Kalam

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KALAM

Kalam is an Arabic term for speech, and has several other, related, technical connotations in Islamic religious thought. Used in the phrase kalam allah it means the word of God as revealed to humankind through prophets (2:75, 9:6, and 48:15). In this sense, kalam is analogous to the Greek term logos, as it is used in Jewish theology by Philo of Alexandria in about the first century c.e. In its second sense, kalam designates God's creative word. In the Qur˒an, God's words, as commands, create reality. This can be seen in such Qur˒anic quotations as: "Yet when We will a thing We only have to say 'Be' and it is" (16:40). In this context, the word of God, kalam, takes on a performative function—the utterance of the word accomplishes the creative act.

The third and the most primary usage is found in the phrase ˓ilm al-kalam, which connotes "the science of (dialectical) theology" that establishes and elaborates on the doctrinal teachings of the various schools (sing. madhhab) of theology, such as the Mu˓tazilites, Ash˓arites, and Maturidites. In Islamic intellectual traditions, the scholars of kalam gradually came to be delineated as dogmatic theologians (mutakallimun), as distinct from philosophers (falasifa) and mystics (Sufis).

The mutakallimun developed a dialectical method of framing and defending religious claims over rival teachers and schools. Some scholars believe that Greek and Hellenistic philosophy influenced the rise of kalam as a form of theology, while others point out that Islam, as a revealed, word-centered religion, was the primary factor in the emergence of the kalam method and schools of thought. The latter method, as it appears in literary form, strongly indicates the disputational context of early and medieval Islamic thought. A theological claim was made, then defended against critics in a series of conditional statements of the form: "if someone from such and such a school asks you so and so, then say to him . . . ."

The subject matter of kalam included such topics as God and his attributes, classification of and arguments against other religions, ethical responsibility and its eschatological consequences, and the doctrine of the imamate (political theology). ˓Ilm al-kalam became the lingua franca of most religious discourse among sects and groups in medieval Islamic society from the eighth century onward. Sunni and Shi˓ite schools adopted the kalam method. So, too, did medieval Christian and Jewish communities living in Iraq and Iran and elsewhere in the central Islamic lands. After the eleventh century, Aristotelian philosophy and logic began to wax as the kalam methods and schools waned. Nowadays, kalam is studied historically but does not claim thriving schools or exponents. Nonetheless, in his widely read theological treatise on Islam and modernity, Risalat al-tawhid (Theology of unity), Shaykh Muhammad ˓Abduh (d. 1905) preserved a modified version of the dialectical method of the medieval Mu˓tazilite and Ash˓arite schools.