How do We Attain Knowledge?

There are three issues which people frequently mix up when trying to answer this question. I hope the reader will distinguish between them:What is the source of knowledge? What are the means by which knowledge is acquired? And what is the method which must be followed toacquire knowledge? The source of knowledge is, as the name indicates, the place where knowledge may be found. The means are abilities and instruments which Allah has placed at our disposal for acquiring knowledge from its source. The sources of knowledge for aMuslim are existence and revelation. Its means are the senses and the mind. As for the method, it variesaccording to the type of knowledge and its source. It is a mistake, then, for us to say - as do some religiously minded people - that the sources of knowledge or its means are the senses and revelation, or that the scientific method is restricted to empirical sciences.
The Means of Acquiring Knowledge
The verse mentioned earlier establishes that thehuman being is born ignorant, and that Allah, the Exalted, provides him with hearing, vision and intellect. This makes it clear that it is not possible for a human being to acquire knowledge-whether it is religious or worldly-except by way of the senses or the intellect. Why do I say the senses when the verse only mentions hearing and sight? Because the other senses are mentioned in other verses. This verse singles them out for mention because they are the most important sensesfor acquiring information.
The senses are - as is well-known - connected tothe brain and, by way of it,to the mind. The mind is what coverts the material arriving through the senses into things that have meaning for the person. The sense which is most closely affiliated withthe intellect is hearing. A person hears sounds arising from natural thingslike thunder, wind, birds, animals and insects, but healso hears speech, which issounds that indicate meanings. Hearing is usually referred to in the Noble Quran to mean this second aspect. The one who doesn’t understand speech or benefit from it iscompared by the Quran to an animal which hears nothing more of speech that its sounds. Speech is affiliated with intellect in another way, that is, somespeech is true and some is false, and there is no way to distinguish the true from the false by the senses alone; logic must be applied as well. It determines whether the speech is internally contradictory or consistent.
If it finds it contradictingitself it rules that it is false.If it finds it internally consistent it examines the meaning: is it in accordance with the reality it refers to or not? Deciding whether there is accord or disparity might be a simple operation. If, for instance, someone says“The sun has risen,” all oneneeds to do is look up. If you see the sun, you judgethe statement to be true, and if you can’t see it, you judge it to be false. Judging the truth or falsehood of a statement may, however, be a long, complex operation, such as confirming the authenticity of a scientific theory like Relativity./

The Theory of Knowledge

Perhaps the central preoccupation of philosophy is with questions connected with knowledge, the answers to which are called “the theory of knowledge.” Themost important questions asked in this area may be: What is the definition of knowledge? Is knowledge possible? Is there some knowledge which precedes birth, or is a babyborn like a blank slate? How do we know?
What is Knowledge?
It appears from certain Quranic verses that Islam supports the view that knowledge is a statement or a concept that corresponds with reality. Some Arabs used to believe that an intelligent man had two hearts. One might, if he got angry at his wife, tell her, “You are like my mother.” He wouldthen consider her as such and would not treat her the way one treats one’s wife. Another of them would adopt someone else’s son or daughter and attribute the child to himself, as if he were the biological father, just as people do now in the West. Allah declared all of these claims to be nothingmore than words in contradiction to reality. The Exalted said:
“Allah has not assigned unto any man two hearts within his body, nor has He made your wives whom you declare(to be your mothers) your mothers, nor has Hemade those whom you claim (to be your sons) your sons. These are justwords from your mouths. But Allah says the truth and He shows the way.” 1
Is Knowledge Possible?
If we take this question literally, we find it contradictory, because when a person asks about the possibility of knowledge it presupposes that he knows what knowledge is, and if he knows what knowledge is,then he knows something.However the point of the question is: how can we know if what we believe to be real actually corresponds with reality and is not merely imagination or delusion? The Noble Quran indicates that knowledge is possibleand that it is one of the blessings of Allah which requires gratitude.
Allah the Exalted said:
“Allah brings you forth from the wombs of your mothers knowing nothing, and gives you hearing and sight and hearts that you might give thanks.” 2
Is There a Knowledge Which Precedes Birth?
The above-mentioned verse is definitive in answering this question inthe negative. Knowledge, then, is acquired entirely after birth. But does this mean that the mind is a blank slate upon which the senses write what they want? No! We read ina h adeeth of the Prophet (pbuh), “ Every child is born with a pristine nature(fi t rah); then his parents make him a Jew or a Christian or a Magian. ” 3
This h adeeth indicates that although the human being is born knowing nothing, he is not born with an empty mind; rather, in this mind are theseeds of knowledge whichwill grow as he grows andreach completion with his maturity. However this knowledge, which is originally planted in each human being, may be overridden by external factors, even if they don’t have the power to completely extinguish it.
What is this knowledge whose seeds are implanted in the fitrah of ahuman being? The h adeeth treats fi t rah as being something different from Judaism, Christianity or Zoroastrianism, which means the fi t rah is Islam. Obviously the meaning is not that a person after thedevelopment of his mind finds himself knowledgeable about the details of the Islamic religion. Rather, two things are meant; first, each person is born with the seed of taw h eed in hismind, that is, the affirmation that no god deserves worship except the sole Creator.
Second, this person is born with a nature which is not suited to beliefs and conduct other than the realities and laws brought by Islam. For that reason Allah described the religion which he revealedto His Messenger (pbuh) asbeing the pristine nature on which Allah created His servants. Allah the Exalted said:
“So set your face for the religion as one by natureupright – the pristine nature (framed) by Allah on which He has created man. There is no altering(the laws of) Allah’s creation. That is the right religion, but most people do not know.” 4
When a person’s mind and disposition are designed so that nothing but the realities and laws of Islam suit them, he will feel no contentment or spiritual peace unless he has surrendered himself tobe a worshipper of Allah.
“Those who believe and whose hearts feel content with the remembrance of Allah. Verily in the remembrance of Allah dohearts find rest.”

the answers of philosophy

Perhaps the only thing that philosophers have in common is the problems they grapple with, not the solutions they propose. So it is a mistake to ask aboutthe answers of philosophy to a given question, since the number of answers may equal the number of philosophers, or at least the number of schools of philosophy.
Therefore, true Muslim philosophy - if one must ascribe philosophy to Islam - consists of the answers we find in the primary sources of Islam, the Quran and the Sunnah,to those philosophic questions. A true Muslim philosopher is, then, one who relies in his philosophical answers upon those sources. He dives deep into the texts of the Quran and Sunnah, searching for those answers. He ponders their meanings, explains them, defends them and argues with those who dispute them using a style of reasoning and language understandable to the people of his era.
The sources of the Islamic philosophy are not,then, the writings of thosethinkers who have become famous under the label of “Muslim philosophers”, such as Al-Kindi, Al-Faraabi and IbnSina (Avicenna), because they took many of their axioms from Greek philosophy, even if they sometimes - by virtue of their Islamic cultural environment - contradicted it, even in certain fundamentals.
The true representativesof authentic Islamic thought were the scholars and jurists with deep knowledge of the Quran, Sunnah, and the statements of the earliest generations of Muslims, the Salaf . They were the staunchest opponents of the philosophers because of what they perceived in their thinking that contradicted what they knew to be Islamic realities established in the Quran, Sunnah and statements of the Salaf .
Philosophy in their time was synonymous with the thinking derived from the norms of polytheistic Greek thought. We find in the writings of Muslim scholars condemnation of it and advice to the peopleto stay away from it. However, if we employ a more general understanding of the term‘philosophy’ to mean the attempt to answer the fundamental questions associated with existence, the mind, morals and knowledge, I see no harm in calling the Islamic answers to these fundamental issues “Islamic philosophy”, as there is no point in arguing about words as long as their meanings areclear.
The following is a brief exposition of some of those answers, which I have condensed from various writings and lectures I have delivered on different occasions through the years. I prepared it in response to repeated requests to discuss the Islamic view onphilosophy. It is a difficult subject to treat adequatelyin a single one-hour lecture, but as our scholarsused to say, ‘That which cannot be fully achieved should not be fully abandoned.’

Ruling on praying in a mosque in which there is a grave

Is it correct to pray in mosques in which there are graves?
Praise be to Allaah.
Prayers should not be offered in mosques in which there are graves.
The graves should be dug up and the remains transferred to the public
graveyards, with each set of remains placed in an individual grave as
with all other graves. It is not permissible for graves to be left in
mosques, whether that is the grave of a wali ("saint") or of anyone
else, because the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon
him) forbade that and warned against that, and he cursed the Jews and
Christians for doing that. It was narrated that he (peace and
blessings ofAllaah be upon him) said: "May Allah curse the Jews and
the Christians, for they took the graves of their Prophets as places
ofworship." 'Aa'ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) said, "He was
warning against what they had done." Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 1330,
Muslim, 529.
And when Umm Salamah and Umm Habeebah told him about a church in which
there were images, he (peace and blessings ofAllaah be upon him) said:
"When a righteous man died among them, they would build a place of
worship over his grave and put those images in it. They are the most
evil of mankind before Allaah." (Saheeh, agreed upon. Al-Bukhaari,
427; Muslim, 528)
And he (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: "Those who
came before you took the graves of their Prophets and righteous people
as places of worship. Do not take graves as places of worship – I
forbid you to do that." (Narrated by Muslim in his Saheeh, 532,from
Jundab ibn 'Abd-Allaah al-Bajali). So the Prophet (peace and
blessings of Allaah be upon him) forbade taking graves as places of
worship and he cursed those who do that, stating that they are the
most evil of mankind. So we must beware of that.
It is known that everyone who prays at a grave is taking it as a place
of worship, and whoever builds a mosque over a grave has taken it as a
place of worship. So we must keep graves far away from the mosques and
not put graves inside mosques, in obedience to the command of the
Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and so as to avoid
the curse issued by our Lord against those who build places of worship
over graves, because when a person prays in a mosque in which there is
a grave, theShaytaan may tempt him to call upon the deceased or to
seek his help, or to pray to him or prostrate to him, thus committing
major shirk; and because this is the action of the Jews and Christians
and we are obliged to differ from them and to keep away from their
ways andtheir evil actions. But if the graves are ancient and a mosque
was built over them, then it should be knocked down, because this is
an innovated thing, as was stated by the scholars, and so as to avoid
the means that may lead to shirk. And Allaah is the Source of
strength.