ʿIlm al-Kalām, usually foreshortened to Kalām and sometimes called "Islamic scholastic theology", is the study of Islamic doctrine. It was born out of the need to establish and defend the tenets of Islamic faith against doubters and detractors. A scholar of Kalām is referred to as a mutakallim, and it is a role distinguished from those of Islamic philosophers, jurists, and scientists. The Arabic term Kalām means "speech, word, utterance" among other things, and its use regarding Islamic theology is derived from the expression "Word of God" found in the Qur'an. Murtada Mutahhari describes Kalām as a discipline devoted to discuss "the fundamental Islamic beliefs and doctrines which are necessary for a Muslim to believe in. It explains them, argues about them, and defends them". There are many possible interpretations as to why this discipline was originally called so; one is that the widest controversy in this discipline has been about whether the "Word of God", as revealed in the Qur'an, can be considered part of God's essence and therefore not created, or whether it was made into words in the normal sense of speech, and is therefore created.
Origins
As early as in the times of the Abbasid Caliphate, the discipline of Kalam arose in an "attempt to grapple" with several "complex problems" early in the history of Islam, according to historian Majid Fakhry. One was how to rebut arguments "leveled at Islam by pagans, Christians and Jews". Another was how to deal with the predestination of sinners to hell on the one hand and "divine justice" on the other,. Also Kalam sought to make "a systematic attempt to bring the conflict in data of revelation into some internal harmony". ;Ahl al-Kalam Historian Daniel W. Brown describes Ahl al-Kalam as one of three main groups engaged in polemical disputes over sources of authority in Islamic law during the second century of Islam -- Ahl ar-Ra'y and Ahl al-Hadith being the other two. Ahl al-Kalam agreed with Ahl al-Hadith that the example of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was authoritative, but it did not believe it to be divine revelation, a status that only the Quran had. It also rejected the authority of hadith on the grounds that its corpus was "fill with contradictory, blasphemous, and absurd" reports, and that in jurisprudence, even the smallest doubt about a source was too much. Thus, they believed, the true legacy of the prophet was to be found elsewhere i.e. in "Sunnah" which is separate from Hadith. Ahl al-Hadith prevailed over the Ahl al-Kalam so that most of what is known about their arguments comes from the writings of their opponents, such as Imam al-Shafi'i. Brown also describes the Muʿtazili as "the later ahl al-kalām", suggesting the ahl al-kalām were forerunners of the Muʿtazili.
As an Islamic discipline
Even though seeking knowledge in Islam is considered a religious obligation, the study of kalam is considered by Muslim scholars to fall beyond the category of necessity and is usually the preserve of qualified scholars, eliciting limited interest from the masses or common people. The early Muslim scholar al-Shafi‘i held that there should be a certain number of men trained in kalam to defend and purify the faith, but that it would be a great evil if their arguments should become known to the mass of the people. Similarly, the Islamic scholaral-Ghazali held the view that the science of kalam is not a personal duty on Muslims but a collective duty. Like al-Shafi‘i, he discouraged the masses from studying it. The HanbaliSufi, Khwaja Abdullah Ansari wrote a treatise entitled Dhamm al-Kalam where he criticized the use of kalam. The contemporary Islamic scholar Nuh Ha Mim Keller holds the view that the criticism of kalam from scholars was specific to the Muʿtazila, going on to claim that other historical Muslim scholars such as al-Ghazali and an-Nawawi saw both good and bad in kalam and cautioned from the speculative excess of unorthodox groups such as the Muʿtazila and the Jahmis. As Nuh Ha Mim Keller states in his article "Kalam and Islam":
