What would Averroes have done?

REGARDING Raymond A. DiBona's enlightening response (letter, Dec. 5) to professor Harvey Cox's Nov. 28 Ideas article, "What would Jesus do at Harvard?"

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There is a great student of Aristotle and a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas in the person of Averroes (also known as Ibn- Rushd in the Muslim world) of Cordoba. Averroes tried as best he could to bring reasoning into our existence and, I think, separate it from divine thinking. Averroes had to face a radical Islam. His books were burned, and he was accused of heresy simply for daring to use reason as a way to understand God. Perhaps the Western world would learn from revisiting Averroes's interpretations of Aristotle's work.

M. REDJDAL
Brighton