1. Τhe philosophy of Ibāḍī Kalām

2. The imamate of Basra

3. Main doctrines

4. References

Τhe philosophy of Ibāḍī Kalām

The development of Ibāḍī theology happened thanks to the works of scholars and imams of the Ibāḍī community, whose histories, lives, and personalities are part of the Islamic history.^[3] Ibāḍī theology can be understood on the basis of the works of Ibn Ibāḍ, Jābir bin Zayd, Abū 'Ubaida, Rabī' b. Ḥabīb and Abū Sufyān among others. Basra is the foundation of the Ibāḍī community.^[1] Even though Ibāḍīsm was extinguished in Basra in the late 2nd century Hijrah, the Ibadi teachers of Basra and their works continue to constitute sources of inspiration for the life and teaching of the Ibāḍī community. This why Ibāḍī teaching cannot be properly understood without awareness of the life, history, and personalities of the Basra community and then to survey the spread and grow of the various Ibāḍī communities that were established in southern Arabia, with bases in Oman, North Africa, and East Africa mainly.^[1]

The Ibāḍīs today prefer to use the term Muḥakkima and to consider themselves descendants of the Muḥakkima, but exclude their extreme tendencies Khawārij, differentiating them from insurgents and extremists.^[4] This position is expressed explicitly by the "most prominent Ibāḍī Kalām theologian" of the 2nd/8th century, 'Abd Allāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī, in his brief work K. al-Futyā, of which survives only the first folio, and which Wilferd Madelung examines in his recent article  Abd Allāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī on the Abode of Islam'.^[5][6]

The basic principles of Ibāḍī theology, of course, do not differ from those of the other Islamic schools, madhāhib, but it has its own identity which, for Ibāḍīs, is the true Islamic identity.Ibāḍīs accept the Qur'ān as the fundamental source of Islamic faith and life. They also value the aḥādīth of the Prophet and his companions (Ṣaḥāba), who preached and interpreted the Qur'ān in the Muslim community. The way they treat the theological, legal and social problems that develop in various Qur'ānic verses was based from the beginning on the words and traditions of the Prophet or the traditions of the Prophet's companions and their students.

The imamate of Basra

Following the example of their first Imam, Jabir ibn. Zayd, they find support for their views in a large number of companions of the Prophet (Ṣaḥāba) and in particular ʻAbdullāh b. Al-'Abbās, the distinguished interpreter of the Qur'ān and the Prophet's cousin.^[7] ʻAbdullāh b. Al-'Abbās was one of the first Muslims to undertake the interpretation (Tafsīr) of the Qur'an. It is also interesting that ʻAbdullāh b. Al-'Abbās applied the raʼy method to his interpretation of the Qur'ān, which would be subsequently adopted by Ibāḍī and Muʻtazila scholars to metaphorically interpret the various Qur'ānic names for God and to avoid tashbīh (anthropomorphisms).^[8][9][10]

An important contribution to the Ibāḍīs' theology came from the third Imam, Al-Rabīʻ b. Ḥabīb b. ʻAmr al Farāhīdī, who incorporated the aḥādīth into the āthār of the Ibāḍī community.^[11] From the beginning, the learned men and spiritual leaders of the Ibāḍī community developed a spiritual and intellectual movement which closely followed the religious, political, and social things of Islam, and elaborated religious and theological teachings on all matters related to Islamic society. The Ibāḍī movement sees itself as the guardian of Islam against the secularisation of power (Muhakkima). As such, it developed—together with the Muʻtazila movement—a rich theology that transformed Classical and Late Antiquity to the demands of the prophetic word.

Ibāḍī theology embraces the fundamental principles of Islam and purports to be based on the Qur'ān, the Prophet, and his companions (Ṣaḥāba, tābiʻūn wa tābiʻūn at-tābiʻūn), the life and works of which were incorporated into the āthār of the Ibāḍī community. The major theological and philosophical issues facing the community relate to God, the world, and human nature, and were negotiated in the Ibāḍī community by its leaders and teachers. Belief in one God is the foundation of Ibāḍīsm. Faith means confession that God is absolutely one, i.e., confession of absolute monotheism (tawḥīd). Ibāḍī theology, therefore, includes teachings about God, His creation, and humans, and discusses the essence and existence of God on one hand and, on the other, His relationship to His creation and creatures, especially his rational creature, the human being. These fundamental teachings of faith constitute the "roots" (uṣūl) or the "principles" of Ibāḍī theology, which are called uṣūl (singular, aṣl) or ʻaqāʼid (ʻaqīda).^{[12][13][14][15]}

The Ibāḍīs, according to their narratives, was one of the first to approach the Qur'ānic passages and formulate the basic theological principles of Islam. They gave great weight to the 112th sura of the Qur'an entitled "Surat al-Ikhlās" or "Surat at-Tawhīd" which declares the believer's sincerity with all purity of heart for his faith in the one God. The chapter is called "Surat at-tawhīd" because it declares the oneness of God, i.e., true monotheism.^[16]

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ ١

اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ ٢

لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ ٣

وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ ٤

With this surat, and some other Qur'ānic passages, Ibāḍī theology emphasizes that God is the only being that has no resemblance to His creatures. Nevertheless, God is the creator of the world, and He is the One Who reveals the law and the truth in the Qur'ān, and cares for His people. Because: "He is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, it is He Who gives life and causes death; and He is Able to do all things. He is the First (nothing is before Him) and the Last (nothing is after Him), the Highest (nothing is above Him) and the Nearest (nothing is nearer than Him). And He is the All-Knower of everything. He is Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days and then Istawā (rose over) the Throne (in a manner that suits His Majesty)" (Surat 57, 2-4). This is a passage that describes God's greatness and omnipotence, and the Ibāḍīs interpreted it allegorically (Taʼwīl) to avoid anthropomorphism. The Ibāḍīs applied the same interpretation to all the Qur'ānic "beautiful names" (al-asmāʼ al-ḥusnā) that refer to the hand of God (al-yad) to express His power, and the eye (ʻayn) to indicate His global supervision. The image of God sitting on His throne (istiwāʼ ʻalā al-ʻarsh) was interpreted as His governance of the universe. They particularly repudiated the idea of the vision of God (ru'ya) at the eschaton.^[17][18][19]

Main doctrines

Ibāḍī theology emphasizes the unintelligible and impersonal nature of the divine essence and asserts that God's being is inseparable from His essence. God's being, however, becomes concrete when it is connected to the Divine names and Divine properties that are made manifest in the moral and physical order of the world. God, therefore, has 99 beautiful names, 100 minus one, because He, the "odd" (al-witr=the one), loves these names. The 100th name is dhāt, the essence of God, which cannot be contained in the human mind and is therefore unknown and inconceivable. It constitutes His internal hypostasis. God, however, is made known to the world with the rest of the names that He revealed in the Qur'ān and with which He communicates with His creatures. The names of God are neither identical with God, nor different from Him (hal asmāʼ Allāh hiya huwa am ghayruh). The names are not part of God, nor are they added to the divine essence, since thus God would be divided. God, however, is not portioned, is one and indivisible. In this sense, the attributes of His essence are eternal. The names, however, that we ascribe to God are our own words and, as such, are created concepts. The attributes of God, therefore, are external characteristics created by man and ascribed to God's essence from outside, and are, therefore, not eternal.^[20][21][22]

To distinguish between the eternal God and his non-eternal or created attributes, the Ibāḍīs used Aristotelian terms that had entered into Arabic philosophy, viz., the terms jawhar (substance) and ʻaraḍ (accident). The essence of God is single and eternal, and His attributes are created accidents, which are added to it from the outside. So, the question arose whether the Qur'ān is created or uncreated. The Ashʻarite and Sunni teachings profess that the Qur'ān is the word of God and therefore eternal and uncreated. The Ibāḍīs tend toward the Mu'tazilite position and believe that the Qur'ān is the created word of God. As with the Christians, the Muslims too adopted the arguments of Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotelian logic, to support their positions. It is indeed important and worth emphasising that, from as early as the 7th century, Islamic theology was familiar not only with the terms "essence" and "accident" from Aristotelian logic, but also its syllogisms generally.^[10][23][24]

A major, related problem is also God's justice (ʻadl), which was widely discussed by Ibāḍī theologians.^[25][26][27] The other issue that arose was God's relationship to the Ibāḍī community, and the faithful's relationship to God and their fellow men. For the Ibāḍī community, the concepts of walāya and barāʼa were of the greatest importance. Which of the faithful and members of the community are worthy of walāya (friendship/communication) and which of barā'a (excommunication), and why? What is the relationship between faith and unbelief (imām wa kufr)? Who is a muʼmīn and who a munafiq and what is kufr an-niʻma?^[28] Another issue discussed was the question of qadar (free will) and good deeds. The question of qadar (divine decision and free will) was one of the main issues within the first Ibāḍī community. Many discussions and arguments were debated between the Ibāḍīs, the Qadariya, and the Mu'atazila. It seems that some Ibāḍīs (like al-Fazārī, 8th century) were critical of determinism.^[29]

The Ibāḍiyya came to consider other Muslims as merely hypocrites (munāfiqūn) and neglecters of the true faith (kuffār), not as mushrikūn. As such they allowed social intercourse, intermarriage, and mutual inheritance, but not religious association (walāya, tawallī) with them. They mostly abstained from the armed revolt against the Umayyad government until the ʿAbbasid revolution in 127/746.^[28]

A very interesting topic is the atomic theory, which was adopted by Islamic schools to prove the existence of God. According to this theory, God is one, indivisible, and eternal. He is to be distinguished from every other atom in the universe, with which He has no similarity. In this sense, God is ʻayn, the primordial atom, the subject of God (dhāt), beside which there is no other atom, i.e., a second subject. God constitutes the identity of predicates. For this reason, I will first review some early Ibāḍī texts, which have been edited only recently, and I will detect the variant ways that their authors argue and engage in dialogue or controversy with other Islamic theological schools, and especially with the pre-Bahshamiyya Muʻtazilites and Ashʻarites.^[30][29]

Some of the authors of this period contribute substantially to the formulation of early Islamic thought, and are characterised by a rationalist rapprochement, understanding, and engagement of Islamic theology. Their contribution is very important not only to the systematization of the Ibāḍī madhhab but also to the renaissance and promotion of dialectics within Islamic theology that would later lead to its systematization by the several Islamic schools. It is particularly important to note that early Ibāḍī and Mu'tazilite thought that predates the formative Islamic period (and which often remains opaque to modern researchers), utilized philosophy from the classical period and Early Antiquity, imbuing old notions—such as the aforementioned ones of substance, atoms, essence, attributes, etc.—with new meanings. To this end, I will also look at the works of John the Damascene^[31] and Abū Qurra^[32] in Eastern Christianity and Islam, as well as the School of Ibn Ḥunayn, and other Baṣrian Christian theologians like al-Kindī, 'Amār al-Baṣri and Yahyā bin 'Alī, in order to trace the use of Aristotelian thought in Christianity initially and Islam later, through the transmission of Greek literature to the Arab-Islamic tradition.

What can be understood from the ideas of the early Ibāḍīs and Mu'tazila is that their ideas helped diversify Islamic intellectual and theological discourse. They have had an important impact on the history of the Muslim world; their contribution was the codification of Islam. Ibāḍīs also created a rational discourse that promoted the study and hermeneutics of Islamic texts and scriptures. Some of the thinkers in the Muslim world came out from this movement, either inspired by or opposed to it. Finally, Ibāḍīs are still producing writings and theology in contrast to the Mu'atazila, who have been lost to Muslim history. Recent research focuses on these issues in all their dimensions from the beginnings of the Ibāḍī community and until the 12th century.

References

• UN 1887
• UN 1888
• UN1889
• UN 1938
• UN 194
• UN 1941
• UN 1955
• UN 1982
• UN 1984
• UN 2035
• UN 2193
• UN 2205
• UN 2256
• UN 2345
• UN 2454
• UN 2491
• UN 2515
• UN 2516
• UN 2644
• UN 2664
• UN 3252
• Un 32 aout sur terre
• Un 32 Août sur la Terre
• Un 32 août sur terre
• Una alma sentenciada