On the time scale of the history of the Earth an individual human lifetime is a mere blink of an eye. We're born, we live, and we die. What is the point of living? If we're all going to be dead in the end anyway, what difference does it make what we do with our lives? Does the finality of death make life meaningless? Is there a meaning to human life, unrealized by most people? What is our origin? What is our destination? What is our purpose? What is the character and general structure of the universe in which we live? Is there a permanent element in the constitution of this universe? Humanity, it seems, always will try to understand that purpose like being for thousands of years. These questions are common to religion and philosophy. Is it then possible to apply the purely rational method of philosophy to religion, especially for Islam?
             According to Muhammad Iqbal, "the spirit of philosophy is one of free inquiry. It suspects all authority. Its function is to trace the uncritical assumptions of human thought to their hiding places, and in this pursuit it may finally end in denial or a frank admission of the incapacity of pure reason to reach the Ultimate Reality. The essence of religion, on the other hand, is faith; and faith, like the bird, sees its 'trackless way' unattended by intellect. Yet it cannot be denied that faith is more than mere feeling" (Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. 4)
             However, ever since the growth of Islam as a religious and political movement, Muslim thinkers have sought to understand the theoretical aspects of their faith by using philosophical concepts because the Quran encourages mankind to "Reflect, you have vision." At another place it states, "Have they not studied the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and whatever things God has created?" Here God is urging the readers to study the world and how and why objects and beings exist. Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1128 &end ash; 1198 CE) who...