Muʿtazilah

Muʿtazilah, in Islam, political or religious neutralists; by the 10th century ce the term had come to refer specifically to an Islamic school of speculative theology (kalām) that flourished in Basra and Baghdad (8th–10th century).

The name first appears in early Islamic history in the dispute over ʿAlī’s leadership of the Muslim community (ummah) after the murder of the third caliph, ʿUthmān (656). Those who would neither condemn nor sanction ʿAlī or his opponents but took a middle position were termed the Muʿtazilah.

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Islam: The Muʿtazilah

The theological school is traced back to Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ (699–749), a student of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, who, by stating that a grave sinner ( fāsiq) could be classed neither as believer nor unbeliever but was in an intermediate position (al-manzilah bayna manzilatayn), withdrew (iʿtazala, hence the name Muʿtazilah) from his teacher’s circle. (The same story is told of ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd [died 762].) Variously maligned as free thinkers and heretics, the Muʿtazilah, in the 8th century, were the first Muslims to use the categories and methods of Hellenistic philosophy to derive their three major and distinctive dogmatic points.

First, they stressed the absolute unity or oneness (tawḥīd) of God. From this it was logically concluded that the Qurʾān could not be technically considered the word of God (the orthodox view), as God has no separable parts, so the Qurʾān had to be created and was not coeternal with God. Under the Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmūn, this doctrine of the created Qurʾān was proclaimed (827) as the state dogma, and in 833 a miḥnah, or tribunal, was instituted to try those who disputed the doctrine (notably the theologian Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal); the Muʿtazilī position was finally abandoned by the caliphate under al-Mutawakkil about 849. The Muʿtazilah further stressed the justice (ʿadl) of God as their second principle. While the orthodox taught a certain determinism in which all actions, whether good or bad, are ultimately willed by God, the Muʿtazilah posited that God desires only the best for man, but through free will man chooses between good and evil and thus becomes ultimately responsible for his actions. So in the third doctrine, the promise and the threat (al-waʿd wa al-waʿīd), or paradise and hell, God’s justice becomes a matter of logical necessity: God must reward the good (as promised) and must punish the evil (as threatened).

Among the most important Muʿtazilī theologians were Abū al-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf (died c. 841) and al-Naẓẓām (died 846) in Basra and Bishr ibn al-Muʿtamir (died 825) in Baghdad. It was al-Ashʿarī (died 935 or 936), a student of the Muʿtazilī al-Jubbāʾī, who broke the force of the movement by refuting its teachings with the same Hellenistic, rational methods first introduced by the Muʿtazilah. Muʿtazilī beliefs were disavowed by the Sunni Muslims, but the Shiʿah accepted their premises.