An Indonesian follower of the Mutazilah school

Harun Nasution was an Indonesian follower of the Mutazilah school of thought. He openly defended the medieval rationalist theological school in his publication in 1970s.

The authors [1] found this somewhat bizarre because very few people in the modern time have identified themselves as a Mutazilite.

The Sunni Muslims are followers of the Ash'ari and Maturidi theologians (mutakallimun). They strongly follow their Fiqh Scholars such as, Imam Hanbali, Imam Hanafi, Imam Shafii.

Among the Shias, their theologians continued to examine the medieval Mu'tazili texts.

The Mu'tazili thinking began to see a revival among the Sunni Muslim intellectuals in the 19th century.

Several Mu'tazili documents have been discovered in libraries in the Middle-East. This has increase the scholarly interest among the Western and Muslim scholars.

The authors studied the following Mutazilah resources

• Harun Nasution pamphlets in Bahasa Indonesia in the late 1970s
• Work by a Mutazili theologian, Qadi 'Abd al-Jabbar - Kitab al-usul al-khamsa (Book on the five fundamentals)

Introduction on page 5 define the science of religion as

the study of religion consists in a science or in sciences that explain the "data of religion" has led communities of scholars in the academy, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (and to a lesser extent the American Academy of Religion), to isolate problems in the study of religion for special attention.

Most of the modern scholars have studied and devoted significant amount of time to Muslim fundamentalists. Muslim rationalists groups like the Mu’tazili have not received much attention.

I am skipping some parts that are not about Mutazilah.

I am quoting authors description about Ilm al-Kalam

Theological controversy was vigorously pursued in classical Islamic society. The term we translate as "theology" is in Arabic "kalam," meaning "speech" or "discourse." Those who pursued verbal controversy about matters of religious belief were known as mutakallimun (singular. mutakallim). Their disputations were about such matters as the nature of God and His attributes, scripture, prophets, good and evil, and the religious foundations of political authority and order. These topics framed discourses on doctrinal boundaries which separated the religious communities that existed within Islamic society, and at the same time they bound them together in a common way of speaking about their relationship to each other.

 to be continued...

Reference
[1] Martin, Richard C, Woodward, Mark R and Atmaja, Dwi S. 1997. Defenders of Reason In Islam: Mu'tazilism and Rational Theology from Medieval School to Modern Symbol. Oneworld Oxford. Preface. ISBN 978-1851681471