Date Posted: Thursday, January 15, 2004

THE EARLY MANIFESTATIONS

The Rise of Kalam

The first manifestation of Islamic thought occurred outside of Arabia, and on three fronts. The first was that of jurisprudence. Confronted with new situations and new problems, and in the absence of the Prophet (pbuh) on whom they could call for fresh instruction in the divine imperatives, the Muslims were thrust upon themselves to translate the ideals of Islam into prescriptions to meet the new situations of daily life and devise solutions for the new problems. They had to invent the science of jurisprudence to govern and regulate the process of lawmaking. To this end they had to raise and answer questions regarding the purposes of the Shari’a, the nature of human acts, the meaning of obligation and of good and evil, and to establish rules for the understanding of the revelation. Thus, they involved themselves in elaborating and establishing logic, a system of rules concordant with Arabic grammar to govern their comprehension of linguistic meanings, deduction of secondary meanings, rules for extrapolation, and methods for determining of empirical truth. Likewise, as previously noted, hadith criticism led them to establish a whole set of critical disciplines, including historiography and biography. These challenges and the efforts the Muslims directed to meet them produced a positive, rational, and critical philosophy bent on meeting the needs of an exuberant and flourishing civilization.

There is no doubt that all these considerations were present in the Arabian Peninsula as well as outside of it in the provinces brought under the dominion of Islam. However, apart from the influx of wealth, which the empire brought to Arabia, the nature and quality of life there did not change. The ideological and social change that Islam brought was radical and pervasive. It succeeded so well that after the Prophet and his generation had passed away, no thinker defended, or even presented, idolatry, associationism (shirk), tribalism, hedonism, or fatalism dahr, as an issue. These problems, which dominated thinking and living in pre-Islamic Arabia, were no longer problems for the Muslims of the Peninsula. It was otherwise in the provinces where life presented different problems. Land tenure, irrigation and intensive agriculture, continuous trade between large urban centers which had hitherto dominated world empires, and the physical and social mobility which Islam and the Islamic state brought – all these created problems for which no ready-made answers were available precisely because life in the Peninsula presented no parallel. The new situations called for an intellectual effort to discover the relevance of Islam to them.

The second front, equally internal to the situation of Muslims, was the inclination, natural in humans, to think out and systematize the truths presented by the new Islamic vision. The earlier generations, which witnessed the revelation, and their children and grandchildren were too close to the extraordinary phenomenon of prophecy and could only be absorbed in the vision it imparted. In the presence of ultimate reality, human tendency is to acknowledge and acquiesce, to proclaim and enter into adoration and obedience. The Muslim's consciousness had been completely dominated by the vision of the divine pattern that commanded the adherent of the faith to transform space-time; and in his life, the Muslim had been too engaged in the business of making history to articulate his mission and ideology in a systematic manner. He certainly argued about it, but controversy had no appeal for him. The greatest and final argument he had was to point to himself and his fellow Muslims as exemplars of the faith; and both he and his opponents were convinced by this argument. The spectacle of the Muslim giving himself completely over to the new religious and moral values and realizing them with a completeness that hardly knew or tolerated exceptions while making history in the process, was as great as it was disarming. However, the human mind wanted to propound and elaborate the new faith, and to systematize and deduce applications to all fields. Where this kind of work requires a minimal effort, as in the case of Islam – with its kitab mubin (clear book), sunnah mubayyinah (clarifying exemplification), and Shari’a muhaqqiqah (actualizing law) – sheer contemplation of the phenomenon of Islam and the revolution it brought about in all aspects of human life forced the mind to ponder and seek answers, if not to the questions of whence and whither, then surely to that of why.

Revelation, in the past as in Islam, is seldom systematic or comprehensive. It is always contextual in that its pronouncements speak to given situations. It does not purport to deal with all situations, nor to classify and order them so as to apply itself to them systematically. Rather, it pours itself out into one or another aspect of human living or concern, in bolts of intense light and heat, exposing the darkest recesses and the highest peaks. The tasks of ordering and categorizing, of applying the light of revelation to other situations, are not the work of revelation but of scholarship and thought acting under its guidance and fight. Likewise, if revelation is ever comprehensive – as the Qur'anic revelation certainly is – it is on the level of first principles and values, never on that of specific materials for actualization. Since the aim of revelation, and that of religion, is to reorder human life in toto, it is natural for it to speak on the highest levels of generality. Later, religious teachers and scholars fill in the detail.

On the third front, the early Muslims were met by Jews, Christians, Sabaeans, and Zoroastrians who questioned the claims of Islam and demanded satisfactory answers before they could convert to the new faith. Naturally, when they converted to Islam, they brought with them some religio-ideational baggage, which predetermined their understanding of their new faith. As Muslims, they thought out their difficulties in understanding the faith, and gave them erroneous interpretations. The fundamental perceptions of their older faiths and cultures were too imbedded in their consciousness to be erased by Islam overnight; their own categories of understanding forced them to cast the Islamic truths in their own light. The Near East into which Islam had intruded was anything but a philosophical vacuum. The legacies of Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, of Greece and India, of Judaism and Christianity, of the region's religions and cultures were all alive and well. They may have allied themselves with the religions and cultures dominant at the advent of Islam in the seventh century; but they were certainly capable of resisting and questioning the new religion.

Philosophical or theological thought in Islam began with three problems: the nature of iman (faith) and the status of the grave sinner (sahib al kabirah); determinism and freedom; and the nature of the divine attributes. The first two arose out of the Muslims’ division regarding the claimants to caliphal rule and the violent conflicts that followed. When some Muslims called their opponents non-Muslim on account of their violent behavior, the issue of whether iman is compatible with sin had to be met. And when those responsible for violence were brought to account for their deeds and they pleaded innocent because they acted under God's all-out determination, the issue of determinism and free will could not but be confronted and solved. The third problem stemmed from a source foreign to Islam. The Arabic-speaking Muslims had no trouble comprehending the Qur'an in a direct and immediate way. Qur'anic meanings bristled and shone in their words and expressions, too conspicuous to be missed. But when other Muslims sought to understand the texts, the road of immediate, intuitive apperception was not open to them. Barring it were the categories of understanding they inherited from their non-Arabic languages and their non-Islamic religions. Such a predicament threatened tawhid, the essence of Islam, when it affected the divine attributes.

Kalam (literally "words" or "speech," and referring to oration) was the name the Muslims applied to the discipline studying the aforesaid issues, and mutakallim (pl. mutakallimun) was used for the person committed to its pursuit. No word could have fitted better. Khutbah, oration or extemporaneous speech, was the primary means of teaching, debating, proselytizing, or simply communicating information. Although writing was becoming more and more in use, it had not yet become central. Upon the able orator fell the task of defending the faith, of clarifying and elaborating it, of bringing it to the understanding of the people.

The First Kalam Schools

Al Qadariyyah.  Founded by Ma'bad ibn Khalid al Juhani (79/699), this school took its name from the view that man is capable of action (qadar or qudrah) and hence is responsible for his deeds. Ghaylan ibn Marwan al Dimashqi succeeded the founder in leading the school, which taught the following principles. First, man is free and capable and therefore author of his deeds, whether good or evil. On the Day of Judgment, God will reckon with him, rewarding him for his good deeds and punishing him for his evil deeds. They quoted the Qur'anic verses that obviously confirmed their view and interpreted those that seemed to do otherwise. Second, iman is the consequence of knowledge and understanding, of acquiescence to the prophetic call of Muhammad, and hence related to action but not necessarily requiring it. The grave sinner, they held, was indeed a Muslim despite his sin; but God will surely punish him on judgment Day. Third, the attributes that pertain to the divine person, such as hand, sight, and hearing, were to be taken figuratively, so that the transcendence of God may be preserved. Predication of the attributes to God, they warned, is unlike that of an accident or quality of the substance to which it adheres. For the attribute, they claimed, is another index for the divine self.

Al Jabriyyah.  Founded by Jahm Ibn Safwan (127/745) of Tirmidh in opposition to al Qadariyyah school, this school is sometimes known by the name of its founder as al Jahmiyyah. It adhered to the following principles. First, man is determined in all actions by divine power, including the acts of faith and virtue or faithlessness and vice. They quoted those Qur'anic verses that obviously confirm their thesis, such as 76:29-30, and subjected the verses quoted by their adversaries such as 41:40 to allegorical interpretation. They thus reduced Qur'anic freedom to a warning. Second, like al Qadariyyah, the school sought to preserve divine transcendence by interpreting the attributes pertaining to the self of God. They claimed that because only action and creation may be predicated of God, it is legitimate to attribute those qualities to the divine self. Third, the transcendence of God precluded that the world ever be visible to man. Hence, they interpreted verse 75:22, which says that the blessed shall behold God in Paradise, as meaning only that they will be in His presence. And they denied eternity of Paradise and Hell because they presumed God alone to be eternal.

Al Sifatiyyah.  The foregoing schools became popular and began to divide the ummah. Arguments and counterarguments were heard everywhere. To some, their claims seemed exaggerated and their adherents removed from the immediate comprehension of the Arabic meanings of the Qur'anic words. Naturally, this group rose to the defense of the silent Muslims who found their faith misinterpreted by both schools, and were known as Sifatiyyah or "attributists." A third school was thus founded by 'Abdullah ibn Sa`id al Kullabi, which taught two principles. The first affirmation was that of the divine attributes in their known Arabic lexicographic meaning; and condemnation of all questioning regarding their nature or predication to God. They denied that the "hand" or "eye" of God is like anything human. They thus preserved transcendence and affirmed the attributes. Second, al Sifatiyyah denied the position of Qadariyyah on human freedom and the capacity for action. They held man to be determined by God in all that he does and judgment (reward or punishment) is equally dictated by God, thus removing the apparent contradiction between them.

Al Khawarij.  When 'Uthman ibn 'Affan was elected to be the third caliph in 12/644, some leaders of the Muslim community were happy and others were not. The former were the clan of Umayyah, for Uthman belonged to their house; the latter were the clan of Hashim, for their candidate, 'Ali ibn Abu Talib, lost his bid for the caliphate. The expectations of the Umayyah clan were met: the caliph appointed a number of the governors of the provinces from his clan, and thus invited the envy of others and the charge of nepotism from some. Soon, the anti-'Uthman forces gathered strength and assassinated the caliph (35/656). The same body that elected 'Uthman to the caliphate now elected 'Ali to replace him. The Umayyah clan was furious. Mu'awiyyah ibn Abu Sufyan, governor of Syria, and 'Amr ibn al 'As, governor of Egypt, both of the Umayyah clan, united and asked 'Ali to identify and punish the assassins, or he would be disqualified from the caliphate by implication. Much as he personally might have wished to comply with the request, 'Ali was too weak to do so because insurrections were breaking out in many regions of the realm. Hence, Mu'awiyyah and 'Amr joined forces and declared their independence of 'Ali’s caliphate. Their contest for power became open defiance.

When their respective armies confronted each other at Siffin, south of al Raqqah on the Euphrates (36/657), and the forces of 'Ali were about to carry the day, Ali’s opponents resorted to a ruse and offered to accept arbitration. Anxious to spare blood and exhausted, 'Ali accepted the offer and withdrew. The offer of arbitration was a hoax and Mu'awiyyah regrouped his forces for another round. The arbitration took place in 38/659, at Adhruh on the caravan route from Madinah to Damascus, between Ma'an and Petra. A group of  'Ali’s followers strongly disagreed and insisted that arms should settle the issue. They were led by 'Abdullah ibn Wahb al Rasibi and counted several thousand soldiers. 'Ali had to fight them to prevent an upset of the arrangement. He attacked and nearly annihilated Rasibi’s followers in the same year. But in the course of his encounter with them, he was assassinated at the hand of one of their men, 'Abdul Rahman ibn Muljam, in 40/661. With 'Ali out of the way, Mu'awiyyah declared himself the legitimate caliph the same year.

The opponents of arbitration were expelled from the ranks of 'Ali's followers and declared heretics. They were charged with going against the consensus of the ummah and given the name of Khawarij or seceders. Subsequently, they were fought by everybody. Al Hajjaj, the Umawi governor of Iraq, fought many battles against them. They were fierce and dedicated, and they overran southern Iraq under the leadership of Nafi' ibn al Azraq, and eastern Najd under that of Najdah ibn 'Amir. Qatari ibn al Fuja'ah was their greatest poet and hero. They recognized as legitimate only the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and 'Umar; and they held that any capable man may hold that office if he is both competent and elected by the community. Theologically, they held the sinner as a kafir, an outlaw or apostate, whom it is legitimate and religiously imperative to fight. Some remnants of this group survive to this day on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, in East Africa, and in Tunisia and Algeria; they are known as Ibadis or Ibadiyyah, in reference to 'Abdullah ibn Ibad who tempered their isolation by teaching that it is lawful for them to live among and mix with ordinary Muslims who disagreed with them. They are remembered today for their beautiful pietistic poetry.

Al Mu'tazilah.  The three schools discussed above were also known by other names depending on the position they took regarding the issues involved. Regarding their position on the divine attributes, the schools were known as Mu’attilah (neutralizers) if they subjected the attributes to allegorical interpretation; Mushabbihah (anthropomorphists) if they affirmed them literally; and Sifatiyyah if they affirmed them and condemned any entertainment of how they were predicated of God. Concerning their position on human freedom, they were known as Qadariyyah and/or Mu’tazilah if they held man free, capable, and responsible; Murji'ah (deferrers) if they deferred judgment of the sinner to God and the Day of Judgment; and Khawarij (seceders) if they declared the Muslim sinner a non-Muslim and made of him an outlaw.

From Wasil ibn 'Ata', who died in Basrah in 131/749, to Abu al Hasan al Ash'ari, who died in Baghdad in 322/935, runs a line of brilliant thinkers who constitute the Mu'tazilah tradition. This tradition was founded by Wasil ibn 'Ata' and was divided into two schools: that of Basrah comprising among its distinguished members 'Amr ibn 'Ubayd, Abu al Hudhayl al 'Allaf, Ibrahim al Nazzam, 'Amr al Jahiz, Abu 'Ali, and Abu Hashim al Jubba`i; and that of Baghdad, founded by Bishr ibn al Mu'tamar (210/826) and counting among its great members Abu Musa al Murdar, Ahmad ibn Abu Du'ad (the favorite of the caliphs al Ma'mun, al Mu'tasim, and al Wathiq, 204-232/ 820 - 848), Thumamah ibn al Ashras, the two Ja'fars (Ja'far ibn Harb and Ja'far ibn Mubashshir), Muhammad al Iskafi, and 'Abd al Rahim al Khayyat. Abu al Hasan al Ash'ari was the last great Mu’tazili who having mastered their thought and method, overturned the tables against the Mu’tazilah and established the first crystallization of Sunni theology. The Mu’tazilah's rise and flowering coincided with the formative period of Islamic thought. It was a time when the array of ideas presented to the observer was most bewildering. The job of controverting the opponents' opinions, of weighing alternatives and exposing their shortcomings, fell on the shoulders of the Mu'tazilah; and they certainly proved themselves in the many battles of ideas in which they engaged. Their history was as brilliant as that of their brethren – the military, the leaders of government and administration, of agriculture and industry, of trade and communications, of learning and the sciences – who had spent themselves in the realization of the divine pattern within as well as without, in themselves as in the world around them.

In the field of abstract thought, it was inevitable that questions of great importance would arise that demanded answers satisfying both reason and faith. Al Mu'tazilah's answers went a long way to achieve this but fell short of the goal. Their efforts opened the gates of controversy in matters that were basic to religion and ethics. The mood of the age was favorable and Mu'tazilah leaders were invited by caliph al Ma’mun to assume power and lead the ummah. However, controversy permeated their ranks. Trusting their political power rather than their reason, they committed the tragic mistake of forcing acceptance of their doctrines upon the rank and file. Those who opposed the Mu’tazilah doctrine were forced out of office or thrown into jail. Ahmad ibn Hanbal was imprisoned for his opposition of this Mu’tazilah view. Ahmad ibn Abu Du'ad (160-240/777-855), the Mu’tazilah leader, was appointed chief justice by caliph al Mu'tasim, on the testament his father, caliph al Ma’mun, gave before his death in 218/833, but he had exercised great influence under the latter since 204/820. Caliph al Mutawakkil (232-247/847-862)

discharged him from office in 229/851and ordered his property confiscated.  Since then, al Mu’tazilah as a movement fell from favor and was banned. It became the minority view and soon joined other Muslim dissenters – the Shi’ah – and alienated itself from the "orthodox" majority where some of its principles persisted.

Mu'tazilah doctrine was founded on five axioms: first, al tawhid, or uniqueness of God. This axiom was emphasized against the contentions of the Karaites (Jewish anthropomorphists), of the Manichaean dualists, of the Christian trinitarians, and of the Near Eastern philosophers who were for the most part gnostic emanationists. Under this principle the Mu’tazilah sought to establish the existence, uniqueness, and transcendence of God, which were threatened by those schools. Among Muslims, however, the Mu’tazilah claim of tawhid had an altogether different purport. It demanded that the divine attributes be "neutralized." If, as ordinary Muslims claim, the attributes were not God and eternal, then transcendence could no longer be maintained. Their argument was simple and straightforward. Divine knowledge is either eternal or it is created. If eternal, it is either in God, outside of God, or nowhere. If in God, then God is a theater where change takes place. If outside of God, then God is not omniscient and someone else is. And knowledge cannot be nowhere. It is somewhere and eternal. But it cannot be outside of God for that involves polytheism. It must therefore be in God and intrinsic to Him.

Similarly, all divine attributes must be declared either negative, denying that their opposites are predicable of God; or positive, affirming a facet of the divine self, not an accident or quality. The Islamic notion that the Qur’an was the eternal word of God invited the same kind of argument. The Mu'tazilah maintained that the Qur'an was created by God in time to fulfill a purpose He had for man and creation. The evidence they adduced was that the Qur'an was composed of language, of sounds and meanings established by human custom, that it was kept in ink and paper and memorized completely by humans. It cannot be "in" or "of" God. On the other hand, to hold that the Qur'an is "outside" of God and eternal is to affirm the existence of another eternal being besides God. Finally, the Mu'tazilah addressed the same argument against the beatific vision in paradise. God, they claimed, cannot be beheld by the human eye, even in Paradise, for only material bodies can be seen. Hence, the Qur'anic verses affirming same (75:22) must be interpreted to mean something else, such as consciousness of the divine presence.

The second doctrine of the Mu’tazilah was that of al 'adl (justice). This axiom was emphasized against the contentions of the advocates of racialism, election, predestination, irrationalism, and justification by faith among all the above-mentioned groups, as well as against those Muslims who were determinists, intercessionists, and advocates of the primacy of revelation over reason. Here, the Mu’tazilah sought to establish the universalism, rationalism, humanism, and moral freedom of Islam. The Qur'an contains verses that support both freedom and determinism (74:41, 41:46, 76:3 for the former; 9:51, 7:188, 11:36 for the latter; 13:13 for both). The Mu'tazilah regarded freedom as basic to the whole of religion and its enterprise. For this they presented five arguments: taklif, or moral obligation, the phenomenon of prophethood and the sending of prophets, the affirmation of divine justice, the all goodness of God, and the rationality of good and evil – all of which, they claimed, were essential to religion and ethics and implied human freedom, capacity for action, and responsibility. Concerning the first, they divided human actions into necessary and free, absolving the former of, and charging the latter with, responsibility. They also denied intercession as interference with divine justice. Regarding the second, they argued that prophecy would be vain – indeed absurd – if humans were not free to be warned and instructed by the prophets. Such a view undermines all revelation, including the Qur'an. As to the all goodness of God, it is absolute and may not be compromised by His willing injustice and evil, which He must do if He were the author of human deeds. That divine justice precludes any injustice equally implies that good and evil must be discoverable by reason as well as given by revelation. For it is injustice to consign to hell those who lived before the revelation and those whom it did not reach.

The third and fourth axioms, al w’ad wa al wa’id (the promise of reward and threat of punishment) and al manzilah bayna al manzilatayn (the intermediate station between salvation and damnation) were subsidiary to the principle of justice. On the one hand, reward and punishment were held to be necessary if God's disposal of man's destiny was to be an absolutely just one. If all man's deeds ended in forgiveness and paradise, or in punishment and hellfire, or in neither, divine righteousness would be gravely compromised. On the other hand, an intermediate station between faith and unfaith, between salvation and damnation, was necessary on account of the faithful who slipped into grave sin. This axiom rehabilitated such a person in opposition to two kinds of extremisms: that which regarded adherence to the faith as all that is necessary for salvation, under which the sinner is complacently regarded as saved; and that which regarded all salvation as logically and materially equivalent to works, under which view the sinner is summarily condemned to punishment in this world and the next. Against both extremes, this principle kept the faithful, as faithful as well as sinner, under God's accusing finger for the sin of which he was guilty.

The fifth axiom was al amr bi al ma’ruf wa al nahy 'an al munkar (the enjoining of good and prohibition of evil), whose role was to establish the necessity of an imperfect yet perfectible creation for man's moral self-realization or fulfillment of the divine command; hence the need for man to engage himself in its warp and woof, to take history into his own hands, and to knead and remold the world into the likeness of the divine pattern God had revealed.

These five axioms were cardinal to the Mu’tazilah. Contention or denial of any one of them removed the contender from Mu’tazilah rank. And yet, if we were to characterize Mu’tazilah doctrine by a single dominant idea, we are compelled to say that the whole thrust of their movement revolved around the problem of man's ethical nature, which they regarded as the central problem of the self. Their concern was a very Islamic one, since in Islam the end-all and be-all of human life – indeed, of all creation – is the realization in space-time of a divine trust. And their reasoning was clear. If God is transcendent – and   the Muslim believes He is – He may not be said to invade, or be invaded by, creation. God is forever unique. Therefore, there is in Islam neither incarnation nor pantheism; neither emanation from God nor fusion into God. These are all constructs devoid of foundation. The only unquestionable, given reality is that man, the creature, stands under an imperative, namely, the command of value; that he is commanded as well as moved by value to seek its realization in the realm of the actual.

According to the Mu’tazilah, four different principles follow from this given reality, and their establishment is the task of all religious and philosophical thought. These are, first, that there is a command, a law, or Shari’a – a divine pattern which is the divine will for man; and that this pattern is not man's creation but is His, for though the law is relational to man, it is not relative to him. Otherwise, if value or the so-called divine command is man's creation or is relative to him, ethics is either the satisfaction of instincts and desires or the rule by convention. In either case the imperativeness and justification of the command are jeopardized.

The second principle is that man has an innate capacity to know that command or divine pattern, a capacity cultivable and susceptible of higher and lower degrees of perceptive strength, but nonetheless internal to man's realities and devolving upon him. Otherwise skepticism and cynicism become unavoidable. Furthermore, such capacity liberates man from traditions, which can never by themselves be critical.

The third principle is that man, whether as subject or as materiel of value realization, has the capacity to act or not to act in accordance with the command. The aspect of man as subject of value realization is precisely his moral freedom; his aspect as materiel is his malleability as well as that of creation, the openness of all space-time to in-formation by the divine pattern.

The fourth and last principle is that there must be an order in which the doing or non-doing of man, his realization or violation of the divine pattern, will not be in vain, but will be of consequence for him as well as for the cosmos; that while the consequence for the cosmos is objective, the consequence for the subject is personal reward or punishment. Upon this principle depend the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the Day of Judgment, and Paradise and Hell. It was the Mu’tazilah thinkers' investigation of these problems that led to the establishment of these principles in the tradition of Islamic thought.

Kalam (Theology) Part II