Part of a series on
Islam
Allah3.svg
Beliefs
Practices
History
Culture and society
Related topics

ʿIlm al-Kalām (Arabic: عِلْم الكَلام, literally "science of discourse"),[1] usually foreshortened to Kalām and sometimes called "Islamic scholastic theology" or "speculative theology", is the philosophical study of Islamic doctrine ('aqa'id).[2] It was born out of the need to establish and defend the tenets of the Islamic faith against the philosophical doubters.[3][4] However, this picture has been increasingly questioned by scholarship that attempts to show that kalām was in fact a demonstrative rather than a dialectical science and was always intellectually creative.[5]

The Arabic term Kalām means "speech, word, utterance" among other things. There are many possible interpretations as to why this discipline was originally called so; one is that one of the widest controversies in this discipline, in the second and third centuries of Hijra, has been about whether the "Word of God" (Kalām Allāh), as revealed in the Quran, is an eternal attribute of God and therefore not created, or whether it is created words in the sense of ink and sounds.[3][6] A scholar of Kalām is referred to as a mutakallim (plural: mutakallimūn), and it is a role distinguished from those of Islamic philosophers, jurists, and scientists.[7]

Origins

As early as in the times of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258 CE), the discipline of Kalām arose in an "attempt to grapple" with several "complex problems" early in the history of Islam, according to historian Majid Fakhry.[8] One was how to rebut arguments "leveled at Islam by pagans, Christians and Jews".[8] Another was how to deal with (what some saw as the conflict between) the predestination of sinners to hell on the one hand and "divine justice" on the other (some asserting that to be punished for what is beyond someone's control is unjust). Also Kalam sought to make "a systematic attempt to bring the conflict in data of revelation (in the Quran and the Traditions) into some internal harmony".[8]

Ahl al-Kalām

In early Islam, Ahl al-Kalām essentially referred to the Mu'tazilites, in addition to other smaller schools. Historian Daniel W. Brown describes Ahl al-Kalām as one of three main groups engaged in polemical disputes over sources of authority in Islamic law during the second century of Islam -- Ahl ar-Ra'y and Ahl al-Hadith being the other two. Ahl al-Kalām agreed with Ahl al-Hadith that the example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad was authoritative, but it did not believe it to be divine revelation, a status that only the Quran had (in its view).[9] It also rejected the authority of the hadith on the grounds that its corpus was "filled with contradictory, blasphemous, and absurd" reports, and that in jurisprudence, even the smallest doubt about a source was too much.[10] Thus, they believed, the true legacy of Muhammad was to be found elsewhere, i.e. in the sunnah, which is separate from the hadith. Ahl al-Hadith prevailed over the Ahl al-Kalām (and Muslims, or at least mainstream Muslims, now accept the authority of the hadith), so that most of what is known about their arguments comes from the writings of their opponents, such as Imam al-Shafi'i.[10] Brown also describes the Muʿtazila as "the later ahl al-Kalām", suggesting the ahl al-Kalām were forerunners of the Muʿtazilites.[11]

As an Islamic discipline

Part of a series on
Aqidah
Silhouette of a mosque
Five Pillars of Islam
Sunni
Six articles of belief

Sunni theological traditions

Shi'a
Theology of Twelvers4

Ancillaries of the Faith

Seven pillars of Ismailism5

Other Shia concepts of Aqidah

Other variants
Including:
1Salafis (Ahl-i Hadith & Wahhabis)
2Al-Ahbash & Barelvis 3Deobandis & Millî Görüş
4Alawites, Qizilbash & Bektashism; 6Jahmīyya
5Sevener-Qarmatians, Assassins & Druzes
7Ajardi, Azariqa, Bayhasiyya, Najdat & Sūfrī 8Wahbiyyah, Nukkari & Azzabas
9Mevlevis, Süleymancıs & various Ṭarīqah
10Bahshamiyya, Bishriyya & Ikhshîdiyya
11Bektashis & Qalandaris
 Islam portal

Although seeking knowledge in Islam is considered a religious obligation, the study of kalam is considered by Muslim scholars to fall beyond the category of necessity and is usually the preserve of qualified scholars, eliciting limited interest from the masses or common people.[12]

The early Muslim scholar al-Shafi‘i held that there should be a certain number of men trained in kalam to defend and purify the faith, but that it would be a great evil if their arguments should become known to the mass of the people.[13]

Similarly, the Islamic scholar al-Ghazali held the view that the science of kalam is not a personal duty on Muslims but a collective duty. Like al-Shafi‘i, he discouraged the masses from studying it.[12]

Despite the dominance of kalam as an intellectual tradition within Islam, some scholars were critical of its use. For example, the Hanbali Sufi, Khwaja Abdullah Ansari wrote a treatise entitled Dhamm al-Kalam where he criticized the use of kalam.[14]

Major kalam schools

Sa'id Foudah, a contemporary Ash'ari scholar of kalam (Islamic systematic theology).
Sa'id Foudah, a contemporary Ash'ari scholar of kalam (Islamic systematic theology).

Muʿtazili

Sunni

Shiʿi

Ibadi

See also

References

  1. ^ Abdel-Haleem, M. A. S. (2008). "Part I: Historical perspectives - Qur'an and hadith". In Winter, Timothy (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 19–32. doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521780582.002. ISBN 9781139001816.
  2. ^ Mutahhari, Murtada; Qara'i, 'Ali Quli (translator). "An Introduction to 'Ilm al-Kalam". muslimphilosophy. Retrieved 29 March 2018. ((cite web)): |first2= has generic name (help)
  3. ^ a b  • Treiger, Alexander (2016) [2014]. "Part I: Islamic Theologies during the Formative and the Early Middle period - Origins of Kalām". In Schmidtke, Sabine (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 27–43. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199696703.013.001. ISBN 9780199696703. LCCN 2016935488.
     • Abrahamov, Binyamin (2016) [2014]. "Part I: Islamic Theologies during the Formative and the Early Middle period - Scripturalist and Traditionalist Theology". In Schmidtke, Sabine (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 264–279. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199696703.013.025. ISBN 9780199696703. LCCN 2016935488.
  4. ^ Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Linda Gale Jones, Handbook to Life in the Medieval World, p. 391. ISBN 1438109075
  5. ^ Shihadeh, Ayman; Thiele, Jan (2020-05-06). Philosophical Theology in Islam: Later Ashʿarism East and West. Brill. p. 299. doi:10.1163/9789004426610. ISBN 978-90-04-42661-0. S2CID 216289385.
  6. ^ Gardet, Louis (1978). "Kalām". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E. J.; Heinrichs, W. P.; Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch.; Dumont, C.; Paterson, M. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Vol. 4. Leiden: Brill Publishers. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0421. ISBN 978-90-04-16121-4.
  7. ^ Clinton Bennett, The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies, p. 119. ISBN 1441127887.
  8. ^ a b c Fakhry, Majid (1983). A History of Islamic Philosophy (second ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. xvii–xviii.
  9. ^ Brown, Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought, 1996: p.51
  10. ^ a b Brown, Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought, 1996: p.13-5
  11. ^ Brown, Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought, 1996: p.15
  12. ^ a b Bennett, Clinton (2012). The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 119. ISBN 978-1441127884.
  13. ^ Black Macdonald, Duncan (2008). Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Theory, Chapter=III. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. p. 187. ISBN 978-1584778585.
  14. ^ Jeffry R. Halverson, Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam, 2010: p 37. ISBN 0230106587

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

Islam topics
Islamic philosophy
Islamic theology
Categories