of understanding, and the responsible exercise of human consciousness.
I made clear that reason does not oppose human nature or divine revelation. Nature, reason, and religion all issue from the same divine origin. Each flows in its own course but leads the human being to the same essential truth.
During the session, one of the students raised an important question: Why do traditional religious institutions and circles often express anxiety, or even aversion, toward reason? Why does the mention of ʿaql evoke discomfort and suspicion?
I responded by saying that the problem lies not in reason itself, but in how schools of thought are treated. If we redirect the question from “Why is reason feared?” to “What is threatened by reason?”, the answer becomes immediately clear. Reason is not the enemy of religion. It cannot be, because Islam itself is founded on dalīl (evidence), ḥujjah (argument), and burhān (clear proof). The Qur’an speaks to human beings in the language of inquiry. It asks: “Do they not reflect?” “Have they not considered?” “Do they not use their intellect?”
Reason becomes threatening only when it begins to interrogate positions that lack evidentiary support. Rigid loyalties to schools of thought, which often rely on emotional attachment, inherited authority, or veneration of personalities, cannot withstand such interrogation. This is why the issue is not with reason, but with an approach to religion in which one’s school of thought becomes immune to question or critique. Reason asks questions. Questions demand answers. But the kind of religious culture built around unquestioned loyalty often lacks the intellectual resources to provide them.
Many of these rigid approaches developed precisely in contexts where the light of sound reasoning had faded. Often, the views that define one’s identity within a school of thought rest on arguments that cannot withstand even modest scrutiny. Reason, by its very nature, seeks coherence and justification. A school of thought, when it loses its openness to critique, begins to resist that very nature.
This fear of reason has deeply shaped the educational ethos of many madrasas. Students are taught that loyalty to a particular school is equivalent to loyalty to Islam itself. They learn to believe that questioning the views of established scholars is a violation of religious boundaries. But this is not the intellectual spirit we inherit from the early generations of Islam. In our scholarly tradition, the respect afforded to scholars was always conditioned by their adherence to evidence. The authority of proof never depended on the personality of the one presenting it.
Once this order is reversed, and evidence is made subordinate to personalities, reason begins to appear dangerous. To neutralise that danger, institutions erect barriers around critical thinking, discouraging students from asking precisely the questions they most need to ask.
One does not need to look far to observe this. A simple examination of the madrasa curriculum reveals the problem. The Qur’an, the central source of Islam, has been marginalised. Though it is the soul of Islam and its ultimate guidance, it is rarely taught in a way that brings light to the intellect and life to the heart. A brief and hurried commentary is no substitute for genuine Qur’anic education. That is merely a ritual.
Students are not encouraged to engage the Qur’an’s reasoning, its intellectual challenge, or its universal vision. As a result, they may read the Qur’an, but the Qur’an does not shape their thinking or their method.
The condition of hadith studies is even more troubling. The life of the Prophet ﷺ — his words, decisions, guidance, and example — becomes the subject of a rushed and mechanical review. Collections are completed within a few months, but no deep understanding of the Prophetic Sunnah emerges. No intellectual tradition anywhere in the world transmits knowledge in this way, yet here it is presented as formal instruction.
Meanwhile, disciplines such as fiqh and kalām are given a prominence that should rightly belong to the Qur’an and Sunnah. These disciplines are important tools. They are lamps, not suns. They help to illuminate, but they are not the source of light itself. When a lamp is mistaken for the sun, then darkness inevitably spreads.
This inversion leads to a more dangerous outcome. The sayings of later scholars begin to overshadow the statements of the Prophet ﷺ. These later views, often lacking strong evidence, are placed in such a sanctified zone that questioning them becomes an offence. Thus, inherited ideas are confused with the religion itself, and tradition replaces reasoned proof.
This misalignment explains much of the intellectual disquiet, confusion, and even alienation from religion that many Muslims experience today. When intelligent individuals encounter a religious discourse that cannot meet the basic demands of reason, they begin to suspect that the religion itself is irrational. But this conclusion is mistaken. The problem is not with Islam. The problem is with how Islam is being presented, filtered through inherited frameworks that were never meant to replace the primary sources.
What we need is a return: a reorientation of religious education toward the Qur’an and the Sunnah. We must teach the Qur’an with its full intellectual force and moral depth. We must present the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ not as a fragmented collection of reports but as a coherent and living guide. We must treat reason not as a threat but as a divine gift, an instrument given by God to recognise truth, not to avoid it.
Reason is not the enemy of revelation. It is its partner in the journey. The real threat lies in the inertia that, in the name of preserving religion, ends up stripping it of vitality. This stagnation extinguishes the Qur’an’s light, silences the Prophetic voice, and paralyses the thinking mind.
To restore the strength and relevance of Islamic tradition, we must recover the original harmony between nature, reason, and revelation. Only then can we renew our intellectual life and offer future generations an Islam that is grounded, coherent, and truly alive.
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