News
Features
Mu'tazilism and the Shiites
Bruce Fudge is an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. When asked about his current work, he replied:
My recent work focuses on a medieval Shiite commentary on the Qur'an. The commentary's author is the well-known scholar from what is now northeastern Iran, al-Tabrisi, who died in the mid-twelfth century. (One of the advantages of a relatively small field such as Islamic studies is that even works that are quite well known remain little studied.)
There are many interesting aspects to al-Tabrisi's work of Qur'an interpretation, but one of the most important, to my mind, is the influence of an Islamic theological group known as the Mu'tazila. By al-Tabrisi's time, the Mu'tazila had largely ceased to be players on the Islamic intellectual scene, but they had been very influential in the formative period of Islamic thought. However, despite their own decline, a number of Mu'tazilite doctrines were adopted by Shiite thinkers, in a process that seems to have occurred mainly in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Al-Tabrisi's Qur'an commentary is, in fact, largely an amalgam of earlier works, and is comprised of more or less equal parts of both Mu'tazilite exegesis and previous Shiite scholarship. This is a striking combination, for reasons I will explain.
The defining characteristics of the Mu'tazilites were two. First, they were rigidly opposed to any kind of divine anthropomorphism. This led them to exert much energy in explaining those verses of the Qur'an that mention God's hand or face. Second, they were equally firm in their belief in free will and following on this, that God was just. This too required exegetical ingenuity in explaining some of the scriptural verses that appeared to indicate otherwise (such as Q 2:7 God has set a seal on their hearts...). It also required a belief that humans were able and obliged to act according to reason or rational thought; part of the divine revelation, then, was merely confirmation of what reason could already discern. (All Muslim sects employed rational thinking to various degrees; the distinction here is that the Mu'tazilites considered it a source of knowledge, alongside revelation, and not merely a tool.)
Shiite tradition absorbed some of these qualities, and gives a large role to reason in law and jurisprudence. However, the defining characteristic of Shiism is belief in the political and religious authority of a group of descendents of the Prophet Muhammad, known as the Imams. The Shiites uphold the charismatic authority and essential immunity from error of the Imams. While Sunni Muslims took the Prophet as model and exemplar, the Shiites venerated the Imams and followed their teachings as well as that of the Prophet. In explaining verses of the Qur'an, Shiite exegetes relied heavily on the saying of these Imams (the last of whom went into occultation in the late ninth century).
To simplify matters somewhat, we find in al-Tabrisi's commentary two conflicting hermeneutic strategies. One is a cold application of a dogmatic rationalism; the other is an absolute faith in the sayings of a hereditary line of charismatic figures, some of which are quite lucid, others more gnomic. The two strategies coexist, there is virtually no attempt to integrate or synthesize them. One would expect some kind of tension between these differing methodologies; one finds instead a t strategy of fragmentation, in which the qur'anic text and its components are broken down and separated from each other. Polyvalent reading are no longer problematic because each aspect, each gloss, is considered in isolation. (I simplify somewhat.)
Mu'tazilite exegesis is a growing but relatively young field, and much of this work is based on manuscript sources that have not been edited or published. Mu'tazilism is sometimes praised for its rationalism and supposed freethinking; some modern scholars (both Muslim and non-Muslim) see in it a key for some kind of adaptation or reform of Islamic thought. While it does provide some fascinating intellectual diversions, many of its limitations come to the fore in Qur'an commentary, where they demonstrate clearly that rationalism and liberalism are two different things. Further, in their prosaic approach to revelation, they demystify the Qur'an, a text whose mystery and power were among its strongest qualities.
