Confusion over the Concept of ʿAql and Logical Thinking among Young Muslims in Malaysia

Abstract

A popular phrase we hear when someone said or did something wrong is “he/she succumbed to logical mind”. This paradoxical statement has become a big wall that people would go to hide and escape from giving defensible justifications for claims made especially claims on religious beliefs and the unseen existences. This pose a huge problem for those who use logical thinking to evaluate the truth value of any proposition as if logical thinking would result in wrong judgment on truth and ethical proposition. What is more, some hold the belief that the Qur’ān shuns logic and thus Muslims are prohibited from applying logical thinking to determine truth from falsehood. This study explored young Muslims’ understanding of the concept of logic to get some insight on this phenomenon, so that informed decisions and planning could be made to arrest this confusion. Moreover, an assessment of young Muslims’ understandings is very important to ensure that they are in line with Qur’ānic teachings. Qualitative analysis was used to analyse data collected from 10 participants using semi-structured interviews. Since face to face interaction was not possible because of the current pandemic, interviews were done using Zoom, Google Meet and WhatsApp. The emergent themes that could be extracted from the participants’ responses were confusion on the understanding of ʿaql and the relationship between the spiritual brain and heart; logical mind as means to solve problems of non-religious issues; and the negative consequences of logical thinking (among others, that it could lead to unbelief). However, a minority of the respondents viewed logical thinking as necessary to understand revelation. This study also found that the young Muslims were weak in logical thinking.