Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

Creation 145
For they understood ‘‘cause’’ in the Greek manner, as a virtual synonym
with ‘‘reason’’ and ‘‘condition’’, thus implying a systemic treatment. But
the one creator cannot be part of the cosmic system, so (in Richard
Frank’s words) ‘‘the programmed sequence of sufficient causes and fulfilled
conditions represented in the causation of the ‘illa and asbab does
not offer an adequate model for an explanation of the grounding of the
possible that exists, i.e., does not give an adequate account of ... its
original possibility and the ground of its actuality in being’’. 7 Creation
must be sui generis since the creator is. They were to find an analogue of
God’s activity in creating, however, in the free actions of human beings,
whom the Qur’an demanded to be the true initiators of their actions, for
otherwise they could not rightly be held accountable for them. This
analogy quickly became an identification, equating authentic agency
with creating, an identification which was to help bring about the demise
of this school. The contrast of agency with causality would become even
more significant, however, in contrasting the later kalam thinkers
(Ghazalı and Razı) with philosophical accounts of origination.
Identifying acting with creating gave the Mu‘tazilites a way of
keeping the divine agent from being ensnared in evil, as well as of justifying
the rewards and punishments promised in the Qur’an to creatures
who perpetrate good or evil acts. The key belief here is that God
must be able to be justified in whatever God does, and so can in no way
be associated with evil, nor can divine justice be arbitrary. It is the
presence of this conceptual framework bridging the divide between
Creator and creature which a trained Mu‘tazilite, al-Ash‘arı, will question
as he proceeds to found the successor school which bears his name.
Two signal implications of the school of his formation can be identified,
which also explain why Ash‘arism quickly became identified with the
consensus position in Sunnı Islam. The first was the stark insistence on
the fact that everything which is not God must be created, including the
Qur’an itself. Apparently a simple corollary to the shahada’s witnessing
that there can be no God but God, this uncompromising teaching
unfortunately left Islam with a mute divinity, so it seemed far preferable
to grasp the nettle and affirm God’s Word to be coeternal with God. In
the political climate of Baghdad, blood was initially spilt over this view,
but it held firm. The identification of acting with creating, however,
instigated an unending debate, which has not yet been decisively settled.
For if any authentic action, be it of creator or of creature, must be tantamount
to an unconditioned origination, or creation, then the actions
of creatures must be attributed to them alone, unduly restricting the
sovereignty of the creator of all by removing all deliberate human
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