MU'TAZILAH

(ArabicThose Who Withdraw, or Stand Apart) English Mutazilites in Islam, political or religious neutralists; by the 10th century the term came to refer specifically to an Islamic school of speculative theology that flourished in Basra and Baghdad (8th10th centuries AD). The name first appears in early Islamic history in the dispute over 'Ali's leadership of the Muslim community after the murder of the third caliph, 'Uthman (656). Those who would neither condemn nor sanction 'Ali or his opponents but took a middle position were termed the Mu'tazilah. The theological school is traced back to Wasil ibn 'Ata' (699749), a student of al-Hasan al-Basri, who by stating that a grave sinner ( fasiq) could be classed neither as believer nor unbeliever but was in an intermediate position (al-manzilah bayna manzilatayn), withdrew (i'tazala, hence the name Mu'tazilah) from his teacher's circle. (The same story is told of 'Amr ibn 'Ubayd .) Variously maligned as free thinkers and heretics, the Mu'tazilah, in the 8th century AD, 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 (tawhid) of God. From this it was logically concluded that the Qur'an could not be technically considered the word of God (the orthodox view), as God has no separable parts, and so had to be created and was not coeternal with God. Under the 'Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun, this doctrine of the created Qur'an was proclaimed (827) as the state dogma, and in 833, a mihnah or tribunal was instituted to try those who disputed the doctrine (notably the theologian Ahmad ibn Hanbal); the Mu'tazili position was finally abandoned by the caliphate under al-Mutawakkil c. 849. The Mu'tazilah further stressed the justice ('adl) of God as their second principle. While the orthodox were concerned with the awful will of God to which each individual must submit himself without question, the Mu'tazilah 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 threat and the promise (al-wa'd wa al-wa'id), 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 Mu'tazili theologians were Abu al-Hudhayl al-'Allaf (d. c. 841) and an-Nazzam (d. 846) in Basra and Bishr ibn al-Mu'tamir (d. 825) in Baghdad. It was al-Ash'ari (d. 935 or 936), a student of the Mu'tazili al-Jubba'i, who broke the force of the movement by refuting its teachings with the same Hellenistic, rational methods first introduced by the Mu'tazilah. Mu'tazili beliefs were disavowed by the Sunnite Muslims, but the Shi'ites accepted their premises.