In his speech at the joint opening of the Umno Youth, Wanita and Puteri assemblies on the 13th of November 2006, the Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak, among others, proposed a few strategies to enhance the Malay Mind, one of which is by protecting the Islamic Creed (Akidah).
Before explaining what he meant by each of those strategies, Datuk Seri Najib touched on the relation of the brain, as a dynamic human organ, and the human mind, mentioning in a cursory manner the fact that the mind was formed after the human brain.
For those who concern themselves with the Philosophy of Mind, or the Philosophy of Psychology, the human mind-brain relation has been the subject of much controversy.
Najib, however, did not succinctly indicate what his position actually is regarding the nature and reality of the human mind in relation to the human brain.
Such controversies aside, one who has read the transcript of his speech is naturally tempted to ask whether there is any positive relation between a Malay protecting his or her Islamic creed and the enhancement of his or her mental capacity.
For those who regard creed as being essentially dogmatic, the positive relation, as claimed, is suspect and, at best, mere political rhetoric.
How can the relation be positive as the very essence of dogmas is that they are not subject to rational questioning and scrutiny, whereas reason’s very life lies in on-going examinations and analyses?
Perhaps, the popular dictum “I believe because it is absurd” is the most simple way to convey this so-called paradox in layman’s terms.
But should the Muslims, the Malays included, be in a dilemma regarding this issue? Is what is truly referred to as the akidah really synonymous in every respect with what is commonly referred to as dogma?
One way to seriously address this is by way of explicating what the human mind actually is. Is the “mind” simply another name for human “reason”? Or has it been reduced to “reason” only in modern times?
What are the other dimensions of the human mind in its non-reducible mode, if there are any? What about other names, such as “soul” and “spirit,” which are hardly mentioned in the so-called modern scientific community, let alone other Arabic terms, namely, ruh, nafs, aql, lubb, nuha, qalb, etc.?
No matter what one’s stance is regarding the answers to all these questions, it is hard to deny the sort of relation the human mind has with human reason.
As such, one cannot deal with issues pertaining to the rationality of the akidah without one having grasped the nature and reality of human reason.
Most of us would readily admit that “reasonableness” is the essence of “rationality” and that the opposite of “rationality” is simply “irrationality.”
As such, we have a strong tendency to simply regard “irrationality” as being equivalent to “non-rationality,” without being fully aware of the other sense of non-rational.
It is here that one should understand the sharp distinction between the two senses of “non-rational”: one having to do with the reason’s ability to grasp and justify, and the other with its status as a source, or a means, of knowing.
Non-rational in the former sense is better captured by the term “irrational,” whereas the latter, by “trans-rational.” In relation to the Philosophy of Science, the former seems to be more related to what is usually called “the context of justification,” while the latter, “the context of discovery.”
It is this fine distinction that we have always been cautioned about by the various authoritative scholars deliberating and expounding on matters of the akidah as well as on other aspects of Islam.
In other words, for them, there are always things in the akidah which are trans-rational but are by no means irrational.
“Whoever cannot distinguish what reason deems impossible from what reason [by itself] cannot attain is beneath being addressed….” Such is al-Ghazali’s (d. 505 A.H./ 1111 C.E.) important remark in his famous work on the Divine Names.
In fact, in that very same treatise, while explaining the spiritual stage of sainthood (al-wilayah), al-Ghazali emphasized that “…it is not possible that something be manifest to a real saint which reason judges to be impossible; [however], it is surely possible that a true saint sees something which reason alone cannot grasp.”
To the Malays at least, al-Ghazali is a familiar name. In fact, it is this scholar whom our Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, cited as one of his benchmarks in his now popular poem.
It is with the above rational framework that Muslim scholars expounded on the Islamic creed, including what the Muslims from this part of the globe commonly call “the twenty Divine Attributes” (sifat dua puluh Tuhan), something they readily commit to memory.
Those who have had the chance to peruse the traditional scholarly works on such attributes, works which contemporary Malays rightly or wrongly call kitab kuning, will not fail to notice that right at the beginning of such works, logical and rational categories are extensively discussed and are clearly differentiated from both the legal and the social categories.
And what is more telling is that by those attributes affirmed of God, or denied of God, scholars emphatically mean the attributes which are arranged according to the logico-rational categories of necessity, impossibility and possibility.
In fact, as I mentioned in this STAR column about two months ago, in addition to the factor of puberty, one is said to be held accountable in terms of religion only when one is possessed of minimal discriminatory faculties (al-mumayyiz). And this faculty is described by Muslim scholars in basic logical terms as being one’s ability to discern he difference between what is necessary, what is impossible, and what is possible. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, most of the Malays have lost the rational framework and basis of what they memorized since childhood. And it is exactly this framework and basis which can invigorate their minds.
Therefore, any sincere effort to enhance the Malay minds must involve a serious process of refreshing their minds with such aforementioned perennial wisdom.