Mu'tazila - Use of Reason in Early Islamic Theology

By Matthew Martin

There were religious disagreements and debates in the early phases of Islam, before it coalesced into a unified religious creed with definitive positions on important religious questions. The Mu'tazila movement emerged in the Umayyad Era and reached its most popularity in the Abassid period. They were distinctly known for using reason and logic in quranic interpretations and in theological arguments, one of which revolved around the early controversy over human free will vs. divine determinism. Mu'tazilites maintained that reasoning and a developed intellect are crucial for man, needed to complement revelation and faith.The Mu'tazila became a significant defending force for Islamic revelation in the early occupied lands, because they were apt at using reasoning in various theological debates with Christians and other faiths. Scholarship on the movement stagnated for centuries, owing to an absence of sympathetic accounts (and an abundance of hostile accounts) of the movement, and because its strongest adherents and main texts were eventually eliminated from Sunni Islamic history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew Martin
• Release date: Mar 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386493723

Matthew Martin

On a spiritual path since 1973, studying a wide variety of teachings and with many distinguished teachers, along with meditation and other practices. University degrees in Religion and Philosophy. Love nature and everyone. LoveWisdom.net LoveWisdom.net/soul EarthGeomancy.net EarthGeomancy.net/Native_Earth_Wisdom VirtuesandValues.net EducationForWorldSolutions.org

Book preview

Part 1 - History & Thought

Mu'tazila use of reasoning

Mu'tazila history

Dominance of Ash'arism

The Ash'arite view

Response from Mu'tazili 'Abd al-Jabbar

Mu'tazila reasoning and doctrine

God in relation to reason and moral laws

Part 2 - Free will vs. Determination

Debates over free will & predestination

The meaning of qadar – capacity or determinism

Relevant verses from the Qur'an

Interpreting meaning by overall context

Example of Mu'tazila logic

Guide us on the straight way

Part 3 – Re-thinking with reason

Misrepresentation of the Mu'tazila

Sunni-Ash'ari 'Divine Decree'

The meaning of 'Allah Wills'

Ideas about Allah's power and will

How important is prayer?

Contradictory beliefs

Mistakes in life: the bad and stupid

Life - an undetermined work in progress

References:

Mu'tazila ; muslimphilosophy.com/mutazila

Mu'tazila ; wikipedia.org/Mutazili

Ash'ariyya and Mu'tazila ;

muslimphilosophy.com/H052

Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mu`tazilism

by Richard Martin & Mark Woodward

Theological Rationalism in the Medieval World of Islam

by Sabine Schmidtke

Predestination in Islam ;

wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_in_Islam

Political misuse of 'qadar' by Murtadha Mutahhari ;

al-islam.org/doctrine-predestination

Understanding God's Mercy by Murtadha Mutahhari ;

al-islam.org/understanding-God's-Mercy

Islamic philosophy and theology by W.M. Watt ;

muslimphilosophy.com/books/ipt-wat.pdf

A History of Islamic Philosophy by Majid Fakhry ;

muslimphilosophy.com/ip/hip.htm

An informative 5-part video series ;

youtube.com/rise_and_fall_of_science_in_Islam

Pt 1 - History & Thought

Mu'tazila use of reasoning in early Islamic debates

There were religious disagreements and debates in the early phases of Islam, before it coalesced into a unified religious creed with definitive positions on important religious questions, which only occurred a few centuries after Muhammad. So even after the many submitted verses were collected, selected and organized into a finalized Quran, there were still open questions regarding how to interpret various ayats and how to understand the overall meaning of this revelation. There was of course, a lineage of religious teachers who proceeded from the closest students of Muhammad, but many theological questions about God and creation, and ethical questions about man's responsibility, were not yet answered with any unified consensus. In other words, many questions were still in discussion.

First, there were the moral and legal questions raised by a picture of God’s overwhelming supremacy in the world as depicted in the Qur’an and its bearing on the responsibility of human agents. Second, there was the necessity of safeguarding what one may call the unity of the Islamic view of life, which could not be achieved without a systematic attempt to bring the conflicting data of revelation into some internal harmony. The attempt to grapple with these complex problems is at the basis of the rise and development of Islamic scholastic theology.

Third, there was the inevitable confrontation of Islamic teachings with pagan and Christian beliefs, both at Damascus and at Baghdad. Because Islam had now encountered many learned men of other cultures and religions, in those regions now conquered, this new religious movement of Islam had to answer the perennial religious questions posed by its challengers. So, a good deal of the work of the earliest theologians consisted in the rebuttal of the arguments leveled at Islam by pagans, Christians, and Jews, and scholastic theology arose as a means of buttressing Islamic beliefs by logical arguments and defending them against attack. The Mu'tazili became a significant defending force for Islamic revelation, because they were able to argue and discuss contentious issues with reason and logic. Significantly, the early Mu‘tazili are often commended for their defense of Islam against the attacks of the Materialists (al-Dahriyah) and the Manichaeans.

From the early days of Islam and into the seventh century, many theological discussions centered around questions of divine justice and human responsibility; such as whether the evils, as perceived in the world, were created by God, and also the issue of predestination versus free will. Discussions also concerned whether the Qur'an was created or eternal, and whether God's attributes in the Qur'an were to be interpreted allegorically or literally.

The earliest religious and ethical discussions in the 7th and 8th centuries appear to have centered most specifically on the question of 'qadar', which could equally mean: 'predetermination' as predicated of God, or 'capacity' as predicated of man. The term, 'qadar' would most literally mean 'measuring out' or 'setting out portions'; which some followers interpreted as God measuring out our fate and what shall happen in the world, while others (Qadarites) interpreted as God measuring out our human capacity for both knowledge and making good choices (vs. bad choices for which we also have a capacity).

The early so-called Qadarites of Damascus also raised the question of qadar in the context of the moral responsibilities of the Umayyad caliphs, who justified their most oppressive policies on the ground that they were part of the divine decree (qada' wa qadar). Qadaris were critical of the Umayyad Caliphs for their sometimes unjust autocracy. However, the Umayyad argued in favor of predestination and that all events must be God’s Will, a theological position which very nicely justified the righteousness of everything the Umayyad did, since everything is God’s Will. They could then say ‘our actions and their consequences are part of God’s Decree’. Countering this, the Qadaris insisted that man has free will, sometimes doing good but other times not, and that we should not accept lies and injustice as being a necessary part of God’s Decree.

In the next centuries following, the Mu'tazila continued the Qadarite line of questioning, asserting the freedom of the individual on the one hand and the justice of God on the other. And although they naturally supported their positions by quotations from the Qur’an, their general tendency was to advance arguments of a strictly ethical or rational character in support of these positions. Subsequently, the Mu'tazili theologians of Basra and Baghdad refined upon the speculation of their Qadarite predecessors, and they offered a rationalist approach for discerning right from wrong, as well as an explanation of God's justice and decrees.

Mu'tazili theologians stressed God's wisdom and goodness and exonerated Him of the responsibility for evils and injustices in the world, even what some called 'apparent' evil or apparent 'injustice'. They argued that there are, indeed, human actions without any divine reason or good purpose, and that all such evils and injustices are 'created' by humankind, rather than caused by or willed by God.

Significantly though, their explanations were expressed in 'reasons'. However, their disapproving [traditionalist] rivals did not believe that qur'anic explanations had to be supported by any rational reasons, but instead they insisted that people simply believe what they preached since they had a true religious knowledge. Therefore, the Mu'tazila use of reasoning, for use in discussion and argument, was essentially rejected by the 'traditionalists' – who tried to persuade more simply by their own positions of religious authority and also with references to the literal statements in revelation.

Mu'tazili were not willing to simply accept what the current political-religious authorities claimed as being the absolute truth or the absolute right moral law. Instead, they believed that the 'words of Allah' require interpretation and that man must apply reasoned thinking to this task; otherwise, the religious authorities or those who happen to be favorites of the current political regime will dictate their own interpretative views to the people in the guise of absolute God's truth. For without the freedom of reasoning, argument, and debate; the intended meaning of God's Message could be kidnapped or falsified by those claiming to be the righteous authorities of meaning.

Thus, the Mu'tazili were courageous in challenging other theologians, even those with political power or ties, to debating the true meaning of qu'aranic statements. But the judge of truth for the Mu'tazili was human reason, in combination also with revelation and with spiritual intuition, because they understood that the only alternative to using reason was religious authoritarianism. However, many of those disagreeing with Mu'tazili conclusions refused to use reasoning in debates, claiming that reason was incapable of knowing the truth of revelation; so they sought to persuade people of their interpretation on the basis of their special religious knowledge and position of simply of knowing what the Quran means. In contrast, The Mu'tazili sought the agreement of others by the power of their reasoning and logic, rather than gaining agreement by either an appeal to being the absolute religious authority or by popularized emotional appeals.

The Mu'tazili sought to ground the Islamic creedal system in reason; though with the Quran and a foundational faith in Islam as their starting point and ultimate reference. Mu'tazilis intentionally applied logic and some aspects of Greek philosophy, but the accusations leveled against them by rival schools of theology that they gave absolute authority to extra-Islamic paradigms reflect more the fierce polemics between various schools of theology than any objective reality.

It was the later Muslim philosophers, not the Mu'tazili theologians, who took Hellenistic philosophy as a starting point and conceptual framework for analyzing and investigating reality. Moreover, the actual translation of Greek philosophical texts had not yet been started by the time the founder of the school, Wasil ibn 'Ata, launched this theological movement in the second century AH. However, earlier Qadarite theologians in contact with Christian theologians, such as John of Damascus and his disciple Theodore Abu Qurrah, were most likely influenced by the scholastic methods of discourse that Syriac-speaking Christian scholars had been applying to theological questions prior to the Arab conquest of Syria, Egypt and Iraq.

The actual degree to which the later period of Mu'tazilite theology and ethics