- published: 19 May 2015
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Ashʿari theology (Arabic الأشعرية al-Asha`riyya or الأشاعرة al-Ashā`irah) is a school of early Muslim speculative theology founded by the theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari (d. 324 AH / 936 AD). The disciples of the school are known as Ash'arites, and the school is also referred to as Ash'arite school.
It was instrumental in drastically changing the direction of Islamic theology, separating its development radically from that of theology in the Christian world.
The Asharite view holds that:
The school holds that human reason in and by itself was not capable of establishing with absolute certainty any truth-claim with respect to morality, the physical world, or metaphysical ideas.
Contrary to popular opinion, the Asharites were not completely traditionalist and anti-rationalist, nor were their historical foes, the Mutazilites, completely rationalist and anti-traditionalist, as the Asharites did depend on rationality and the Mutazilites did depend on tradition. Their goals were the same, to affirm the transcendence and unity of God, but their doctrines were different, with the Asharites supporting an Islamic occasionalist doctrine and the Mutazilites supporting an Islamic metaphysics influenced by Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. For Asharites, taqlid only applied to the Islamic tradition and not to any other, whereas for Mutazilites, taqlid applied equally to both the Islamic and Aristotelian-Neoplatonic traditions. In his introduction to Al-Ghazālī’s The Decisive Criterion of Distinction Between Unbelief and Masked Infidelity, Sherman Jackson writes:
Ash may refer to:
The solid remains of fires, such as:
Ari may refer to: