http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/1994/10/03#mutazilites Ties to pre-Islamic philosophy; science; democratic politics; Sufism; feminism. Use by modernizers in the contemporary Muslim world as ``acceptable ancestors''. (I got on to this because of <a href="mernissi.html">Fatima Mernissi</a>, specifically the parts of <cite>Islam and Democracy</cite> devoted to the Mu'tazilites. Unfortunately it looks like the serious work on this is not in English...) <ul>To read: <li>Alnoor Dahani, <cite>The Physical Theory of </cite>Kalam<cite>: Atoms, Space and Void in Basrian Mu'tazili Cosmology</cite> <li>George Hourani, <cite>Islamic Rationalism</cite> <li>Peters, <cite>God's Created Speech: a Study in the Speculative Theology of the Mu'tazili Qadi l-gudat Abul-Hasan 'Abd al-Jabbar bn Ahmad al-Hamadani</cite> <li>Sophia Vasalou, <cite>Moral Agents and Their Deserts: The Character of Mu'tazilite Ethics</cite> [<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8675.html">blurb, ch. 1</a>] </ul>