This Religion Is a Science 153Hanbal (780–855), who accepted God’s absolute control over human
affairs but still maintained humanity’s responsibility for reacting posi-
tively or negatively to the circumstances predetermined by God.
By the ninth and tenth centuries, this debate over determinism
and free will was loosely divided between two major strands of
thought: the so-called “Rationalist position,” most clearly represented
by the Mu‘tazilite school, and the “Traditionalist” position, dominated
by the Ash‘arite school. The Rationalist Ulama of the Mu‘tazilah
argued that God, while fundamentally indefinable, nevertheless exists
within the framework of human reason. Challenging the notion that
religious truth could be accessed only through divine revelation, the
Mu‘tazilah promulgated the doctrine that all theological arguments
must adhere to the principles of rational thought. Even the interpre-
tation of the Quran and the traditions, or Sunna, of the Prophet were,
for the Rationalists, subordinate to human reason. As Abd al-Jabbar
(d. 1024), the most influential Mu‘tazilite theologian of his time,
argued, the “truthfulness” of God’s word cannot be based solely on
God’s Revelation, for that would be circular reasoning.
The Spanish philosopher and physician Ibn Rushd (1126–98),
better known as Averroës in the West, pushed al-Jabbar’s conception
of truth to its limit by proposing a “two truths” theory of knowledge
in which religion and philosophy are placed in opposition to each
other. According to Ibn Rushd, religion simplifies the truth for the
masses by resorting to easily recognizable signs and symbols, regard-
less of the doctrinal contradictions and rational incongruities that
inevitably result from the formation and rigid interpretation of
dogma. Philosophy, however, is itself truth; its purpose is merely to
express reality through the faculty of human reason.
It is this commitment to what Binyamin Abrahamov calls “the
overwhelming power of reason over revelation” that has led modern
scholars to label the Mu‘tazilah the first speculative theologians in
Islam. And it was precisely this emphasis on the primacy of human
reason that the Traditionalist Ulama of the Ash‘ari so strenuously
opposed.
The Ash‘ari argued that human reason, while certainly important,
must nevertheless be subordinate to the Quran and the Sunna of the
Prophet. If religious knowledge could be gained only through rational