Reason, and Those the Message Never Reached

What of reason, and the interplay of reason with our dīn? As mentioned before, the Muʿtazilah believe that reason stands alone, and can impute things onto Allah. But no: Allah provides the reasoning with some knowledge and some perceptions, to recognize Him and to learn His name.

Allah (swt) says: wa mā kunnā muʿadhdhibīna ḥattā nabʿatha rasūlā: We are not going to punish until We send a prophet, a messenger. Here there is a difference of opinion between the Māturīdīs and the Ashʿarīs. The Māturīdīs… because Imam Abū Ḥanīfah took this verse differently; and, as described in the previous chapter, the Māturīdī madhhab is actually an inheritance of the research of Abū Ḥanīfah (may Allah have mercy on him).

So Imam Abū Ḥanīfah's opinion was that this verse, that We are not going to punish until We send a messenger, refers to — there are different explanations given, but he says that this means — beyond recognizing the oneness of the Creator. So one does not have to pray, one does not have to fast: meaning a person from an indigenous tribe somewhere that has no exposure to modern civilization, or any civilization, any other civilization for that matter, so that no message of the Qur'an, or of the prophet of the time, has reached them. They are completely closed off and isolated. Their responsibility is not to do the other things, which are only given by Allah (swt) through the prophets and through prophecy.

But Imam Abū Ḥanīfah says that it is essential for every single human being, because of the intellect and reasoning Allah (swt) has given them, to recognize the Creator, because that is something that has been programmed into their reasoning, into the mind. So there is no way that they would be forgiven for not recognizing one Creator, whatever they call Him. The wisdom of this can be understood: when many people were discovered for the first time, in their exposure to others, they came up believing in certain supreme beings. Imam Abū Ḥanīfah says it is necessary for the ʿaql to believe in the oneness of Allah, because that much has been programmed into the ʿaql, if it can be called that.