This is clear from the Prophet’s own attitude towards Ibn...

This is clear from the Prophet’s own attitude towards Ibn Âayy«d’s psychic experiences.7 The function of Sufism in Islam has been to systematize mystic experience; though it must be admitted that Ibn Khaldën was the only Muslim who approached it in a thoroughly scientific spirit.8 But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge.

According to the Qur’an, there are two other sources of knowledge - Nature and History; and it is in tapping these sources of knowledge that the spirit of Islam is seen at its best.

The Qur’an sees signs of the Ultimate Reality in the ‘sun’, the ‘moon’, ‘the lengthening out of shadows’, ‘the alternation of day and night’, ‘the variety of human colours and tongues’,10 ‘the alternation of the days of success and reverse among peoples’ - in fact in the whole of Nature as revealed to the sense-perception of man. And the Muslim’s duty is to reflect on these signs and not to pass by them ‘as if he is dead and blind’, for…