Islam Quote by Dimitri Gutas

““At the center of discussion were the questions of legitimacy of succession to the caliphate, the relationship of leadership to faith, and the concomitant problem of unbelief when that relationship was considered by some factions as inadequate. The conflicting views that were expressed on these controversial issues eventually gave rise to theological positions, or to a theology of controversy (Kontroverstheologie), as termed by Josef van Ess, which constituted part of the political discourse of the nascent Muslim society.30 Right after the turn of the first Islamic century and just before the Abbasid revolution (ca. 720s), however, a new, cosmological element was introduced into theological discussions – in particular, atomism – apparently through the Manichean sects.31 The need for a cosmology other than atomism occasioned the translation of Aristotle’s Physics by the end of the eighth century, a work that was repeatedly to be re-translated (or revised).32 Also related to such theological disputes is the appearance, in the first half of the eighth century and before the beginning of the translation movement, of certain Plotinian ideas in the theology of Jahm Ibn S.afwan (d. ¯ 746), ideas that, in this case, appear to have traveled without written translations.33””

— Dimitri Gutas