The
Ashʿari theology (
Arabic الأشاعرة
al-asha`irah) is a
school of early
Muslim speculative theology
founded by the theologian
Abu
al-Hasan al-Ash'ari (d. 324 AH / 936 AD). The disciples of the
school are known as
Ash'arites, and the school is
also referred to as
Ash'arite school.
It was instrumental in drastically changing the direction of
Islamic theology, separating its
development radically from that of
theology
in the
Christian world.
Overview
In contrast to the
Mutazilite school of
Islamic theology, the Asharite view
was that comprehension of unique nature and characteristics of
God were beyond human capability. And that,
while man had
free will, he had no power
to create anything. It was a
taqlid
("faith" or "imitation") based view which did not assume that human
reason could discern
morality. This doctrine is now known as
occasionalism. However, a critical spirit of
inquiry was far from absent in the Asharite
school. Rather, what they lacked, was a trust in reason itself,
separate from a
moral code, to decide
what
experiments or what
knowledge to pursue.
Contrary to popular opinion, the Asharites (or "traditionalists")
were not completely traditionalist and anti-
rationalist, nor were the Mutazilites (or
"rationalists") completely rationalist and anti-traditionalist, as
the Asharites did depend on
rationality
and the Mutazilites did depend on tradition. Their goals were the
same, to affirm the transcendence and unity of God, but their
doctrines were different, with the Asharites supporting an Islamic
occasionalist doctrine and the Mutazilites supporting an
Islamic metaphysics influenced by
Aristotelianism and
Neoplatonism. For Asharites,
taqlid
only applied to the Islamic tradition and not to any other, whereas
for Mutazilites,
taqlid applied equally to both the
Islamic and Aristotelian-Neoplatonic traditions. In his
introduction to
Al-Ghazālī’s
The
Decisive Criterion of Distinction Between Unbelief and Masked
Infidelity, Sherman Jackson writes:
Promoting figures
Al-Ash'ari
Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari was
noted for his teachings on
atomism, among
the earliest
Islamic
philosophies, and for al-Ash'ari this was the basis for
propagating a
deterministic view that
Allah created every moment in
time and every particle of
matter. Thus
cause and
effect was an
illusion. He nonetheless
believed in
free will, elaborating the
thoughts of
Dirar ibn Amr' and
Abu Hanifa into a "dual agent" or
"acquisition" (
iktisab) account of
free will.
While al-Ash'ari was opposed to the views of the
Mu'tazili school for its over-emphasis on reason,
he was also opposed to the views of certain orthodox schools such
as the
Zahiri (literalist), Mujassimite
(
anthropomorphist) and Muhaddithin
(
traditionalist) schools for their
over-emphasis on
taqlid (imitation) in his
Istihsan al‑Khaud:
Al-Ghazali
Despite being named after Ash'ari, the most influential work of
this school's thought was
The Incoherence of the
Philosophers, by the Persian polymath
al-Ghazali (d. 1111). He was a pioneer of the
methods of
doubt and
skepticism, and he changed the course of
early Islamic philosophy, shifting
it away from an
Islamic
metaphysics influenced by
ancient
Greek and
Hellenistic
philosophy, and towards an
Islamic philosophy based on
cause-and-effect that were determined by
God or intermediate
angels, a
theory now known as
occasionalism.
He is famous for defending the theory of
occasionalism using
logic. Al-Ghazali famously
claimed that when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton
is burned directly by God rather than by the fire, a claim which he
defended using logic. He argued that because God is usually seen as
rational, rather than arbitrary, his behaviour in normally causing
events in the same sequence (ie, what appears to us to be efficient
causation) can be understood as a natural outworking of that
principle of reason, which we then describe as the
laws of nature. Properly speaking, however,
these are not laws of nature but God's habits, which he
could change anytime.
Al-Ghazali nevertheless expresses support for a
scientific methodology based on
demonstration and mathematics,
while discussing
astronomy. After describing the
scientific facts of the
solar eclipse resulting from the
Moon coming between the
Sun
and
Earth and the
lunar eclipse from the Earth coming between
the Sun and Moon, he writes:
Ibn Rushd (Averroes), a philosopher,
famously responded that "to say that philosophers are incoherent is
itself to make an incoherent statement." Ibn Rushd's book,
The Incoherence
of the Incoherence, attempted to refute Al-Ghazali's
views. Though the work was not well received in the Muslim
community,
Averroism went on to have a
profound influence in European thought.
Al-Ghazali also wrote
The Revival of the Religious Sciences in
Islam, a cornerstone of the Ashari school's thinking. It
combined
theology,
skepticism,
mysticism,
Islam and other conceptions, discussed in
depth in the article on
Islamic
philosophy.
Other figures
- Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d.
1039) was
an Iraqi
Arab polymath who was a pioneer of the scientific method, modern optics, experimental
physics, experimental
psychology, psychophysics,
phenomenology, scientific skepticism, and visual perception. He was also a
critic of Aristotelian physics,
Ptolemaic astronomy and the
emission theory. His
Book of Optics is considered
one of the most influential books in the history of physics.
- Al-Biruni (d.
1048) was a Persian polymath who was
a pioneer of anthropology, geodesy, Indology, experimental astronomy, and experimental mechanics. He was also a critic of Aristotelian
physics, the Aristotelian
theory of gravity and Ptolemaic astronomy.
- Fakhr al-Din Razi (d. 1209)
was a Persian mathematician,
physicist, physician, philosopher, and a master of
kalam. He wrote an encyclopedia of science,
which was influential, and a later referent for such modern efforts
as the Islamization of
knowledge, which have similar intention. He was also a critic
of Aristotelian logic and a
pioneer of inductive logic.
- Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) was a North Africa Arab Muslim polymath, historian, pedagogue and
philosopher who was the pioneer of demography, cultural
history, historiography, the philosophy of history, sociology, and the social sciences in general. His Muqadimmah is still referenced today in
these fields.
Other works of
universal history
from
al-Tabari,
al-Masudi,
Ibn
al-Athir, and Ibn Khaldun himself, were quite influential in
what we now call
archaeology and
ethnology. They worked in a relatively
modern style that historians of the present would recognize.
Influence and modern assessment
The influence of the Asharites is still hotly debated today. It was
commonly believed that the Asharites put an end to philosophy as
such in the Muslim world, with the death of
Averroes at the end of the 12th century.
While
philosophy did indeed decline in the western Islamic world
(Al-Andalus
and the Maghreb), recent
research has shown that philosophy continued long after in the
eastern Islamic world (Persia and
India), where the Avicennian, Illuminationist and Sufi schools predominated, until Islamic philosophy reached its zenith
with Mulla Sadra's existentialist school of transcendent theosophy in the 17th
century.
The 12th to 14th centuries marked the peak of innovation in Muslim
civilization, and this continued through to the 16th century.
During this period many remarkable achievements in science,
engineering and social organization were made, while the
ulema began to generate a fiqh based on taqlid
("imitation based on authority") rather than on the old ijtihad.
Eventually, however, modern historians think that lack of
improvements in basic processes and confusion with theology and law
degraded methods. The rigorous means by which the Asharites had
reached their conclusions were largely forgotten by Muslims before
the
Renaissance, due in large part to
the success of their effort to subordinate inquiry to a prior
ethics - and assume ignorance was the norm for humankind.
Modern commentators blame or laud Asharites for curtailing much of
the Islamic world's innovation in sciences and technology, then
leading the world. This innovation was not in general revived in
the West until the Renaissance, and emergence of
scientific method - which was based on
traditional Islamic methods of
ijtihad and
isnad (backing or
scientific citation). The Asharites did
not reject these, amongst the
ulema or
learned, but they stifled these in the
mosque
and discouraged their application by the lay public.
The Asharites may have succeeded in laying the groundwork for a
stable empire, and for subordinating
philosophy as a process to fixed notions of
ethics derived directly from
Islam - perhaps this even improved the
quality of life of average citizens. But it
seems the historical impact was to yield the initiative of Western
civilization to Christians in Europe.
Others, however, argue that the Asharites not only did not reject
scientific methods, but indeed promoted them.
Ziauddin Sardar points out that some of the
greatest
Muslim
scientists, such as
Ibn
al-Haytham and
Abū Rayhān
al-Bīrūnī who were pioneers of
scientific method, were themselves
followers of the orthodox Ash'ari school of Islamic theology. Like
other Asharites who believed that faith or
taqlid should
only apply to Islam and not to any ancient
Hellenistic authorities, Ibn
al-Haytham's view that
taqlid should only apply to
prophets of Islam and not to any
other authorities formed the basis for much of his
scientific skepticism and criticism
against
Ptolemy and other ancient
authorities in his
Doubts Concerning Ptolemy and
Book of Optics.
See also
References
- Watt, Montgomery. Free-Will and Predestination in Early Islam.
Luzac & Co.: London 1948.
- M. Abdul Hye, Ph.D, Ash’arism, Philosophia Islamica.
- H. Salih, M. Al-Amri, M. El Gomati (2005), " The Miracle of Light", A World of Science
3 (3), UNESCO
External links
- Hamad as-Sinnan, Fawzi al-'Anjari with Approvals from Dr
al-Buti and Habib Ali al-Jifri Kitab Ahl as-Sunnah al-Asha'irah
[26892]
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search