Abu'l-Hasan
al-Ash'ari
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Born in 873 AD in Basra of parents who were themselves 'Ulama'.
His forefather was the famous Abu Musa al-Ash'ari, the great
Companion, who was one of the two mediators appointed after
the Battle of Siffin by Ali ibn Abi Talib RA and Mu'awiya
RA. The other mediator was Amr ibn al-As RA.
His
father Shaykh Isma'il was a renowned alim of his time and
he took special care to give the right type of education
to his brilliant son in Qur'an, hadith, fiqh, usul, ad-din,
etc. from his early boyhood. The father took special care
to educate the boy on the lines recommended by the Shari'a
and he asked him not to get in touch with the Mu'tazilite
group of scholars who were very active in those days and
who were spreading their controversial ideas.
But
Abu'l-Hasan frustrated all attempts of his father, went
to Baghdad and became a disciple of the principal advocate
of the Mu'tazilite group, Abu'l-Wahhab al-Jubba'i. Under
his guidance he learnt philosophy, logic, and literature
as well, and soon made his name as a good speaker and philosopher.
But the Mu'tazilities had already, by that time, lost the
power and patronage that they had previously enjoyed, and
they were being hunted out by the enraged theologians and
other Muslim scholars, who bore an inborn hatred towards
the sect.
The
Mu'tazilities used to interpret the Qur'an and Hadith in
a purely rationalistic way. They were known as 'free thinkers'
and they were influenced by the old Greek and other ancient
philosophers from whom they borrowed freely when propounding
their theories. in the name of the development of Islamic
philosophy and Arabic literature, they borrowed so freely
and indiscriminately from these alien sources that they
lost touch with the Qur'an and Sunnah. They started interpreting
the Qur'an in a new way and held that the Qur'an was a 'created'
thing and that the Miraj took place in dream or by the imagination.
In short, these Mu'tazilites by their resort to 'free thinking'
corrupted the roots of Islam from within and they convinced
the luxury-loving Abbasid Khalifs, particularly Khalif al-Ma'mun,
to accept their idea of the interpretation of the Qur'an.
Since
he was earlier trained by the Mu'tazilites, he knew their
weaknesses and sensitive issues and thus he started replying
to their points one after another. He introduced the science
of al-Kalam that is scholastic theology which saved the
Muslim nation from the cursed rationalism of the Mu'tazilites.
Soon
he became widely acclaimed as a scholar throughout the Muslim
world. The 'Ulama' all accepted him as their leader in their
fight against the Mu'tazilites.
Abu'l-Hasan
al-Ash'ari was a born genius. He wrote more than one hundred
books on different subjects of Islam. Of these, his Maqalat
al-Islamiyya is the greatest book on 'ilm al-Kalam. In this
book, he compared Greek philosophy with Islamic philosophy
and pointed out those things which are irrelevant to the
requirements of Islam and made 'ilm al-Kalam the basis of
our philosophy. In this respect, he is the father of 'ilm
al-Kalam or Islamic theology, and Imam al-Ghazzali is its
perfector.
The
ideas and teachings of Abu'l-Hasan al-Ash'ari made their
impact in the East. In its initial stage the Ash'ari school
of thought was strongly opposed by the Mu'tazilites, but
gradually, with the strong, support it received from the
khalifate, particularly from men like Nizamu'l-Mulk and
Imam al-Ghazzali, his doctrine became very popular all over
the Muslim world. Al-Ash'ari and al-Ghazzali were criticised
for their strong opposition to the study of science and
philosophy for the sake of study only, without considering
the need to study religion and the Shari'a. But it is they
who saved the Muslim nation from the onslaught of the Mu'tazilites,
who were taking the nation to secularism.