Avidya is not mere absence of knowledge but active forgetting of innate truth; Islamic scholars recognize that ignorance of divine reality often masks our natural disposition toward truth.
The Yoga Sutras' avidya—ignorance as a positive force of forgetting and obscuration—offers profound insight into Islamic epistemology. In Islamic thought, humans are born with the fitra (natural disposition) toward recognizing truth and divine reality. Avidya explains how this truth becomes obscured: not because we lack capacity, but because ignorance actively clouds our vision. The Quran describes how people cover truth with falsehood, how hearts become sealed, how knowledge is hidden. Patanjali teaches that avidya isn't mere emptiness but a positive veil that distorts perception—we mistake the temporary for eternal, the limited self for supreme reality, the part for the whole. Islamic scholarship becomes the systematic removal of avidya, the lifting of veils that obscure the fitra. This framework suggests that learning is partly remembering, partly unlearning false beliefs. The scholar becomes a remover of obstacles rather than a builder from nothing. This perspective infuses Islamic learning with spiritual urgency: ignorance actively damages the soul, while knowledge restores what was always there but forgotten.
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