Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

250 Umar F. Abd-Allah
was something that all Muslims could learn and potentially put into
practice. From a legal perspective, conformity to God’s commandments
did not require an abstract intelligence or an elaborate education. The
pathways of faith and practice lay within the grasp of the many and the
few, the untutored and the elite.
For Mu‘tazilite and Ash‘arite theologians, however, God’s purpose
in revealing the law revolved around the abstract questions, such as the
nature of taklıf. For the former, human reason knew good and evil.
God could not create evil but was bound of necessity to do what was best
for human well-being. The chief purpose of the revelatory law was to
inform humanity of the compensation or retribution their acts would
meet with in the next world. Those who did good would of necessity be
rewarded; those who did evil would inescapably be punished; those who
fell between the two categories would occupy an intermediate state
(manzila bayn al-manzilatayn).
For the Ash‘arites the law’s purpose also rested on the issue of taklıf
and the knowledge of good and evil. Humans know good and evil and
their otherworldly consequences only through revelation. Since the will
of God is utterly free, God will mete out judgement in the next world as
He sees fit. He is not bound by necessity to reward or punish anyone. By
virtue of His revealed promise, He will, in fact, reward good and punish
or forgive evil, but this is not a cosmic imperative; it is utterly the
workings of His will. 56
For the Maturıdites, revelation, reason and empirical knowledge
comprise complementary sources of truth regarding the Seen and the
Unseen. The revelatory law is humanity’s aid in this life and the next, but
knowledge of good and evil is accessible to them through each of the three
sources. Unlike the Mu‘tazilites, however, the Maturıdites argue that it is
fundamentally mistaken to make the principle of divine justice the cornerstone
of theology. Sound theological speculation must begin and end
with reflection on divine wisdom. God’s wisdom permeates creation,
explains the existence of good and evil and provides the prism through
which the intricacies of God’s justice become intelligible to human beings.
The Muslim scriptures sometimes seem to exist in tension with the
grand speculations of medieval kalam. The Qur’an and hadith clearly
teach the innate goodness of human nature (fit _
ra), and its inherent
aptitude to know God. It was widely held that natural faith was sufficient
for the salvation of all children who died before majority, and for
adults who died before receiving the prophetic teaching, if they lived in a
way faithful to their natures. The Islamic declaration of faith (‘‘legal
faith’’) based on true knowledge of God and acceptance of his prophets
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