ILMU KALAM INTRO

• Classical Kalam


  Period from Quranic revelation to 18th century C.E., focus on 10th-13th centuries C.E.
• Kalam


  Literally means 'discourse', formal academic discipline called "Islamic doctrinal theology" and stood at the peak of the academic curriculum
• Theology does not have the same meaning as Kalam since theological issues were treated by Muslim civilization in a wide range of disciplines</b>
• Sufism


  Esoteric and ascetical traditions - issues of creation, ethics, providence, miracles, inspiration etc. Covered in Theology
• Kalam integrated mystical doctrines easily with doctrine of occasionalism
• Al-Ghazali


  Mystic theologian who integrated exoteric (outward; external) and esoteric (inward) sciences and breaking barriers between them to form coherent Islamic intellectuality
• Ibn 'Arabi


  Mystic and theologian responsible for proposing a detailed mystical theology that incorporated all the great topics of Kalam, philosophy, Law and Sufism into a brilliant and controversial synthesis
• Shari'ah (Law)


  Discussions on human accountability are theological and entire content of law as function to prepare society and individual to receive God's grace is theological in nature
• Falsafah (from Greek Philosophia)


  Incorporated theological concerns, contributed to Kalam and was also indebted to Kalam
• Limiting Kalam to its disciplinary boundaries by Muslim thinkers and Western treatment of the discipline itself has resulted in neglecting the richness of theological discussions outside the Kalam in the intellectual tradition's literature
• What is Islamic about Islamic Theology?

  • Can be traced back to the Prophet of Islam (pbuh) and his vision of the one God, sent as a 'mercy to the worlds'
  • Mapped a simple religious path - Millah Ibrahimiyyah hanifiyyah (rejection of idolatry, call to repentance and trust in the justice and mercy of God)
• A small group of scholars disagreed for the need of Kalam at all (Islam: simplicity, unity, direct human relationship with God)
• Monotheism (tawhid) is not as simple (e.g. the idea of many from the one). It is also the same problems faced by Christians and Jews
• Need for Kalam


  • 1. Formal discipline of argument and proof which could establish the proper sense of a scripture which could be open to many interpretations
  • 2. Need to defeat heresy and innovations
• Contentions in Kalam


  • God's abundant Names, in existence before the world; are His Names identical or distinct to His Essence?
  • Was the Quran created or uncreated?
  • Are human beings accountable when God is Omnipotent (All-Powerful) and All-Knowing?
  • Are good and evil intrinsic or are they subject to Divine volition/will?
  • Is faith (iman) enough for salvation? Does the Prophet Intercede for sinners?
  • What is meant that God be seen by the blessed in Paradise?
• Quranic Verses which generated tensions and questions
• Tanzih (affirming difference; transcendence)


  Characteristic of Kalam
• Tashbih (affirming resemblance; immanence)


  Characteristic of Sufis
• Symbiosis/synthesis of the two disciplines (Tanzih and Tashbih) with the goal of achieving unity
• The reason why 'aqidah is central to the thoughts of scholars such as al-Ghazali and Ibn al-'Arabi
• The Construction of Orthodoxy

  Culmination of Muslim Theology as a "White-hot moment of pure revelatory renewal at the hands of a Prophet who was a "discontinuity in person" with remarkable speed systematised itself as a: Systematic set of schools but not harmfully divided, divided into law, metaphysics and mysticism, and woven again in the eclectic theologies of al-Ghazali and Ibn 'Arabi
• In the process of contestation and institution building an orthodoxy came to be establiblished
• In Islam there are no mechanisms for imposing dogmatic conformity on a society
• Allowed and even legitimized differences in law (madhhabs), mysticism (turuq) and doctrine (Theological schools e.g. Ash'arism, Maturidism, Hanbalism)
• Despite numerous polemics there were only 2 state backed inquisitions; Mu'tazilite persecutions of Hanabilah (833 and 848 C.E) and in 16th century destruction of Iranian Sunnism under Safavids
• Other than the two episodes Islamic lands were religiously diverse
• Ijma' (consensus of believers)


  In contrast to ecclesial (related to the church) authority in Christianity
• True belief is the belief of the majority (jumhur); sects (firaq) were necessarily minorities
• Results: hardly any impositions of doctrine and practices on population (ta'dib al-'amma) no wars , Muslims go to same mosques
• Mainstream Sunnism


  Middle way, straight path (sirat al-mustaqim), moderate, wasat
• Al-Ghazali


  Thought it was necessary to chart "just mean in belief" (al-iqtisad fi al-i'tiqad) which lay between two form of ghuluww (extremism)
• Reason ('aql) and Revelation (naql)

  Reason as prior to the authority of revelation, supported a more abstract model of God
• Scripturalists


  Inclined anthropomorphists (mushabihah; mujassimah), knowledge of prophetic authority and eschatology known through revelation (sam'iyyat) and acknowledged to be unprovable by reason although not unreasonable in themselves
• Kalam remained always a discourse of divine transcendence and of logic, which justified claims made through revelation and mystical insight but never incorporated them into its epistemology
• Kalam flourished in the tradition of Ibn 'Arabi
• Rejection of Mu'tazilism, Hanbalism, Kharijism because of violent tendencies to promote themselves
• Falsafah


  Deliberate cultural borrowing known to history: 1. Islam - favoring monotheistic worldview and prophetic tales of their neighbors and rivals, 2. Translation of Greek texts into Arabic, 3. Engagement with modernity
• Falsafah: Islamic, Neoplatonism and Aristotelian strands - conversation and synthesis not "reason versus revelation"
• Ibn Sina/Avicenna's system of thought prospering now even though attacked by Al-Ghazali much earlier
• Claim that Avicenna borrowed from Kalam thinkers, later Kalam's attempt to complete Avicenna's integration of monotheism with his philosophy