Talk:Kalam

message: From the introduction I wasn't exactly sure what Kalam is, is it simply Islamic theology or is it a branch of Islamic theology or is it a school of Islamic theology.  The introduction just says it is one of the Islamic religious sciences, but that is a very broad term.  Could someone educated in the matter clarify it in the introduction itself?
:It is actually a philosophical practice, so I suppose you could say it is a branch of wider theology.  Unfortunately, most of this article contains general information about Islamic theology in general, some of which isn't directly related to Kalam.  It's no wonder the article isn't clear, as it stands most of it is unsourced and sort of ambiguous. MezzoMezzo (talk) 18:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Islamic Theology?

message: The criticism of the four imams and other traditional imams was not blanket in nature. "What has been forgotten today however by critics who would use the words of earlier Imams to condemn all kalam, is that these criticisms were directed against its having become "speculative theology" at the hands of latter-day authors. Whoever believes they were directed against the `aqida or "personal theology" of basic tenets of faith, or the "discursive theology" of rational kalam arguments against heresy is someone who either does not understand the critics or else is quoting them disingenuously." Nuh Keller
Jaw101ie (talk) 19:48, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Nuh Keller is neither a reliable nor neutral source, though.  He's a religious cleric and polemicist; if you can find similar comments from a recognized historian then that's fine, but the opinions of controversial religious figures isn't appropriate. MezzoMezzo (talk) 18:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism Section

message: Is it relevant and are there other sources than Maimonides for the issue that by his time, Mutakallim writers had proposed their own version of the atomic doctrine and that a vacuum could exist?  The Leo Strauss edition of Guide for the Perplexed discusses this issue because a fairly long discourse about it appears between the two main portions of GftP -- and Maimonides, as an Aristotelian, argues against Mutakallim viewpoints.
71.163.117.143 (talk) 15:23, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aristotle 

message: Forgive me any failings in this post, this is my first.
I arrived here after looking for some information on the Kalam cosmological argument and was immediately struck by two things in the opening sentence:
"...kalām, is an Islamic science born out of the need to establish and defend the tenets of Islamic faith..."
Firstly, there is no such thing as Islamic science, any more than there is a Christian particle physics or Hindu gravity. All science has to be universal or it isn't science.
Secondly, I have issue with it being born out of the need to reach presupposed conclusions. This is a greyer area admittedly, as many scientists have set out to prove what they thought was happening and proved themselves wrong, but it is a challenge to think these Islamic scholars are truly adhering to the scientific method, publishing their findings in peer-reviewed journals etc. Evidence of this lack is suggested here:
" the widest controversy in this discipline has been about whether the Word of God, as revealed in the Qur'an, can be considered part of God's essence and therefore not created, or whether it was made into words in the normal sense of speech, and is therefore created."
however it has definitely not been presented (with evidence) in a peer-reviewed journal (their peers being the global scientific community) that the Qur'an is the Word of God in the first place.
Pre-supposing unsupported premises is not part of the scientific method.
Also:
"studying of 'Ilm al-Kalam is considered by Muslim scholars to fall under the category of necessity and is only permitted to qualified scholars, but not for the masses or common people.[4]"
makes me wonder how you become a "qualified scholar", but I suspect the answer is entirely unscientific.Mytheroo (talk) 15:42, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I.e this is where Islam stopped being open minded and feel into rote repetition and orthodoxy. The fact that you think that is an argument that "cannot be made" is a sign of the sort of thinking that modern Islam encourages. There is no argument that can't be made. Greatest tragedy in Islamic history was the triumph over the rationalist and the closing of the Islamic mind.2601:140:8900:61D0:C80B:9269:1F4D:D81B (talk) 23:37, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science? 

message: A Tunisian friend of mine used to quote an Arabic saying, but some 20 years ago he became Canadian by marriage, and now neither he nor me can remember the second half. AFAICR, it began: "Kāna kalām el-foḍḍa, ikūna s-sakāta ðahab" كان كلام الفضة، إكون ٱلسكات ذحب… (I'm not sure of the spelling) which means something like "talk is silver but silence is golden". There were two more verses, on the rhythm (IIRC): tataTĀ ta TĀ ta TĀ tata, TĀ ta ta TĀ. Can anyone refresh my memory? — Tonymec (talk) 00:10, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I know this comment is terribly old but why not, you're thinking of " اذا كان الكلام من فضة فان السكوت من ذهب " which translates to "If talk is of silver, silence is golden", an advice given by Luqman Al-Hakeem to his son, narrated by Al-Awza'ee that it was originally said by King Sulaiman Bin Dawood Sampharo (talk) 17:26, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, yes, but there was a second half to it, approximately as long, and (IIRC) rhyming with it; and it is that second half that I can't remember. — Tonymec (talk) 03:06, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, is the question related in some way to improving the article? If not, I would recommend asking it in a more appropriate WP:FORUM. Eperoton (talk) 03:03, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kalam as speech 

message: Kalam i s a speech or saying of good 138.75.15.126 (talk) 12:20, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kalam 

message: Mashallh 2600:6C46:6A00:10FF:2D91:277:5C8D:8A59 (talk) 16:59, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Since you can see that there is nothing 

message: In common Islamic argumentation it has become stereotypical to attribute the flaw in Kalam to it being "Greek philosophy". For instance, from the article:
: Because the source of Ilmul Kalam is human intellect, which is based on Hindu and Greek philosophy. On the other hand, the main source of Tawheed is revelation. Moreover, Ilmul Kalam includes restlessness, imbalance, ignorance and doubt. That is why the Salaf Saleheen condemned Ilmul Kalam. And Tawheed is based on knowledge, conviction and faith,….. Another reason can be said that the foundation of philosophy is based on assumptions, false beliefs, imaginary thoughts and superstitious ideas
Ie, Kalam and philosophy are just thrown in the same basket and blamed. The narrative is constructed such as to not implicate faith in the affair - the actions of the Mutakallimūn are speculated to be entirely because they used reason/philosophy, reason/philosophy here being equated simply with "...assumptions, false beliefs, imaginary thoughts..." It is of course true that many of the "demonstrated" arguments of the Mutakallimūn were in fact in practice simply "...assumptions, false beliefs, imaginary thoughts...", and it is also true that they described to others their thought process as having been source in "reason" and "philosophy". And frequently they would (mis)use terms from philosophy in their arguments, for instance the term "demonstrated". However, having read the Guide of the Perplexed, by the important medieval Jewish Rabbi and philosopher Maimonedes, who was somewhat close to the tale end of this affair and knowledgeable of several of those involved, and included an extensive history and criticism of them in this philosophical work of his, I was able to find different, and more comprehensive, accounting on the history of the Islamic Kalam.
The Mutakallimūn were *not* of course philosophers, they were theologians that encountered certain propositions from Aristotelian philosophy they disliked.
The first along this line were actually Christian apologists in late antiquity, before being taken over almost entirely by Muslim Mutakallimūn. In any case, most importantly for them, they objected to Aristotle's claim of the eternality of the universe, and, speculated that such a claim would, if true, disprove the existence of God. As such they developed counterarguments using the little they had decided to pick up of philosophy in pursuing this goal, and eventually devised one that they found satisfactorily disproved this notion. Once they had this argument that all seemed to them to be good enough, they declared this argument to have been "demonstrated". Importantly at this point, they began to perceive themselves as having philosophically proven the existence of God. One should note that what I have described in the previous paragraph, *is not* philosophy. It is pseudophilosophy. The initial premise that prompted this investigation - that the eternality of the universe would disprove God - does not necessarily follow. Meanwhile, once they had "solved" the problem and "proved" the temporal creation of the world, it also does not clearly follow that God would necessarily exist (even if the initial premise is assumed valid). Their use of the term "demonstrated" is also noxious, because all it clearly meant here was that it became commonly held opinion that the argument was true (to be fair, among Islamist jurists such commonality of opinion *does* in many cases constitute sufficient "clear proofs" for endorsing religious rulings - as they were theologians, I guess it would make sense to them from their context that this is what a "demonstrated" argument consists of; unfortunately for them, in philosophy, things are such that common opinion does not at all serve for the purpose of "demonstration", but they did not understand this. Obviously had they "demonstrated" the existence of God they would be by far the greatest philosophers in history. However in reality they were that level of philosopher who does not even understand what a demonstration is.
Once they had convinced themselves and many others in the Caliphate of this momentous discovery of course, things changed - at this point this becomes a critical basis of faith for many people, that God had been demonstrated to exist. So inevitably the state began to enforce this as dogma, and to suppress beliefs harmful to the faith, including of course disbelief in the temporal creation of the world. And at this point it is of course not possible to even point out their mistake, if you point out that their proof is not demonstrated in a philosophical sense, such an action is disbelief in its truth, and so impermissible because that would threaten faith.
Now of course their brilliant argument largely revolved around assuming that only a single entity could "logically" before the creation of the universe. At this point it would not take someone long to work out that, had the Koran been uncreated, it would also violate their brilliant argument which had so clearly demonstrated the existence of Allah. So this is where the period of happiness comes to a close, now we are torturing scholars for having an opinion that contradicted a speculative and bad philosophical argument that had somehow found itself in the position of being a key proof of faith. That would not indeed go well for them, and for some reason 99% of Islamic jurists cease talking about them here because there is no need anymore for a bad guy to pit against the valiant defenders of faith who would be on the other side of this conflict. But in fact Kalam would continue on for hundreds of years after this, and proceed in a similar fashion. 
Building iteratively over time one layer over another, where they would perceive a need for something to be true to support the faith, or ever increasingly just the system itself, hastily cobble together an argument for it's being true, and upon finding one that seemed more or less good enough to all of them, declare it to be demonstrated, and so on and so on. They would of course readily write over and disagree with whatever preceding philosophical premises they felt they had to to get to where they wished to go. Many of the premises were largely based on purely imaginary scenarios; once again, they were not good enough at philosophy to understand the difference between imagination and the intellect. Eventually, the system had developed its own bizarre pseudo-physics as well, which was based around atoms, denied entirely the concept of necessity, and considered the universe to be just arbitrary arrangements of atoms spontaneously particularized by Allah into whatever configuration for no other reason than that He willed it. This also eventually degraded to them discounting the senses as valid sources, as the senses were clearly flawed and if the senses disagreed with the "demonstrated", clearly the senses had to go. Essentially, to protect their pseudophilosophical system and "demonstrated" arguments, they ripped out the entire basis of philosophy and rationality. 
Now that we reached this point, I'd like to point out that we consider the Mutakallimūn to be a thing of the past, as the quote above indicates. However, I imagine some among you have probably heard very similar arguments used elsewhere. Denial of any necessity, conception of the universe as nothing more than ephemeral configurations of matter that Allah for whatever reason decided to particularize in that perceived form and shape at that time, as well as completely discounting the senses (ie, suspiciously castigating anyone who disagrees of "...merely believing their senses...), to the point of stubbornly refusing to believe them when doing so would necessarily contradict that which has been demonstrated by 'itja. One does not see any of these in modern philosophy, but I do not think it can be said that there is not *some* major and important discipline out there in modern society which readily does all of the above. They may even consider such to be part of their authentic doctrine from time immemorial, but this is understandable I suppose since custom so often seem that way. Many are also still seemingly impressed by the Kalam cosmological argument, despite supposedly being against Kalam. One can understand how in such an environment such a noxious and stifling movement was able to gain such purchase and spread so quickly and with so little opposition, as there is seemingly little care in those who are unvirtuous and iniquitous, besides achieving certain results. So how would they notice?
In any case, as for their association with the Islamic Philosophers, this is completely laughable. The Islamic Philosophers wrote extensive rebuttals of the above and were forethright in their criticism and opposition to kalam pseuophilosophy from the beginning. Some were religious judges, but they, understanding the inherent incompatibility of the two disciplines, did not use philosophy in their jurisdiction, or for that matter attempt to import customs from the practices of Islamic jurists into philosophy. The kalam was objectionable to them because of it's clear intellectual bankruptcy, as it had never from the start been practiced for the sake of philosophy itself, but only as an avenue by which they thought they could accomplish other goals. And in doing so they grossly mutilated and did great offense to theology. Moreover they were persecuted for it - it is obvious that several of Al-Farabi's texts which contained extensive criticism of Kalam were completely suppressed such that no extant copy of them exists today. This hundreds of years after the inquisition where supposedly in the common narrative Kalam disappeared. Al-Ghazali of course, was also hugely opposed to the philosophers, but surely for entirely different reasons because, as we know, his views were certainly so different than those of the wretched Mu'tazilites who did all of this for, well I guess because they disbelieved so hard or something, and as we know Al-Ghazali was truly among the righteous.
In any case I think a summary of Momainedes exposition would do much to benefit the article, since it is much more extensive than that usually given by Islamic scholars, who seem significantly more focused on highlighting the unrelated, and in fact, opposed, school of Islamic philosophers, than anything that was actually a tenet of the kalam. If anyone could find a scholarly summary to reference and link the highlights, that would be good. I only have the primary source myself which would be unsuitable to attempt to adapt into a wikipedia article.2601:140:8D01:C90:B92F:AEB2:2986:85FB (talk) 16:04, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maimonedes opinions on Kalam