Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

132 Part 3: Islamic Philosophy in History
al-ma‘rifah or Divine Knowledge. Many later Sufi figures, including
several of the important authorities of North African, eastern Arabic,
Turkish, and Indian Sufism, were to continue this wedding between
Ash‘arism and Sufism. Yet, many other Sufi masters and authorities of
Islamic gnosis stood against Ash‘arism and criticized its limitations
severely, as did the Islamic philosophers, many of whom during later
centuries did not believe that Ash‘arism possessed the intellectual
requirements necessary for dealing with the questions of God’s Names
and Qualities or other problems related to theo-logia in the original
sense of this term. This is to be seen especially in Mullå |adrå’s attitude
to kalåm and has already been discussed in chapter 5.
Ash‘arism, while not ceasing to oppose both the Islamic philosophers
and certain types of Sufi metaphysics, nevertheless became itself
more philosophical and turned to the basic philosophical and metaphysical
issues dealt with by its adversaries. Its later treatises are
concerned with such issues as being and nonbeing, necessity and
contingency, the relation of the one to the many, substance and accidents—all
of which were treated primarily by Islamic philosophers.
Later Ash‘arism also deals with the “science of God” (ilåhiyyåt), which
is so amply treated in works of theoretical Sufism such as those of Ibn
‘Arab¥ and |adr al-D¥n al-Qunyaw¥, not to speak of the philosophers
who used the term in their own way and identified it with metaphysics
as expounded in their philosophical treatises. Ash‘arism thus became
one of several major schools of Islamic thought vying with the
philosophers, on the one hand, and the theosophers and gnostics, who
dealt with matters of more direct spiritual concern than the Ash‘arites,
on the other. In the final account Ash‘arism provided a rational defense
of the tenets of the faith and created a climate in which religious
truths were real and the Will of God reigned supreme. For those who
wanted to know God as well as obey His will, Ash‘arism appeared
either as an impediment as seen by most of the philosophers or, at
best, the walls of the city of Divine Knowledge. It protected the city,
but one had to pass beyond the wall in order to reach the treasures of
the city itself, the city to which the Prophet referred when he said, “I
am the city of knowledge and ‘Al¥ is its gate.”
SHI‘ITE KALĀM
In addition to Sunni kalåm, there developed in Islam other schools of
kalåm associated with the Ismå‘¥l¥s and Twelve-Imam Shi‘ites. As for
the Zayd¥s, the third school of Shi‘ism, they adopted more or less