KalĀm
KALĀM. In common usage kalām signifies speech, language, sentence, proposition, words, but in the field of Muslim religious thought it has two particular meanings: the word of God (kalām Allāh) and the science of kalām (ʿilm al-kalām), which may be understood as dogmatic theology or more precisely the defensive apologetics of Islam. Apart from a few preliminary remarks on kalām as the word of God, the present article is devoted to kalām in the latter sense.
Etymology and Definitions
Kalām Allāh is mentioned several times in the Qurʾān (for example, sūrahs 2:75, 9:6, 48:15). God spoke to the Prophets (2:253). He "spoke clearly to Moses" (4:164, 7:143, and elsewhere). However, one finds neither kalām nor mutakallim (speaking) in the list of the most beautiful names of God (asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā). Rather, it was the theologians who, on the basis of Qurʾanic evidence, ascribed the attribute of kalām to God and designated the Qurʾān as kalām Allāh. From this development arose the very controversial problem of the relationship of the Qurʾān to the Word as a divine attribute. Here it may be mentioned in passing that during the European Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas described the mutakallimūn (whose occasionalism and negation of causality he refuted) as "loquentes in lege maurorum" ("those who speak on behalf of Islam").
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