TENTH-CENTURY MU'TAZILI COMPENDIUM

Abstract

Some Muslim intellectuals have expressed a renewal interest in the classical school of Islamic theology known as the Mu'taziIa. In particular, the Mu'razli inclusion of the human intellect., along with divine revalatron, as a source of the knowledge of God and ethical action in the world is of interest to modernist muslim theologians in fndonesia and elsewhere. While most modernist adhere to traditionalist. Sunni doctrine that knowledge of god come from the sacred texts and interpretive process of divine legislation (sharia) , they nonetheless stress the function of reason to f ind f slamic solutions to historical and sosial problems in the world. Under quite dif f erent hist.orical circurstances, the Mu'tazil i theologians of the tenth and eleventh centuries C.E. worked, although more for the purpose of knowing God as a first principle of religious knowledge than for determining ethical action in t.he world. This thesis presents a study of the Mu'tazila. After a survey of the intellect.ual and political history of the school. is a chapter on the works and achievement of Qadi Abd aI-Jabbar's compendium of theology, Kitab al-usul al-khamsa [The book of the five fundamentals (of religion)] . This is followed by its translation on final chapter (four) .