Note 40 — Chapter VIII · FREETHOUGHT UNDER ISLAM1

The history of Saracen culture is the history of the attainment of saner ideas and a higher plane of thought. Within a century of the Hej’ra40 there had arisen some rational skepticism in the Moslem schools, as apart from the chronic schisms and strifes of the faithful. A school of theology had been founded by Hasan-al-Basri at Bassorah; and one of his disciples, Wasil ibn Attâ, following some previous heretics—Mabad al Jhoni, Ghailan of Damascus, and Jonas al Aswari41—rejected the predestination doctrine of the Koran as inconsistent with the future judgment; arguing for freewill and at the same time for the humane provision of a purgatory. From this beginning dates the Motazileh or class of Motazilites (or Mu`tazilites),42 the philosophic reformers and moderate freethinkers of Islam. Other sects of a semi-political character had arisen even during the last illness of the Prophet, and others soon after his death.43 One party sought to impose on the faithful the “Sunna” or “traditions,” which really represented the old Arabian ideas of law, but were pretended to be unwritten sayings of Mohammed.44 To this the party of Ali (the Prophet’s cousin) objected; whence began the long dispute between the Shiah or Shîites (the anti-traditionists), and the Sunnites; the conquered and oppressed Persians tending to stand with the former, and generally, in virtue of their own thought, to supply the heterodox element under the later Khalifates.45 Thus Shîites were apt to be Motazilites.46 On Ali’s side, again, there broke away a great body of Kharejites or Separatists, who claimed that the Imaum or head of the Faith should be chosen by election, while the Shîites stood for succession by divine right.47 All this had occurred before any schools of theology existed.