Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi on the Utility of 'Ilmul Kalam

I found this paragraph to be quite the eye-opener:

”The science of kalam (speculative theology) arose as a response to outsider perspectives brought into reflections on the Qur’anic text. These were the perspectives of former Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who had been influenced to varying degrees by Hellenic philosophy, and asked of Islam the questions that had been asked of their former religions. As a result Muslims had doubts about, for example, what kind of attributes God has, vis-à-vis those attributes in reference to human beings. Muslim scholars and thinkers were fearful that the same schisms and disunity that afflicted the former peoples, might now afflict the Muslims also (the Arabs among them were severely outnumbered by non-Arabs). They wanted to put an end to people’s doubts and misgivings on such matters. However, they were bound to formulate the problem in the language and from the perspective of the outsiders. Unsurprisingly, they did not thereby heal the divisions on `aqida, they complicated them by making it possible, apparently, to hold certain position within Islam that had been held in the Jewish or Christian traditions: needless to say, these positions could not be reconciled. For generations ever since, Islamic philosophical theology has wrestled fruitlessly with the same problems, and done so for the same reasons and with the same consequences, as the previous peoples of the Book. An outsider’s perspective brought in to resolve insider problems is not necessarily harmful or fruitless, but it is unlikely to solve those problems because it does not internalize, it does not make use of, the relevant knowledge that the insiders have.”

- Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, Orientalists and Hadith, Source