Thereafter...

Thereafter, during the first half of the second century, the notion of the unity of Divine Attributes and Essence was posed by Jahm ibn Safwan.

Thereupon, Wasil ibn 'Ata' and 'Amr ibn 'Ubayd, the founders of the Mu'tazilite school, adopting the belief in free will from Ma'bad and Ghaylan and the doctrine of the unity of Divine Essence and Attributes from Jahm ibn Safwan, and themselves innovating the doctrine of manzilah bayna al-manzilatayn in the issue of the faith or infidelity of fasiq, initiated debates in some other issues, thus founding the first school in Islamic kalam.

This is how the Orientalists and the scholars of Islamic studies in the West and the East explain and interpret the origins of rational speculation and debates in the Islamic world. This group, advertently or mistakenly, ignores the profound rational and demonstrative arguments advanced for the first time by Amir al-Muminin 'Ali (A). The truth is that the rational approach in Islamic teachings was first initiated by 'Ali (A) in his sermons and discussions.

It was he who for the first time initiated profound discussion on the subjects of Divine Essence and Attributes, temporality( huduth ) and pre-eternity( qidam ) , simplicity (basatah) and compositeness( tarkib ) , unity( wahdah ) and plurality (kathrah), etc. These are recorded in the Nahj al-balaghah and other authentic texts of Shi'ah hadith .

These discussions have a colour, perfume and spirit which are totally distinct from the approaches of the Mu'tazilah and the Asha'irah to the controversies of kalam, or even from that of the Shi'ah scholars, who were influenced by their contemporary kalam. In our Sayr dar Nahj al-balaghah (" A Journey Through the Nahj al-balaghah "), and in our preface to the Vol. V of Usul-e falsafeh wa rawish-e riyalism , we have discussed this matter.

Sunni historians confess that from the earliest days the Shi'ite thinking was philosophical in approach. The Shi'ite intellectual and theoretical approach is opposed not only to the Hanbali thinking - which fundamentally rejects the idea of using discursive reasoning in religious belief - and the Ash'arite approach - which denies the independence of reason and subordinates it to literalist appearance - but also to the Mu'tazilite thinking with all its predilection for reason.

Because, although the Mu'tazilite thought is rational, it is dialectical or polemical ( jadali ), not discursive or demonstrative ( burhani ).