Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Mozammel Haque, “The Role of 

Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami in the Promotion of Islamic 

Education,”  Islamic Quarterly 6, no. 1 (1992): 58–63; 

Jacob Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and 

Organization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

mutaa

  See t

welve

-i

mam

 s

hiism

.

Mutazili School

The first truly doctrinal school of 

theology

(kalam) in Islam, the Mutazili School flourished 

from the eighth to the 11th centuries. Its com-

parative rationalist orientation influenced dis-

cussions within classical Islamic 

philosophy

, and 

made decisive contributions to the development 

and intellectual sophistication of ilm al-kalam

(science of theology). In fact, the rationalist 

approach and doctrines of Mutazili theology 

impacted a variety of Islamic sciences. In our 

own time, historical and theoretical treatments 

of Mutazili theology have affected the tenor and 

tone of modernist and postmodernist Muslim 

discourse in general and Islamic liberalism in 

particular: from the Indonesian scholar Harun 

Nasution to such diverse figures as the late 

F

azlUr

  r

ahman

,  m

Uhammed

  a

rkoUn

, F

atima

m

ernissi

, and Hassan Hanafi.

The school’s name is derived from an Arabic 

verb meaning “to withdraw, stand aside” (itazala), 

here in the sense of “those who separate them-

selves.” The following traditional account elabo-

rates:  a

l

-h

asan

 

al

-b

asri

 (642–728), an ascetic 

Sufi who belonged to the generation of pious 

Muslims (tabiun) after the c

ompanions

 

oF

 

the

p

rophet

  m

Uhammad

, argued that humans have 

been accorded free will and thus possess moral 

and spiritual responsibility for their behavior. 

This viewpoint, propagated by the Qadariyya, 

opponents of the U

mayyad

  c

aliphate

, allowed 

them to hold the 

caliph

 accountable for his 

acts. Technically, qadar meant “divine decree” or 

“predestination,” but for the Qadariyya and the