Muʿtazilism and ‘Ḫalq al-Qurʼān’ and Lingua Sacra: The Qurʼānic Arabic Text as a Challenge in Early Islam

Abstract

One of the discourses that are ascribed to the Muʿazilites is their claim that the Qur’ān is created. We do have primary and secondary resources explaining this Muʿtazilite teaching and elaborating on how these rationalist mutakallims treated the Religious Text as a created entity. However, while the question of ‘how’ is intensively exposed in scholarship, what is yet to be answered is the following question: Why did the Muʿtazilites opt for this theological belief in specific? What drove them to argue for the createdness of the Qurʼān instead of just following the predominant trend of thought that was adopted by their contemporary Muslim Qur’ānic scholars, namely the belief that the Qur’ān is not just pre-existent but also an uncreated text? What could be the driving-force behind the Muʿtazilites’ parting ways with this mainstream conviction? This essay tackles these inquiries by means of proposing that the Muʿtazilites’ speech about the createdness of the Qur’ān is scriptural, linguistic, and exegetical in nature. It is expressive of their corosspollination with the other Muslim Qur’ānic scholars’ praising of the sacredness of the Qur’ān’s Arabic language; this belief that was commonly emphasized by the Muslim public. This might indicate that ‘ḫalq al-Qur’ān’ is the Muʿtazilites’ way of questioning the ‘lingua sacra’ idea in correspondence with other Muslim traditionalists’ reservations on this sacredness. The essay develops this proposal by unpacking the stances of discourses on the Qurʼān from 2^nd/8^th-3^rd/9^th centuries onwards on the sacredness of the Qurʼān’s Arabic language. It, then, looks attentively at some of the main discourses on the createdness of the Qurʼān in known Muʿtazilite texts. The essay aspires at offering a new reading of the historical-contextual and religious factors that generated the controversy between Muslim scholars over the createdness of the Qurʼān, and wants to propose a possibility exceeds the classically believed political and power-game causing factors.