Ma`rifat

Abstract One of the most fundamental issues in Kalam (the Islamic speculative theology) and philosophy of religion is the relationship between reason and religion, which has been a major issue for many philosophers and theologians in the Western world as well as the Islamic world. There are many definitions of reason and religion and also different opinions about the relationship between them. Among the presented opinions, extreme rationalism, extreme textualism and moderate rationalism can be mentioned. In order to deal with the issues arising in the discussion of the relationship between reason and religion, various kalami schools have provided some solutions. One of the most important and influential kalami schools in the Islamic world is called neo-Mu’tazila. As critiques of the extreme trends of textualism and rationalism, Sheikh Muhammad Abdo and Muhammad Amara are among the most prominent neo-Mu’tazila Islamic thinkers whose ideas have been influential among Sunni Islamist. These two thinkers have made a lot of effort and have written many books in defending moderate rationality and fighting against extreme trends such as extreme rationalism and extreme textualism. Using library method, this paper introduced extreme textualism and extreme rationalism and analyzed their problems such as external obedience and prejudice to the surface of texts and ignoring reason, excessive exegesis of religious texts, promotion of historicism of religious texts and favoring secularism.