Karen Armstrong - A History of God--The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

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order to impose the Mutazili belief, the ordinary folk were horrified by this unIslamic behaviour. Ahmad ibn Hanbal
(780-855), a leading Traditionist who narrowly escaped death in al-Mamun's inquisition, became a popular hero. His
sanctity and charisma - he had prayed for his torturers - challenged the caliphate and his belief in the uncreated Koran
became the watchword of a populist revolt against the rationalism of the Mutazilah.
Ibn Hanbal refused to countenance any kind of rational discussion about God. Thus when the moderate Mutazili al-Huayan
al-Karabisi (d.859) put forward a compromise solution - that the Koran considered as God's speech was indeed uncreated
but that when it was put into human words it became a created thing - Ibn Hanbal condemned the doctrine. Al-Karabisi
was quite ready to modify his view again, and declared that the written and spoken Arabic of the Koran was uncreated in
so far as it partook of God's eternal speech. Ibn Hanbal, however, declared that this was unlawful too because it was
useless and dangerous to speculate about the origin of the Koran in this rationalistic way. Reason was not an appropriate
tool for exploring the unutterable God. He accused the Mutazilis of draining God of all mystery and making him an abstract
formula that had no religious value. When the Koran used anthropomorphic terms to describe God's activity in the world or
when it said that God 'speaks' and 'sees' and 'sits upon his throne', Ibn Hanbal insisted that it be interpreted literally but
'without asking how' (bila kayf). He can perhaps be compared to radical Christians like Athanasius, who insisted on an
extreme interpretation of the doctrine of incarnation against the more rational heretics. Ibn Hanbal was stressing the essential
ineffability of the divine, which lay beyond the reach of all logic and conceptual analysis.
Yet the Koran constantly emphasises the importance of intelligence and understanding and Ibn Hanbal's position was
somewhat simple-minded. Many Muslims found it perverse and obscurantist. A compromise was found by Abu al-Hasan
ibn Ismail al-Ashari (878-941). He had been a Mutazili but was converted to Traditionism by a dream in which the Prophet
had appeared to him and urged him to study hadith. Al-Ashari then went to the other extreme, became an ardent
Traditionist and preached against the Mutzilah as the scourge of Islam. Then he had another dream, where Muhammad
looked rather irritated and said: 'I did not tell you to give up rational arguments but to support the true hadiths? {38}
Henceforth al-Ashari used the rationalist techniques of the Mutazilah to promote the agnostic spirit of Ibn Hanbal. Where
the Mutazilis claimed that God's revelation could not be unreasonable, al-Ashari used reason and logic to show that God
was beyond our understanding. The Mutazilis had been in danger of reducing God to a coherent but arid concept; al-Ashari
wanted to return to the full-blooded God of the Koran, despite its inconsistency. Indeed, like Denys the Areopagite, he
believed that paradox would enhance our appreciation of God. He refused to reduce God to a concept that could be
discussed and analysed like any other human idea. The divine attributes of knowledge, power, life and so on were real; they
had belonged to God from all eternity. But they were distinct from God's essence, because God was essentially one, simple
and unique. He could not be regarded as a complex being because he was simplicity itself; we could not analyse him by
donning his various characteristics or splitting him up into smaller parts. Al-Ashari refused any attempt to resolve the
paradox: thus he insisted that when the Koran says that God 'sits on his throne', we must accept that this is a fact even
though it is beyond our understanding to conceive of a pure spirit 'sitting'.
Al-Ashari was trying to find a middle course between deliberate obscurantism and extreme rationalism. Some literalists
claimed that if the blessed were going to 'see' God in heaven, as the Koran said, he must have a physical appearance.
Hisham ibn Hakim went so far as to say that:
Allah has a body, defined, broad, high and long, of equal dimensions, radiating with light, of a broad
measure in its three dimensions, in a place beyond place, like a bar of pure metal, shining as a round pearl
on all sides, provided with colour, taste, smell and touch. {39}
Some Shiis accepted such views, because of their belief that the Imams were incarnations of the divine. The Mutazilis
insisted that when the Koran speaks of God's 'hands', for example, this must be interpreted allegorically to refer to his
generosity and munificence. Al-Ashari opposed the literalists by pointing out that the Koran insisted that we could only talk
about God in symbolic language. But he also opposed the Traditionist wholesale rejection of reason. He argued that
Muhammad had not encountered these problems or he would have given the Muslims guidance; as it was, all Muslims had a
duty to use such interpretive tools as analogy (qiyas) to retain a truly religious concept of God.
Constantly al-Ashari opted for a compromise position. Thus he argued that the Koran was the eternal and uncreated Word
of God but that the ink, paper and the Arabic words of the sacred text were created. He condemned the Mutazili doctrine
of free will, because God alone could be the 'creator' of man's deeds but he also opposed the Traditionist view that men did
not contribute at all to their salvation. His solution was somewhat tortuous: God creates the deeds but allows men to acquire
merit or discredit for them. Unlike Ibn Hanbal, however, al-Ashari was prepared to ask questions and to explore these
metaphysical problems, even though ultimately he concluded that it was wrong to try to contain the mysterious and ineffable