Kalam

ʿIlm al-kalām (Arabic: عِلْم الكَلام, lit. 'science of discourse'), usually foreshortened to kalām and sometimes called "Islamic scholastic theology" or "speculative theology", generally speaking is the philosophical study of Islamic doctrine (Arabic: عقائد, romanized: ʿaqāʾid). It can also be defined as the science that studies the fundamental doctrines of Islamic faith (usul al-Din), proving their validity, and refuting any doubts regarding them.

Some scholars state kalām was born out of the need to establish and defend the tenets of Islam against the philosophical doubters. This picture has been questioned by scholarship that attempts to show that kalām was, in fact, a demonstrative rather than a dialectical science and was always intellectually creative. It is also important to note that the definition of kalām has changed depending on the time and context and who it was used by.

The term kalām means "speech", "word", or "utterance". There are many possible interpretations as to why this discipline was originally called so; one is that one of the widest controversies in this discipline, in the second and third centuries of Hijra, has been about whether the "Word of God" (Kalām Allāh), as revealed in the Quran, is an eternal attribute of God and therefore not created, or whether it is created words. A scholar of kalām is referred to as a mutakallim (plural: mutakallimūn), and it is a role distinguished from those of Islamic philosophers and jurists.