Information AboutMihna |
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The Mihna—Arabic for 'ordeal'—was the last real attempt by Muslim rulers to impose their will on the development of the Islam; during this period, which lasted from 832 until 848 CE, the Abbasid Caliphs had made the Greek philosophy-influenced Mu'tazilite interpretation of Islam the official version of the religion, and tried to bar the teaching of other versions in many mosques. The Mu'tazilite school at this point was using the recently translated works of the Greek philosophers to interpret the Quran --applying, for example, the principles of logic to the teachings of the holy book, and trying to explain Islam through rational proofs (as Rene Descartes tried to do for Christianity many centuries later). However, the Mu'tazilite ideas were emphatically not shared by the mass of believers or even by most Muslim scholars—it was essentially a movement of a group of intellectual Muslim scholars without a large following. The caliph Al-Ma'mun made Mu'tazilite doctrine the official state doctrine, and near the end of his reign launched the Mihna, which western commentators have compared (perhaps not accurately) to the Inquisition. Many of the Ulema—Muslim religious scholars—vehemently opposed the Mu’talizite doctrines and their attempts to interpret the Quran through the lens of Greek logic and philosophy. Perhaps the most notable opponent was Ibn Hanbal , the founder of the Hanbali school of Islamic interpretation. Hanbal and his followers advocated a nearly literal interpretation of the Quran, and considered the holy book 'uncreated,' in contrast to the Mu'tazilites. Hanbal spent much of the Mihna period imprisoned by the Abbasid Caliphate, until the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil released him, ended the controversy over the createdness of the Quran, and suppressed the public discussion of Mu'tazilite doctrines. The result of the Mihna was a kind of 'separation of church and state' (though not at all in the modern sense of the phrase )—from 848 on, it was the Ulema who decided individually what was the legitimate interpretation of Islamic law and its sources; Caliphs could try to influence Islamic doctrine, but they no longer attempted to dictate terms to the Ulema. |
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