• ↑↓ to navigate
  • Enter to open
  • to select
  • Ctrl + Alt + Enter to open in panel
  • Esc to dismiss
⌘ '
keyboard shortcuts

Kalām

Ilm al-kalam or ilm al-lahut, often shortened to kalam, is the scholastic, speculative, or rational study of Islamic Theology (aqida). It can also be defined as the science that studies the fundamental doctrines of Islamic faith (usul al-din), proving their validity, or refuting doubts regarding them. kalām was born out of the need to establish and defend the tenets of Islam against the philosophical doubters. A scholar of kalam is referred to as a mutakallim (plural mutakallimun), a role distinguished from those of Islamic philosophers and jurists.

After its first beginnings in the late Umayyad period, the Kalām experienced its rise in the early Abbasid period, when the Caliph al-Mahdi commissioned Mutakallimūn to write books against the followers of Iranian religions, and the Barmakid vizier Yahya ibn Khalid held Kalām discussions with members of various religions and confessional groups in his house. Until the 10th century, the Muʿtazilites were considered the real “masters of the Kalām”. Later, two important Sunni Kalām schools emerged: the Ashʿariyya and the Maturidiyya. They positioned the Kalām particularly against the growing Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy and elevated the “Kalām science” (ʿilm al-kalām) to the highest ranking science in Islam. Some of the arguments of the Mutakallimūn also found their way into Jewish and Christian theological discussions in the Middle Ages. After the Kalām science in the early modern period was essentially limited to the study of manuals and commentaries, from the late 19th century onwards various reform thinkers appeared in British India and the Ottoman Empire who called for the founding of a “new Kalām”.

wikipedia/en/KalamWikipedia

The mutakallimūn are Muslim dialectic theologians who study Islamic theology through a method called kalām

  • Definition The word mutakallimūn is a plural noun that refers to the practitioners of kalām, or scholastic Islamic theology. The word comes from the Arabic word mutakallimūna. 
  • Purpose The goal of kalām is to prove the validity of Islamic doctrines, refute doubts about them, and establish the true meaning of religious beliefs.
  • History The genre of kalām was developed by Muslim authors in Iraq and was also used by Jewish and Christian Arab theologians. It was actively pursued between the eighth and nineteenth centuries. 
  • Other names The mutakallimūn are also known as ṭuruq and darwīsh. 
  • Related works The book al-Safadiyyah by Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah is a refutation of the mutakallimūn, or “Philosophers”

Historically, kalam was developed to defend Islam against:

Scholars like Al-Ash‘ari and Al-Maturidi used kalam to establish robust frameworks for theology while remaining grounded in Qur’an and Sunnah.

Salafis, particularly influenced by the Athari school and scholars like Ibn Taymiyyah, rejected kalam as “speculative” and argued for a return to a purely textual approach.