The Unquenchable Thirst for Knowledge- Imam Al-Ashari

Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Ismail al-Ashari was born in the city of Basra, Iraq, in 873. He was descended from the Asharia clan of Yemen who had governed Iraq during the time of the Prophet’s Successors. The foremost amongst the clan had been Abu Musa Al-Ashari, on whom the Prophet Muhammad had once singled out:

“If the Asharis go on an expedition or if they only have a little food among them, they would gather all they have on one cloth and divide it equally among themselves. They are thus from me and I am from them“.

Distinguished and hailing from an eminent family, Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Ismail al-Ashari was one of those individuals- rare in their thankfulness to Divine Providence- who used their private incomes to pursue a life of increasing ‘ilm, or sacred knowledge. As a young man, he quelled his intellectual thirst by delving into the field of religious law, but eventually found himself gravitating toward the teachings of a prominent theologian named Abu Ali al-Jubai, who belonged to the rationalist school of the Mutazilites.

The Mutazilites were one of the first systemized schools of theology in the Islamic world. Though they were called Mutazilites, they disliked the popular name and called themselves by another- the people of justice and unity. They had arisen during the Ummayad period to defend Islamic doctrines from heresy. Such heresy came from many sides, but the most dangerous were the ones introduced by pretenders to the Islamic faith who intentionally tried to corrupt the religion by transmitting ideas and notions for which God had given no authority. Another area which the Mutaziltes specialized in was refuting the excessively anthropomorphic interpretations that some people had of the attributes of God, such as the view that he had hands or that He sat upon a throne. Mutazilite reasoning even went as far as to challenge the popular belief that God could be seen by the faithful in the afterlife. However, their excessive use of reason and the philosophical tools advanced by non-Muslim civilizations brought them into direct confrontation with scholars who preferred an unquestioning obedience to transmitted sources such as the Quran, Sunna and Hadiths.

In 819, in the wake of a bitter civil war between two brothers, a prince named Abu’l Abbas Abdullah became caliph of the Abbasid empire. He was the eldest son of Harun al-Rashid and was more popularly known as Al-Mamun, or the trusted one. Because Al-Mamun descended from a Persian mother, he inclined toward Shi’ism, which had always favored philosophy and rationalism. Al-Mamun was wise enough to know that his precarious position was directly threatened by the populist movement led by traditional scholars. Thus, upon ascending the throne of Baghdad, he set about declaring the Mutazilite creed the state religion. Al-Mamun also started an aggressive inquisition to force mainstream scholars and their followers to accept the Mutazilite creed. Imam Ahmad Hanbal, the founder of one of the four key Schools of Jurisprudence (Madhhab) was one of the inquisition’s victims, and suffered greatly for it.

The mihna, as the inquisition came to be known, cemented opposition for the Mutazilite school amongst traditional scholars. In the time of Al-Ashari, though, the school still had many powerful and brilliant patrons. In fact, while the Mutazilite school eventually waned amongst Sunni Muslims, it remains a significant part of Shia Islam. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, father of modern-day Salafism, had also been a Shia Muslim who favored Mutazilism doctrines, though he hid the fact through a Shia device called taqiya, or disambiguation.

At around 912, during the month of Ramadan, Al-Ashari went into spiritual retreat, where he began to re-examine many of his beliefs. He had doubts about the positions that the Mutazilites held, and prayed for guidance. Then, in his sleep, the Prophet Muhammad began to appear to him.

"O Ali," the Prophet said. "Support the positions that have been transmitted from me, for they are the truth."

And thus, the Prophet confirmed the favor that had been bestowed on the clan of Asharia through the words: “They are thus from me and I am from them“. The dream occurred three times, in which the Prophet also promised that Al-Ashari would receive divine aid in the effort. Al-Ashari had little doubt that the dream was real, and immediately went to a mosque to make public his repentance and repudiation of Mutazilite beliefs.

The position we take and the religious views we profess are: to hold fast to the book of our Lord and the Sunnah of the Prophet and to what has been related on the authority of the companions and the followers of the Imams of the Hadith. Moreover, we profess what Abu Abdullah Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal taught…and we contradict all who contradict his teachings.

Al-Ashari followed Imam Ash-Shafi’i’s School of Jurisprudence and possessed profound knowledge of the Quran and Hadiths. He greatly admired Ahmad ibn Hanbal because of the fact that the latter had remained steadfast in the face of Mutazilite persecution. While Al-Ashari also considered himself an adherent of the Hanbali methodology, Hanbalis typically adopt a literal interpretation of the Quran and hadiths and despise all theology.

Like Imam Ash-Shafi’i before him, Al-Ashari developed a unique synthesis between opposing views of theology that trod between two extremes. One end of the spectrum lay the rationalist tendencies of his previous Mutazilite beliefs, while on the other lay the firmly literal interpretations of the Hanbalis. In fact, centuries after Al-Ashari, a Hanbali scholar named Imam Abdul Rahman ibn Al-Jawzi would rise to criticize his contemporaries for extending Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s original position on God’s Attributes to zealous extremes. Al-Ashari made a robust argument that exclusive reliance on the Scripture alone is the attitude of the lazy or ignorant, while sole reliance on reason is dangerous. His method was to distill the best principles from both scripture and reason. Revelation can be justified by reason only up to a certain point, as some of the earlier generations of Muslim scholars had well understood. Anything beyond must simply be accepted as revealed truth.

One important issue in which the Mutazilites, the Hanbalis and Al-Ashari differed was on God’s Attributes. The Mutazilites argued that when the Quran talks about God’s hands, eyes and face, the verses must be interpreted metaphorically. God’s Hands, for example, refer to His Grace. The Hanbalis, being literalists, asserted that if the Quran talks about God’s Hands, then it is God’s Hands and that is the end of it. Al-Ashari stated that if the Quran mentions that God created with His two hands, then that is sufficient proof that he did so. He explained that it does not make linguistic sense to say that God had created ‘with My Grace’. However, Al-Ashari cautioned that the Attributes are not to be understood in a crude anthropomorphic manner, a trait that Imam Abdul Rahman ibn Al-Jawzi later accused some of his Hanbali colleagues of holding, but rather the descriptions just have to be accepted without asking how. This is a principle known as bila kayf.

Al-Ashari’s approach mirrored the approach of the Salaf, who read such verses without pausing and pondering over them. Although the Salaf made no comment most of the time, they never understood the verses about God’s Attributes in a literal fashion. That would have meant bestowing on God distinctly human characteristics. The balance and relative stability that is inherent in al-Ashari’s theology endeared itself to most adherents of the major Schools of Jurisprudence, with the exception of the Hanbalis, who remain suspicious of all forms of theology.

Although Ashari’ism remains the dominant school of theology amongst Sunni Muslims today, opponents have picked up on an old Orientalist claim that its rise marked the end of all forms of rational thought in the Islamic world. They say that the type of determinism endorsed by Al-Ashari caused a complete halt to scientific and material progress. However, Al-Ashari himself had resisted the concept of extreme determinism, believing that it would lead to moral laxity. It is also wrong to say that Al-Ashari advocated a creed that totally oppossed rationalism. Al-Ashari established boundaries to rationalism, and also encouraged a more mystical and contemplative attitude toward God- a flexibility and an accessibility that was lacking in the abstruse teachings of the Mutazilites and the overly-simplistic interpretations of the literalists. Al-Ashari’s creed encouraged Muslims to see the divine presence everywhere, to look through external reality and perceive the transcedent reality immanent within it. Unlike the internal contradictions and circular logic of the literalists, Asharism’s most basic tenets satisfied the common sense and natural curiosity of the layman, making them easy to internalize.

Another common argument that opponents of Ashari’ism employ is that the school could only have become so widespread due to the political circumstances that saw the benefit of upholding a unified theological framework. While this might be true in a limited sense, the hypothesis carefully ignores a critical feature of Ashari’ism- its capacity to draw to itself the greatest and most profound thinkers to expound on and refine it. It had incontrovertible intellectual and psychological appeal. Ashari’ism spread across the Muslim world more on the efforts of scholars like Abdul Malik ibn Abdullah Al-Juwayni, also known as Imam of the Two Sanctuaries and the philosopher Fakhr Al-Din Al-Razi than Al-Ashari himself. But it is probably the towering Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali who consolidated Asharism’s triumph over all other theological frameworks that appeared in the Islamic fold, and established its true function alongside the other sources of ‘ilm, or sacred knowledge.

Himself a master of Ashari kalam, he was aware of the dangerous paths into which it might lead him. He tried to define limits within which kalam was licit. It was essentially a defensive activity: discursuve reason and argumentation should be used in order to defend right belief derived from the Quran and Hadith against those who denied it, and also against those who trie to give false and speculative interprtations of it. It should not be practised by those whose faith might be troubled by it, nor whould it be used to build a structure of thought which went beyond what was given in the Quran and Hadith. [1]

The frantic development of Asharism also meant that the jurists of all the major Schools of Jurisprudence (Madhhabs) came to accept ‘ilm-al-kalam as providing a basis of faith on which their fiqh (jurisprudence) could rest. Ashari kalam was the outer shell that protected the stature, integrity and authenticity of all sacred knowledge, and through the practioners of such knowledge, down to the ordinary masses who imitate the Imams of the Muslim community.

Without doubt, the Prophetic dream that appeared to Imam Al-Ashari has had such a vast impact on the Islamic world that later scholars like Imam Ibn Hajar Haytami eventually came to define the entirety of Ahl al-Sunna waal-Jemaa as,

"…those who follow Abul Hasan Ashari and Abu Mansur Maturidi, the Two Imams of Ahl al-Sunna."

---

Notes:
1. Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, pg 167-168

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