Mu’tazilla is not Godzilla

There is no doubt that the Islamic concept of God during the time of Prophet Muhammad was stark and simple. There is one God, and He is like no other. The divine unity is known as Tawhid and it is reinforced by the first part of the Shahada (testimony of faith): There is no God but The God.

This was when Islam was essentially confined to the Arabian peninsula, whose inhabitants had an unsophisticated notion of religion. The simplicity of faith had been molded by centuries of living in harsh, arid climes where life and death was separated only by a thin line. Some would argue that it was this quality that made the first Arab converts so comfortable in their roles as the initial heralds of the the Islamic revelation, for the religion quickly expanded in all directions, eventually brushing up against ancient civilizations like Persia and Rome.

Non-Arab Muslims flocked to Islam in droves, and brought with them their own cultures and intellectual heritage which were often more highly-developed and systemized than the Arabs’ own. It was inevitable that these new converts would understand Islam in the light of their own traditions. Shaykh Muhammad Abu Zahra (1898-1974) identified it as a person’s involuntary inclination towards the past; a sub-conscious trait that found the strongest expression during the bloody civil wars of Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib’s (599-661) reign. Ancient sects and mysteries stirred to life, adding to the chaos that threatened to tear the fledgling Muslim community apart. It was in the midst of this jumble of confused ideas and sects that the Mu’tazilites made their appearance.

Mu’tazilism was a doctrinal stream dedicated to refuting the more obvious heresies of its time. It was because of their work that the rulers of the Abbassid dynasty (750-1258) gave them their staunch support. According to Abul-Hasan al-Khayyat in al-Intisar, a Mu’tazilite adhered to five core tenets:

1. Tawhid
2. Justice
3. The Promise and the Threat
4. The Position between the Two Positions, and
5. Commanding the right while forbidding the wrong.

Each tenet was crafted to respond to a particular heretical group that the Mu’tazilites confronted. Their doctrine of Tawhid, for example, was formulated to refute the anthropomorphist, who interpreted the scriptures in an overly-literal way and sought to assign human qualities and even limbs to God. The tenet of Justice was to refute the Jabarite school, which taught that man is compelled in his actions without any power, volition or choice. The Promise and the Threat was used to refute the Murijites (deferrers), who claimed that God would forgive all sins except disbelief and that hell was only a temporary abode. The Position between the Two Positions was in direct response to the Kharajites (seceders), who insisted that anyone who sinned was immediately an unbeliever, his life and property forfeit.

Despite their efforts, the Mu’tazilites were strongly opposed by scholars who were steeped in orthodox teaching of Islam. This was because the Mu’tazilite defense of Islam included many aspects of the theological and logical devices of their opponents. These tools came to be collectively known as kalam, and it was this particular manifestation of it that provoked both Imam Shafi’i and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal to condemn the science. In Imam Shafi’i’s eyes, kalam encouraged division and strife, as is evident from his statements:

"I see that some of the people of kalam call others unbelievers, while the people of hadith call others mistaken. Mistakes are far less grave than disbelief."

"If you debate a matter of fiqh people say- ‘You have erred,’ not "You have committed kufr’."

Imam Shafi’i keenly objected to the way in which some Muslims used kalam to come up with absolute answers on Islamic doctrine, even as they ignored the fact that some of the philosophical devices had been borrowed from backgrounds that were incompatible with Islam. This was especially true for the Mu’tazilites, who relied more on reason than transmission. Every question was put through a sieve of logic. What was logical was accepted. What was illogical was rejected. Whatever was unclear was dealt with by linguistic means.

While knowledge generally has a positive quality, not all is useful in religious application. Imam Shafi’i diligently shunned the practice of borrowing the kalam of philosophers, and restricted himself to exploring only those aspects of kalam that addressed ingrained Islamic doctrine. When asked about the evidence that Muhammad was the Messenger of God, for example, he replied:

"The proof of the Prophethood of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is the revealed Quran, the consensus of the people and the signs that cannot be attributed to any but him."

Shaykh Muhammad Abu Zahra lists other traits that the Mu’tazilites possessed:

1. They avoided imitation  and were averse to following others without investigation, examination and comparison proofs and criteria. Hence, they did not imitate one another; the rule they followed was that every responsible person is answerable for the principles of the Deen (religion) to which his ijtihad (the scholarly effort to derive rules from the Quran and hadiths) leads him. This was primarily why they split into so many groups, each with its own ideological bias.

2. Their respect was reserved for opinions and not for names, for what they perceived as the truth and not the speaker.

3. They relied on the intellect to establish articles of faith, finding support for their positions from the Quran. They lacked knowledge of hadiths because they did not use them for either doctrine or evidence.

4. They took from scientific sources that were translated in their time, borrowing generously from them to buttress their arguments against their opponents.

In Sunni Islam, Mu’tazilism effectively died as a distinct movement, after being replaced by the more orthodox doctrinal schools of Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari (873-935) and Imam Abu Mansur Al Maturidi (d. 944). However, like genocidal Kharajism, many of Mu’tazilism’s traits have been revived in modern Islamic movements. Elements of the Mu’tazilite dialectic can be found in the writings of modern Islamic thinkers such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Mohammad Abduh and Rashid Rida. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, also known as the father of the Salafist reform movement, is particularly interesting because his early education was deeply anchored in the Shia understanding of Islam. His writings, most notably The Benefits of Philosophy, mimic the Mu’tazilite fondness for articulating a cosmology based on the findings of modern science.

The revival of what are really ancient tendencies within the Islamic fold is not an unexpected development, given the unfortunate return of anarchic conditions to the Muslim community these days. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States report might seem like an odd and unfair source of information on the Islamic world, but it accurately identifies today’s global violence as being "byproducts of an Arab civil war".

One of the main reasons Mu’tazilism fell out of the Sunni framework of religion was the liberties it took with interpreting Islam. Many with heretical opinions found Mu’tazilism to be a nest in which to incubate their ideas. This was due to the inherent flexibility of Mu’tazilism’s deductive methods, a symptom that is also present in today’s extremist groups. In many instances, the positions adopted by contemporary extremists on questions of jihad, women and non-Muslims repudiate that of traditional scholarship. Extremists typically abandon established and rigorously-transmitted solutions in favor of solutions that are creative and radical enough to bolster their agenda. Not surprisingly, some of the ulema (scholars) they quote from are also likely to be highly-controversial figures who lived in near-contemporary times. It is this predisposition that led John Gray to dub extremist groups as being the offspring of modernism.

It is conceivable that in the Mu’tazilite paradigm, philosophical and ideological bias ingratiate themselves into it from very early on, which would in turn lead to the splintering of the community along contentious, absolute factions. I personally believe that the Islamic world has so far been spared the fate of religions like Christianity and Judaism (and their splintering into hundreds of sects and devolvement into personal spheres of life) because those Muslims who subscribe to Mu’tazilite ideals continue to be in the minority, with little or no influence over Islam’s eventual destiny.

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