The Sunni position on selected issues in Kalam : a comparison between the views of al-Ash`ari and al-Bazdawi

Abstract

The issue of the relationship between revelation and reason in Islamic thought emerged, to some extent, due to the influence of foreign thought and cultures, and as a result of the reaction to the internal development within the Muslim society itself, a feature that was earlier experienced in Judaism and Christianity. There emerged in Islamic thought two contradictory schools of thought, and no reconciliation seemed possible. On one hand, was the group of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal and his associates who opposed the use of reason to confirm the revelation. On the other hand, was the Mu'tazilism, whose adherents argued that the truth of Islam and firm religious belief could best be established and defended through the use of reasoning based on the revelation. In the light of this controversy between these two extreme groups, and in lieu of the nature of man, many declined to simply opt for one of these two extreme positions. At this point, two schools of thought emerged offering a middle path, which eventually became the representatives of Sunnism, namely the Ash'arism, which was associated with the Shafi'ite school of jurisprudence, and the Maturidism, which had geographically spread among the Hanafites. This comparative study is an attempt to explore the similarities and dissimilarities between Ash'arism and Maturidism, with special reference to the views of al-Ash'ari and al-Bazdawi. The study shows that these two schools agreed with one another on the fundamental principles of religious thought. However, there were some secondary and minor disagreements between al-Ash'ari, a Shafi'ite, and al-Bazdawi, a Hanafite, that were arguably triggered by their different juristic affiliation and preference between revelation and reason.