Kalām — Islamic Speculative Theology

Kalām is the discipline of defending and systematising Islamic belief through reasoned argument — Islam's speculative theology.

At a glance

As the young Muslim community encountered other faiths and the translated legacy of Greek thought, questions arose that scripture did not answer in system: the nature of God's attributes, the createdness or eternity of the Qur'an, the reach of human freedom. Kalām — literally “speech” or “discourse” — is the science that took up these questions with the tools of reasoned argument, and its practitioners are the mutakallimūn.

The earliest major school, the Muʿtazila, championed reason and divine justice. The reaction against them produced the two great schools of Sunni theology, founded by al-Ashʿarī and al-Māturīdī, which sought to defend traditional belief with rational method while checking reason's claims. Not all welcomed the enterprise: traditionist scholars such as Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal and, later, Ibn Taymiyya were wary of theology's speculative reach and preferred to rest on scripture and the practice of the early community.

Kalām should be distinguished from falsafa, the Hellenising philosophical tradition: the two overlapped and argued, but the theologian began from revelation and defended it, while the philosopher began from reason and pursued it where it led.

Related in Chronicle

Curated reference on Islamic belief and thought. On matters where traditions differ, positions are attributed rather than adjudicated; verify points of doctrine with qualified scholars.