Post by Ibrahimi on Apr 3, 2015 16:44:19 GMT -5
As far as we know, mutazilite is an exonym, created by adversaries to designate muslims who use a rationalist methodology in interpreting islam through the quran only, or through the quran and only the hadiths that pass the test of rationalist scrutiny.
Both sunni's and shia's now and then try to claim 'mutazilism' for themselves, while others reject them vehemently, while others again accuse the other for being one in secret or at least sympathizing with them or copying their methodology partly or in whole.
According to sunni and shia sources, mutazilites used to refer to themselves as 'ahl al adl wa t-tawheed'; people of justice and monotheism.
There is though, something very peculiar going on (there is a lot) in this subject.
Most books of the 'mutazilites' have been the victim of biblioclasms, that is book-burning, which caused to the inconvenient fact that we only know little of them by first hand. The books that did survive are very likely selected to do so, because they only belong to the late mutazilites like Qadi Abduljabbar and Zamakhshari, who were subject to heavy influence of the shafiite and hanafite branch of sunnism respectively. Other books by the hands of mutazilites, do not dive into the subject of religion, like Kitab al Hayawan of al Jahiz, again probably because of selectivism during censorship.
So, when contemporary scholars try to reconstruct 'mutazilism', they have to research heavily biased sunni scriptures in which myth is mixed up with probabilities of different degrees.
A very, very, very interesting fact, is that a person called Ibrahim al Nazzam is called the greatest mutazilite who ever existed, of which is said only accepted the quran as the sole source of religion in islam, and who vehemently rejected hadith and sunna. No coincidence; no first-hand proof of his existence through books or other material has survived. Very strange. The greatest mutazilite ever, the greatest of the people who were the architects of islams Golden Era, but not a single first-hand trace.
It shows that 'mutazilites' were united in their preference for rationalism, and that the most important and influential were strict quran-only muslims. Even the most 'traditionalized' mutazilites were often accused of being heretics rejecting hadith in total.
It is likely that the predecessors of the mutazilites were what sunni's call 'khawarij', an exonym for 'shurraat' ('those who buy the afterlife with their lives', after the quranic verse 4:74).
While information about the 'khawarij' is very biased, conflicting and confusing, it is very likely they too were showing a tendency to accept only the quran as the sole source of religion in islam. It is very probable these 'khawarij' were actually the legitimate inheritors of genuine islam as how it was proclaimed by the quran.
According to mainstream islamic historical narrative (which is biased and probably in many cases fictituous), they were put aside by powerful enemies; the qurayshite oligarchs who would later turn into the traditionalists (umbrella term), and the 'Alawite' hereditarian priest-monarchs. While the qurayshites obviously had the economic and military structure which stayed intact after the death of the prophet, the 'Alawites' had a little of that, but more people of influence who were close to the prophet through Ali.
The third group, often identified as 'the common folk', perhaps the bulk of muslims, were left in the middle and would soon be pascified by excommunication and harsh persecution. While the so-called 'khawarij' called for some form of egalitarian democracy (every muslim can be caliph, be it an Abessynian slave), the qurayshites would establish an elitarian democracy, which would turn into a hereditary absolute monarchy under Muawiyyah after Ali.
The Alawites, by which I mean 'followers of Ali' (I conciously do not use the term shi'ites, cause shiite doctrine didnt exist yet), would strive to establish an absolute priest-monarchy, much like the Papal state in catholicism.
After the 'khawarij' were neutralized, the quran-alone methodology would not gain prominence again until the coming of the mutazilites. Under the umbrella of the mutazilites, the quran-only methodology has had to been dominant at some point (think about Ibrahim al Nazzam and many instances in traditionalist sources which tell us about people who 'completely reject the sunna'), but soon mutazilites would change the quest for 'truth' for political convenience and pragmatism.
First they allied themselves with the Alawites, in hope of neutralizing sunni influence over the Abbasid state, then they established inquisitorial courts wherein they persecuted sunni's for heresy which caused resentment among the common folk who were very receptive of traditions cause of their lack of intellectualism, superstition and ignorance, and at last they once again tried to gain political power by allying with the shia Buwayhids.
This meant the definitive end of their political aspirations, because the Seljuks which were pragmatists, would soon destroy the Buwayhids and slowly incline to sunnism. While their first Sultan Tughrul Shah was positively inclined towards mutazilites and even revived and supported the spread of its methodology, his grandchild Malikshah would burn the last mutazilite library in Rey (Iran) and would strictly enforce traditionalism (umbrella term for all ahlu l-hadith groups), by which the bulk of their intellectual treasure was forever destroyed.
With the death of Qadi Abduljabbar, the last political influential mutazilite disappeared, and with the invasion of the Mongols and the destruction of the Bayt al Hikmah 250 years later, the last nail in the coffin of mutazilite intellectual dominance was pinned. Although the Bayt al Hikmah was a mere shadow of what it was when it was established in 830 by Harun al Rashid, and when it flourished, not surprisingly, under the mutazilite caliphs al Ma'mun who turned it into an institution, and al Wathiq.
Its decline started under the traditionalized caliph al Mutawakkil, who installed 'traditionalism' (sunnism wasnt chrystallized yet) as the state religion.
Mutazilites were intellectual elitists, which meant that their creed/methodology was only spread widely amongst intellectuals and libraries, but not the people. So biblioclasm (burning of books), was a fatal blow to their role in history.
Also, intellectualism hardly lends itself to be used by political actors. Intellectualism is based on the premise of criticism, and that is not what men of power want. Traditionalism was rapidly seen as a more useful tool in controlling the masses, and it would soon ally itself with political elites wherever they existed.
The so-called heralded hero of sunni phisolophical thought who is often seen as the actor who eliminated rationalist philosophy, al Ghazzali, was merely confronted with a declining movement and disappearing discourse due to social and political factors he could never understand.
Mutazilite principles and methods did survive partially in disguise through Ash'arism, Maturidism and Jafari shi'ism, who adopted parts of it and claimed it their own, while ironically calling them heretics. Even judaism adopted large parts of mutazilite methodology, out of which, not surprisingly, a sola-scriptura judaism called 'Karaism' came into being.
One can assert, although it is far fetched, that even the advent of christian protestantism was due to neo-mutazilite influence of Ibn Rushd on political and philosophical thought
It is far fetched, but not a strange hypothesis to historians and researchers of philosophy.
(By Nazzam: Reply #2, free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9605045.0)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf-6OJg7krM
Interesting points. Aisha Musa discussed all this in her book "hadith as a scripture". She has an excellent lecture in youtube where she shows Al Shafi's arguments against whome he called "ahlul Kalam" is identical to today's Sunni versus Quranist debate:
(By Bigmo: Reply #4, free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9605045.0)
Right. Notice how she said when Al Shafi used the obey God and obey the messenger, the Ahlul kalam (as Shafi referred to them) answered that we obey the messenger by obeying the Quran. Only a Quranist will give such an answer. Also Shafi repeatedly says we can not only follow the Quran because of s and so and so etc. Only a Quranist will make such claim, that we are to only follow the Quran.
What Aisha Musa did was she looked at Shafi's arguments and counter argumnets against his opponents and noticed they are identical to the Sunni-Quranist debate she came across in the internet.
But one topic she did not address that was a major (and perhaps the most important) was abrogation and contradiction. Shafi was asked point blank by the Quranist of his time what happens if a hadith contradicts the Quran. This issue is the issue that Sunnis and Shias avoid to talk about in public. Its is in the end the most important issue.
Abrogation is applicable to both sources of Islamic law: the Qur'ān and the Prophetic Sunna. A Qur'ānic verse may abrogate another Qur'ānic verse, and a Prophetic Sunna may likewise abrogate another Prophetic Sunna. The possibility of abrogation between these two sources, though, was a more contentious issue precipitated by the absence within a source of the appropriate abrogating (nāsikh) or abrogated (mansūkh) material necessary to bring concordance between it and the Fiqh.[11]
In Shāfi'ī's source theory the possibility of abrogation between the Sunna and the Qur'ān was vehemently denied:
Arguing determinedly that any verbal discrepancies between the Qur'ān and the reported sayings or reports of the practices of Muhammed- the Sunna of the Prophet- were merely illusory and could always be removed on the basis of a satisfactory understanding of the mechanism of revelation and the function of the prophet-figure, Shāfi'ī set his face decidedly against any acceptance of the idea then current that in all such cases the Qur'ān had abrogated the Sunna, or the Sunna the Qur'ān.[12][13]
This stance was a reaction to larger developments within Islamic jurisprudence, particularly the reformulation of the Fiqh away from early foreign or regional influences[14] and toward more eminently Islamic bases such as the Qur'ān. This assertion of Qur'ānic primacy was accompanied by calls for an abandonment of the Sunna. Shāfi'ī's insistence upon the impossibility of contradiction between Sunna and Qur'ān can thus be seen as one component in this larger effort of rescuing the Sunna:
He campaigned tirelessly to justify use of the Sunna as the second primary source alongside the Kur'ān against those who would accord the hadīth no role in the derivation of the sharī'a on the argument that the degree of conflict in the hadīth, the inadequacies of the guarantee against corruption, fraud or error afforded by the isnāds rendered the hadīth unfit for the sacred role of declaring the divine intent underlying the Kur'ān's declarations.[15]
Asked point-blank whether the Sunna could ever be abrogated by the Qur'ān, Shāfi'ī had bluntly replied [in the Risāla] that that could never happen. Were the Sunna to be abrogated by the Qur'ān, the Prophet would immediately introduce a second sunna to indicate that his first sunna had been abrogated by his second sunna- in order to demonstrate that a thing can be abrogated only by its like (mithlihi) [ cf. Q.2:106].[16]
Later scholars, writing when the juridicial legitimacy of the Sunna could be taken for granted (thanks largely to Shāfi'ī's efforts!), were less inclined to adopt his inflexible stance. To their minds the reality of this sort of inter-source abrogation was proven by several "indisputable" instances: the changing of the qibla towards Mecca and away from Jerusalem, and the introduction of the penalty of stoning for adultery. The following passage from Qurtubī (al-Jāmi' li ahkām al-Qur'ān) is representative in this regard:
...the Qur'ān may be naskhed by the Qur'ān and the Sunna by the Sunna. The Qur'ān may, in addition, be naskhed by the Sunna, as has occurred in the case of Q.2:180, which was replaced by the Sunna ruling: no wasiya [i.e. extra bequest] in favor of an heir. Mālik admitted this principle, but Shāfi'ī denied it, although the fuqahā all admit, in the instance of the penalty for adultery, that the flogging element of Q.24:2 has been allowed to lapse in the case of those offenders who are condemned to death by stoning. There is no explanation for the abandonment of the flogging element other than that the penalty all now acknowledge is based on the Sunna, i.e. the practice of the Prophet.
In the instance of the change of qibla, a Sunna ruling was set aside in favor of a Qur'ān ruling- there is no reference in the Qur'ān to the Jerusalem direction of prayer.[16]
Al-Ghazālī employs the same three examples in his Mustasfā.[16]
One outcome of these disputations was the proposal of a mode of naskh known as naskh al-tilāwa dūna al-hukm ("abrogation of the wording but not ruling") in order to provide a Qur'ānic nāsikh, or abrogator, for Q.24:2 (see below).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naskh_(tafsir)
They are talking about the challenge Shafi faced from the Mutaziltes and Ahlul Kalam. Both were Quranist and refused abrogation of any kind of the Quran and both did not accept hadith as a religious binding source. Their arguments are the same arguments you find in this forum.
(By Bigmo: reply #7, free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9605045.0)
Both sunni's and shia's now and then try to claim 'mutazilism' for themselves, while others reject them vehemently, while others again accuse the other for being one in secret or at least sympathizing with them or copying their methodology partly or in whole.
According to sunni and shia sources, mutazilites used to refer to themselves as 'ahl al adl wa t-tawheed'; people of justice and monotheism.
There is though, something very peculiar going on (there is a lot) in this subject.
Most books of the 'mutazilites' have been the victim of biblioclasms, that is book-burning, which caused to the inconvenient fact that we only know little of them by first hand. The books that did survive are very likely selected to do so, because they only belong to the late mutazilites like Qadi Abduljabbar and Zamakhshari, who were subject to heavy influence of the shafiite and hanafite branch of sunnism respectively. Other books by the hands of mutazilites, do not dive into the subject of religion, like Kitab al Hayawan of al Jahiz, again probably because of selectivism during censorship.
So, when contemporary scholars try to reconstruct 'mutazilism', they have to research heavily biased sunni scriptures in which myth is mixed up with probabilities of different degrees.
A very, very, very interesting fact, is that a person called Ibrahim al Nazzam is called the greatest mutazilite who ever existed, of which is said only accepted the quran as the sole source of religion in islam, and who vehemently rejected hadith and sunna. No coincidence; no first-hand proof of his existence through books or other material has survived. Very strange. The greatest mutazilite ever, the greatest of the people who were the architects of islams Golden Era, but not a single first-hand trace.
It shows that 'mutazilites' were united in their preference for rationalism, and that the most important and influential were strict quran-only muslims. Even the most 'traditionalized' mutazilites were often accused of being heretics rejecting hadith in total.
It is likely that the predecessors of the mutazilites were what sunni's call 'khawarij', an exonym for 'shurraat' ('those who buy the afterlife with their lives', after the quranic verse 4:74).
While information about the 'khawarij' is very biased, conflicting and confusing, it is very likely they too were showing a tendency to accept only the quran as the sole source of religion in islam. It is very probable these 'khawarij' were actually the legitimate inheritors of genuine islam as how it was proclaimed by the quran.
According to mainstream islamic historical narrative (which is biased and probably in many cases fictituous), they were put aside by powerful enemies; the qurayshite oligarchs who would later turn into the traditionalists (umbrella term), and the 'Alawite' hereditarian priest-monarchs. While the qurayshites obviously had the economic and military structure which stayed intact after the death of the prophet, the 'Alawites' had a little of that, but more people of influence who were close to the prophet through Ali.
The third group, often identified as 'the common folk', perhaps the bulk of muslims, were left in the middle and would soon be pascified by excommunication and harsh persecution. While the so-called 'khawarij' called for some form of egalitarian democracy (every muslim can be caliph, be it an Abessynian slave), the qurayshites would establish an elitarian democracy, which would turn into a hereditary absolute monarchy under Muawiyyah after Ali.
The Alawites, by which I mean 'followers of Ali' (I conciously do not use the term shi'ites, cause shiite doctrine didnt exist yet), would strive to establish an absolute priest-monarchy, much like the Papal state in catholicism.
After the 'khawarij' were neutralized, the quran-alone methodology would not gain prominence again until the coming of the mutazilites. Under the umbrella of the mutazilites, the quran-only methodology has had to been dominant at some point (think about Ibrahim al Nazzam and many instances in traditionalist sources which tell us about people who 'completely reject the sunna'), but soon mutazilites would change the quest for 'truth' for political convenience and pragmatism.
First they allied themselves with the Alawites, in hope of neutralizing sunni influence over the Abbasid state, then they established inquisitorial courts wherein they persecuted sunni's for heresy which caused resentment among the common folk who were very receptive of traditions cause of their lack of intellectualism, superstition and ignorance, and at last they once again tried to gain political power by allying with the shia Buwayhids.
This meant the definitive end of their political aspirations, because the Seljuks which were pragmatists, would soon destroy the Buwayhids and slowly incline to sunnism. While their first Sultan Tughrul Shah was positively inclined towards mutazilites and even revived and supported the spread of its methodology, his grandchild Malikshah would burn the last mutazilite library in Rey (Iran) and would strictly enforce traditionalism (umbrella term for all ahlu l-hadith groups), by which the bulk of their intellectual treasure was forever destroyed.
With the death of Qadi Abduljabbar, the last political influential mutazilite disappeared, and with the invasion of the Mongols and the destruction of the Bayt al Hikmah 250 years later, the last nail in the coffin of mutazilite intellectual dominance was pinned. Although the Bayt al Hikmah was a mere shadow of what it was when it was established in 830 by Harun al Rashid, and when it flourished, not surprisingly, under the mutazilite caliphs al Ma'mun who turned it into an institution, and al Wathiq.
Its decline started under the traditionalized caliph al Mutawakkil, who installed 'traditionalism' (sunnism wasnt chrystallized yet) as the state religion.
Mutazilites were intellectual elitists, which meant that their creed/methodology was only spread widely amongst intellectuals and libraries, but not the people. So biblioclasm (burning of books), was a fatal blow to their role in history.
Also, intellectualism hardly lends itself to be used by political actors. Intellectualism is based on the premise of criticism, and that is not what men of power want. Traditionalism was rapidly seen as a more useful tool in controlling the masses, and it would soon ally itself with political elites wherever they existed.
The so-called heralded hero of sunni phisolophical thought who is often seen as the actor who eliminated rationalist philosophy, al Ghazzali, was merely confronted with a declining movement and disappearing discourse due to social and political factors he could never understand.
Mutazilite principles and methods did survive partially in disguise through Ash'arism, Maturidism and Jafari shi'ism, who adopted parts of it and claimed it their own, while ironically calling them heretics. Even judaism adopted large parts of mutazilite methodology, out of which, not surprisingly, a sola-scriptura judaism called 'Karaism' came into being.
One can assert, although it is far fetched, that even the advent of christian protestantism was due to neo-mutazilite influence of Ibn Rushd on political and philosophical thought
It is far fetched, but not a strange hypothesis to historians and researchers of philosophy.(By Nazzam: Reply #2, free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9605045.0)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf-6OJg7krM
Interesting points. Aisha Musa discussed all this in her book "hadith as a scripture". She has an excellent lecture in youtube where she shows Al Shafi's arguments against whome he called "ahlul Kalam" is identical to today's Sunni versus Quranist debate:
(By Bigmo: Reply #4, free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9605045.0)
Right. Notice how she said when Al Shafi used the obey God and obey the messenger, the Ahlul kalam (as Shafi referred to them) answered that we obey the messenger by obeying the Quran. Only a Quranist will give such an answer. Also Shafi repeatedly says we can not only follow the Quran because of s and so and so etc. Only a Quranist will make such claim, that we are to only follow the Quran.
What Aisha Musa did was she looked at Shafi's arguments and counter argumnets against his opponents and noticed they are identical to the Sunni-Quranist debate she came across in the internet.
But one topic she did not address that was a major (and perhaps the most important) was abrogation and contradiction. Shafi was asked point blank by the Quranist of his time what happens if a hadith contradicts the Quran. This issue is the issue that Sunnis and Shias avoid to talk about in public. Its is in the end the most important issue.
Abrogation is applicable to both sources of Islamic law: the Qur'ān and the Prophetic Sunna. A Qur'ānic verse may abrogate another Qur'ānic verse, and a Prophetic Sunna may likewise abrogate another Prophetic Sunna. The possibility of abrogation between these two sources, though, was a more contentious issue precipitated by the absence within a source of the appropriate abrogating (nāsikh) or abrogated (mansūkh) material necessary to bring concordance between it and the Fiqh.[11]
In Shāfi'ī's source theory the possibility of abrogation between the Sunna and the Qur'ān was vehemently denied:
Arguing determinedly that any verbal discrepancies between the Qur'ān and the reported sayings or reports of the practices of Muhammed- the Sunna of the Prophet- were merely illusory and could always be removed on the basis of a satisfactory understanding of the mechanism of revelation and the function of the prophet-figure, Shāfi'ī set his face decidedly against any acceptance of the idea then current that in all such cases the Qur'ān had abrogated the Sunna, or the Sunna the Qur'ān.[12][13]
This stance was a reaction to larger developments within Islamic jurisprudence, particularly the reformulation of the Fiqh away from early foreign or regional influences[14] and toward more eminently Islamic bases such as the Qur'ān. This assertion of Qur'ānic primacy was accompanied by calls for an abandonment of the Sunna. Shāfi'ī's insistence upon the impossibility of contradiction between Sunna and Qur'ān can thus be seen as one component in this larger effort of rescuing the Sunna:
He campaigned tirelessly to justify use of the Sunna as the second primary source alongside the Kur'ān against those who would accord the hadīth no role in the derivation of the sharī'a on the argument that the degree of conflict in the hadīth, the inadequacies of the guarantee against corruption, fraud or error afforded by the isnāds rendered the hadīth unfit for the sacred role of declaring the divine intent underlying the Kur'ān's declarations.[15]
Asked point-blank whether the Sunna could ever be abrogated by the Qur'ān, Shāfi'ī had bluntly replied [in the Risāla] that that could never happen. Were the Sunna to be abrogated by the Qur'ān, the Prophet would immediately introduce a second sunna to indicate that his first sunna had been abrogated by his second sunna- in order to demonstrate that a thing can be abrogated only by its like (mithlihi) [ cf. Q.2:106].[16]
Later scholars, writing when the juridicial legitimacy of the Sunna could be taken for granted (thanks largely to Shāfi'ī's efforts!), were less inclined to adopt his inflexible stance. To their minds the reality of this sort of inter-source abrogation was proven by several "indisputable" instances: the changing of the qibla towards Mecca and away from Jerusalem, and the introduction of the penalty of stoning for adultery. The following passage from Qurtubī (al-Jāmi' li ahkām al-Qur'ān) is representative in this regard:
...the Qur'ān may be naskhed by the Qur'ān and the Sunna by the Sunna. The Qur'ān may, in addition, be naskhed by the Sunna, as has occurred in the case of Q.2:180, which was replaced by the Sunna ruling: no wasiya [i.e. extra bequest] in favor of an heir. Mālik admitted this principle, but Shāfi'ī denied it, although the fuqahā all admit, in the instance of the penalty for adultery, that the flogging element of Q.24:2 has been allowed to lapse in the case of those offenders who are condemned to death by stoning. There is no explanation for the abandonment of the flogging element other than that the penalty all now acknowledge is based on the Sunna, i.e. the practice of the Prophet.
In the instance of the change of qibla, a Sunna ruling was set aside in favor of a Qur'ān ruling- there is no reference in the Qur'ān to the Jerusalem direction of prayer.[16]
Al-Ghazālī employs the same three examples in his Mustasfā.[16]
One outcome of these disputations was the proposal of a mode of naskh known as naskh al-tilāwa dūna al-hukm ("abrogation of the wording but not ruling") in order to provide a Qur'ānic nāsikh, or abrogator, for Q.24:2 (see below).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naskh_(tafsir)
They are talking about the challenge Shafi faced from the Mutaziltes and Ahlul Kalam. Both were Quranist and refused abrogation of any kind of the Quran and both did not accept hadith as a religious binding source. Their arguments are the same arguments you find in this forum.
(By Bigmo: reply #7, free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9605045.0)