A Critical Study of Fanaei’s View of the Reliability of Rational Speculations (1)

In his reformist agenda, AbolqassemFanaei considers rational speculations (al-ẓunūn al-‘aqlīyya) to be reliable, and thus, he criticizes the standard ijtihadin Islamic seminaries. In this paper, I criticize his view with an analytic method. I claim that the stage of knowledge is different from the stage of judgment: the stage of knowledge is infinitely-valued, thresholdless, and not subject to laws, while the stage of judgment is two-valued, has a threshold, and is subject to laws. At the stage of judgment, non-epistemic aspects might make preferences. Evidence based on jurisprudential principles work at the stage of jurisprudential judgment, and since they are subject to laws, we need to consult transmitted evidence (naql) and look for further interventions of the legislator. After the search, we find that there are many texts in which the legislator bans acting upon rational speculations at the stage of issuing fatwas. One cannot ignore such texts without providing us with stronger evidence.