Rida and Enlightenment “Reason”

One central conceits of Rida’s critique is his repeated assertion that the educated and worldly among European Christian abandon their faith in the course of their education: the fully rational, he suggests, reject Christianity. This conceit underpins a series of comparisons between Christianity and Islam in the second article. Trinitarian doctrine, for instance, reveals the pagan heritage of Christianity, because it “extinguishes the light of the mind” by commanding the reason to believe that three are one and one is three.  It is this sort of claim, among others, which “banishes independence of thought and will” by compelling Christian obedience to Church leaders. As a result, Rida can claim that the cultural flourishing of European civilization is in fact independent of Christian doctrine: “the Europeans did not achieve all of this until they discarded the Christian teaching.” In stark contrast stands Islam, which almost immediately gave birth to a sprawling civilization and social order: Muhammad’s teaching was beneficial to humanity precisely because it offered a rational basis for culture and moral doctrine, whereas the Christian civilization was irrational.

What exactly is the meaning of “reason” operative in Rida’s writings?  His frequent invocations (in this article and later ones) of the maneuverings of post-Christian European intellectuals (and, for instance, early historical-critical accounts of the development of the biblical canon) bespeak an account of reason which is quite similar to a European enlightenment understandings of the concept. Perhaps the best example of this concept is the conceit of a rational arbitrator who judges between Islam and Christianity on the basis of their accomplishment of the three objectives of “religion” in general. Is this an accurate assessment of Rida’s notion of rationality?  Or is the Islamic notion with which Rida works in some significant way different from the Enlightenment idea? More generally, what sort of understanding of “reason” is necessary to effectively mediate and distinguish between religions? Does Rida’s idea suffice for this task?