"The literal translation of al-'aql is 'reason.'

As I will show in chapter 1, however, al-'aql as a constituent of Muslim Tradition refers neither to the plain dictates of the faculties nor to any particular uniform regime of systematic reasoning. It is, rather, a highly contested terrain of competing "regimes of sense" that oscillate between primordial and synthetic reason, yielding overlapping composites that religiously literate Muslims collectively recognize as "public reason." Among the subtleties of al-'aql is that not purely a tool of exegesis, or extracting meaning from the sources; rather, it is just as often a mechanism for monitoring eisegesis, that is, validating/invalidating meaning that is read into the sources, whatever the actual origins of this meaning may be. In sum, the essential function of al-'aql is to adjudicate interpretive disputes and validate interpretive arguments in the public realm in a manner that is recognized as fair and impartial. [24]

-Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering, p. 10