63this happens for po liti cal reasons, not because of
the strength of the arguments. It happened at the
Council of Nicaea, when Chris tian ity was adopted
by the Roman Empire, leading to its spread across
much of Eu rope. Po liti cal decisions made by em-
pires can determine and have determined which
doctrines become or t hodox y. So it was wit h Islam.
Part of the history of Muslim “doctrine being
shaped by power” lies in the story of the Muslim
dispute over whether the Qur’an was created by
God or is his eternal word. I refer to this dispute not
to take one view or another— I won’t take theolog-
ical stances here— but to highlight the variety in
traditional Islamic theology on questions such as
this. Having the ruling doctrine at one stage, the
Mu’tazila were eventually defeated by the Asha’ira,
led by Imam Ash’ari, whose views on the eternal,
uncreated nature of the Qur’an then became
accepted as orthodoxy. Imam Ash’ari was, in fact,
a defector from the Mu’tazila, which shows how
pop u lar the Mu’tazila view once was. This is why
most Muslims today believe that the Qur’an is the
eternal, literal word of God, despite neo- Mu’tazilite
thinkers such as Soroush and others, who still
make the opposite case.
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