Al-Ash’ari

Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ash’arī is one of those figures whose influence is so pervasive that it becomes invisible. The theological framework of mainstream Sunni Islam — its account of God’s attributes, its theory of causation, its understanding of human action — is substantially Ash’arite. When Iqbal describes the Ash’arites as ‘the most orthodox and still popular school of Muslim theology,’ he is identifying the water in which most Sunni Muslims swim.

Al-Ash’ari began his career as a Mu’tazilite — a rationalist theologian committed to the primacy of reason in theology. Around the age of forty, he publicly broke with the Mu’tazila and committed himself to defending the positions of the traditionalists (ahl al-hadith) using the very tools of rational theology (kalam) that the rationalists had developed. This is the founding paradox of Ash’arism: it uses reason to defend positions that claim to be beyond reason.

Iqbal’s engagement with al-Ash’ari is almost entirely positive. He treats the Ash’arite atomic theory — the claim that the universe is composed of indivisible atoms that are continuously created by God — not as a historical curiosity but as a genuine philosophical insight that resonates with modern physics. The Reconstruction’s reading of Ash’arite atomism is one of its most original and provocative claims.