Prima facie, there is a clash between the autonomy of man and the sovereignty of God. But in reality there is no clash, provided believers do two things; (a) make a distinction between the jurisdiction or proper sphere of matters of faith, and the proper sphere of autonomous enquiry through logical reasoning or factual investigation, as the case may be; (b) apply the basic principles of semantics to the proper understanding of the Quranic scripture. In other words, if we make a distinction between objective beliefs concerning empirical and logical matters, and existential convictions concerning transcendental matters, we could well combine autonomy, in the sphere of objective beliefs, with surrender to the Scripture in the sphere of faith in the Unseen-- transcendental matters, such as Divine revelation to prophets, life   after death, the final reckoning etc. Questions of fact or of logical implication belong to the sphere of objective belief, and must be dealt with according to the canons of the scientific method or of logic, and not on the basis of any scriptural authority or faith. Truth-claims concerning facts, natural, social, or historical can be conclusively settled, in principle, on the basis of the scientific method of observation, experiment and formulation and testing of hypotheses, but this procedure is ruled out, in the sphere of the ‘Unseen’. And here the Muslim believer can very well accept the supreme authority of the Quran.   The spheres of objective enquiry and of existential faith should not be confused.    If this confusion be avoided, no contradiction remains between spiritual autonomy and the sovereignty of God or faith in the infallibility of the Quran.

It is significant that the Quran does not refer to objective matters (factual or logical) apart, of course, from some biographical matters concerning the Prophet of Islam and earlier messengers etc. and some basic natural phenomena—the succession of the seasons, the night and the day, the cycle of birth, growth and death, and so on. However, such references are not meant to provide factual information or details, but rather to evoke proper attitudes or impart wisdom and moral or spiritual guidance. The tendency to read into the verses of the Quran some theory or other of Physics, Biology, Geography etc. is an hermeneutic error. It is significant that the Prophet himself never claimed that he had any super-natural access to knowledge concerning objective matters, just as he did not claim any super-natural powers to perform miracles in addition to his gift of prophecy. Here again, the tendency to attribute miraculous powers to the Prophet persists despite numerous Quranic verses declaring that he could not perform miracles and had no knowledge of the Unseen, though the Quran does give him the most exalted status among created beings. There is no reason to doubt that several opinions and beliefs of the Prophet (apart from the contents of the Quran) were derived from his milieu, as in the case of all human beings. Such beliefs cannot be deemed to be sacrosanct. The second Khalifa always took this stand.11

    The crucial question which we must now answer is whether social, economic, political, administrative matters belong to the category of objective beliefs or of transcendental convictions. The truth is that they belong neither to the one nor the other, but rather, to the category of cultural beliefs which are based partly on factual premises and partly on value judgments. Now obedience to the clear moral imperatives of the Quran, no less than faith in its transcendental content is binding upon the believer. A clash is, therefore, theoretically possible between the conclusions of an independent or autonomous individual and some Quranic value judgment or imperative. However, it should not be difficult to resolve any actual conflict between spiritual autonomy and authority of the Quran, if we keep in mind the fact that the Prophet interpreted the Quran flexibly in the light of sturdy commonsense, rather than rigidly or literally. In fact it was because of his flexible and non-literal approach in the application of Quranic injunctions in actual life situations that led the early Muslim theologians to infer that some revelations were verbal (wahi-e-jali) and were included in the corpus of the Quran, while others were silent (wahi-e-khafi), though they were equally authoritative or normative for the believers.  The above distinction was clearly meant to explain the Prophet's freedom of interpretation with respect to the Quran. The above distinction, however, is not found in the Quran and places believers in a predicament.12 If they follow the Quran rigidly, in the literal sense, without the Prophet’s flexibility of interpretation, they do something the Prophet did not do; if they show any flexibility of their own in interpreting the Quranic texts (wahi-e- jali) they risk deviating from both—the text as well as the judgments of the Prophet.