Studying the Truth of Faith from the Viewpoint of Mujtahid Shabistarī

The article explores Mr. Shabistarī's ideas regarding the truth of faith. He is of the opinion that faith is a kind of reality from religious experiences, which is not only unrelated to the field of theory and argument, but also it is not connected, by any means, to knowledge and cognition generally, or to belief in particular. In his opinion, faith is compatible with doubt, but it is irreconcilable with despair. He believes that Islamic culture was an oral culture at its early time. He says that the truth of faith for early Muslims was a practical experience. They were being addressed by four main subjects of time, language, history, and society and this address permeated through their soul. Gradually, through later centuries, the inner belief appeared and faith was entangled with human limitations through history and became an epistemic truth. He, on historical phenomenology method, believes that Muslims should rely on their religious experiences more than their religious knowledge. Because, reviving religion is depended on vitalizing Muslims' religious experiences, not reviving religious thoughts and knowledge, for religious knowledge is extracted from religious experiences which is the deepest layer of religion.