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In its formative medieval period, Islamic theology, defined as a systematic discourse about God carried out by Muslims, evolved as part of the premodern world’s most internally diverse cultural sphere. The vast territorial range of the religion, combined with its inability to generate an authoritative church-like hierarchy to define and impose doctrine, ensured that acceptable Muslim ways of speaking about the divine evolved over centuries by largely consensual processes, and that no formal list of creedal essentials was ever generally promulgated.
Properly speaking, therefore, there are multiple Islamic theologies, rather than a single discrete tradition with settled canons of orthodoxy. Of these, three have substantially survived in the majoritarian Sunni context: Ash‘arism, Maturidism, and Hanbalism, all of which are generally regarded as valid. In the context of Shi‘ism (approximately 10% of Muslims), the medieval Mu‘tazilite school, rejected in...
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Winter, T.J. (2013). Theology in Islam. In: Runehov, A.L.C., Oviedo, L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_1110
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_1110
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