In the first half of the first century of the Islamic era...

In the first half of the first century of the Islamic era, the debate erupted about the unity of the Attributes and the Essence, championed by al-Jahm bin Safwan. The idea of man’s freewill, as espoused by Ma’bad and Ghelan, was taken on board by Wasil bin Ata’ and Amr bin Obaid, co-founders of the Mu’tazilite School; they also took up the idea of the unity of the Essence and Attributes from al-Jahm.

However, the idea of “the middle way”, regarding the unbelief or belief of the godless was their own child. This was the beginning of the Islamic science of kalaam . Indeed, this is one interpretation for the emergence of religious rational discussions in Islam, which was advocated by the orientalists and professors of Islamic thought in the East and the West. Those people [i.e.

the orientalists] had deliberately however, overlooked the role of Imam Ali (a.s.) in bringing these serious deductive and rational studies to the fore. It is a known fact that raising such thought-provoking issues in the domain of Islamic thought was done by Imam Ali in his sermons, appeals, and letters.

He was the first to talk about the Essence and the Attributes, Eternity and Transience, simplicity and complexity, unity and multiplicity, and other profound questions, the majority of which can be found in Nahjul Balagha (Path of Eloquence), an anthology of Imam Ali’s words, and other authentic Shia reports.

Those discussions and studies were characterized by the spiritual, which was completely alien to the kalaam techniques of the Mu’tazilites and Ash’arites that were the product of the thought prevalent in their own day and age. Sunni historians recognize that Shia thought has been woven of a philosophical fibre. In other words, their intellectual and rational approach is based on deduction.

Shia thought is dissimilar to the Hanbilite thought, which unequivocally reject the use of reason and evidence in reaching conviction in religious beliefs. It is also not like the Ash’arite thought, which takes its cue from reason and makes it subservient to the apparent meanings of expressions per se. And it is contrary to the Mu’tazilite thought, which unleashes the rational tendency, because it is based on argumentation that lack substance and proof.

As a result, most of the Muslim philosophers were of Shia persuasion.