had become an issue because of an early political dispute over the legitimacy
of the caliphate. The succession had been won by violence and treachery, and
some Islamic factions held that sins such as these make one cease to be a
Muslim and render a ruler subject to overthrow. Those willing to accept the
status quo tended to accept as well the argument that the caliph’s acts were
predestined. Free will was accordingly condemned as an incitement to rebel-
lion. As late as 743 some advocates of free will were executed by the caliph.
This political connection was ephemeral. Within a few generations the political
implications had been reversed; for a period in the 800s the MuÀtazilite advo-
cacy of free will was put forward as orthodoxy by the caliphate.
A faction was formed at the mosque at Basra out of those who took an
intermediate position on the debate over sinners—the issue implying how much
loyalty one must give to a sinful caliph. A further split reacted against the
theological moderation of Hasan al-Basri; this faction stressed the predestina-
tion of human acts and the omnipotence of God so strongly as to hold that
actions can be imputed to humans only figuratively. Intellectual debate was
now driving positions to extremes. The next step was the MuÀtazilite defense
of free will, the typical pattern of intellectual development through escalating
conflict between opposite sides of the field. The defenders of free will were
forced to elaborate their position, declaring that God does no evil. This led to
a recognition that the standards of good and evil are not conventional or
arbitrary. To reconcile this stance with the power of God, these theologians
concluded that God has a rational nature, and that moral laws are part of this
unchangeable essence of reason.
This was one route which led from literal scriptural piety into a philosophi-
cal metaphysics. Joining it was another stream of argument over the unity and
attributes of God. The MuÀtazilite faction forming at Basra and Baghdad
entered into a multi-fronted war against rival theologies, attacking the Zoroas-
trian and Manichaean dualists (the former the traditional religion of Persia,
now under Islamic conquest; the latter a Christian heresy centered in Mesopo-
tamia) as well as the Trinity of the Christians (widespread in the Islamic
domains of Iraq, Syria, and Egypt). This controversy led to proofs that there
is only one God, undivided and without plurality. The MuÀtazilites became
famous for their proofs, not only of the unity of God but also of the createdness
of the world, and thus of the existence of the Creator as well. Theology became
rationally defended and set on the path to where reason itself could be exalted
above scripture and revelation. The MuÀtazilite proofs were adopted wholesale
by contemporary Jewish thinkers who became the first notable Jewish philoso-
phers of the Middle Ages.
Both Muslim and Jewish practitioners of kalam, or rational theology,
argued for the harmonization of rational proofs with their scriptural doctrines.
Tensions of Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom^ •^397