The Fourfold Kalām Categorization: The Contribution of Malay Muslim Scholars to The Development of Kalām Attribute

Abstract

Despite the continuous effort by traditional Muslim Malay scholars in producing Jāwī texts, they are often viewed as stagnant and static which is supposedly reflected by the lack of Intellectual development in the Malay world in terms of originality and ingenuity. This, along with a strong focus on a small group of popular scholars brought about such eschewed perception towards Malay scholars. Whereas in reality there were some lesser-known groups of Malay scholars in the 20th century that contributed in disproving such perception. This paper then will shed some light on these Malay scholars, their ideas, justification of these ideas and their overall contributions. This paper employed a qualitative research method by referring to available sources like books and academic journals. Most importantly, Jāwī texts that are relevant to the topic will be scrutinized in order to delineate the topic at hand. The findings reveal that this group of scholars developed a unique method in expounding the Kalām Attribute by categorizing it into four instead of two which is the addition of Kalām Nafsānī and Kalām Maṣdarī on top of the mainstream Kalām Nafsī and Kalām Lafzī. This pedagogically prevents potential deviations among readers that occur as a result of literally understanding Jāwī texts that are prior to the emergence of these scholars.