Moderate Muslims, Rational Islamic Theology

Claire Berlinski contrasts the moderate Muslims she lives around in Turkey with radical Muslims. Start the video, then go to full screen for better video quality.

On Ricochet (a blog-like discussion forum), she discusses a new book concerning a time, prior to the ninth century, when Islamic theology may have been more conducive to reason than it is today.

The answer ... completely hinges on God’s relationship to reason in Sunni Islam. Is God reason, or logos, as the Greeks would say? If God himself is reason, then it is hard to close the mind because one would then be closing oneself to God. This, in fact, was the view of the first fully-developed theological school in Islam, the Mu‘tazilites. The Mu‘tazalites asserted the primacy of reason, and that one’s first duty is to engage in reason and, through it, to come to know God. . . .

However, the school of theology that arose to oppose the Mu’tazilites, the Ash‘arites, held the opposite. Unfortunately, by the end of the ninth century, they prevailed and became the formative influence in Sunni Islam. For the Ash‘arites, God is not reason, but pure will and absolute power. He is not bound by anything, including his own word. Since God is pure will, He has no reasons for his acts. Thus what He does cannot be understood by man. One of the things that God does is create the world, which also cannot be understood. . . .

Interesting reading if you're up for some academic cross-talk.

There's a lot most of us don't understand about Islam.