The Mutazili school & rationalism

The Mutazili (Mutazilite) is a school of Islamic thought that was developed in the Umayyid period and came to prominence in the Abbasid period after it received the patronage of several Abbasid Khalifs, who used the school as their main weapon against apostates and heretics who threatened the state.

The Mutazilis differed from other schools in their heavy reliance of scientific rationalism, logic and philosophy. They did not rely heavily on Hadiths, fiqh or other historical documents to make their judgements. The most famous & controversial of their teachings is on the nature of the createdness of the Quran. They reasoned that since God had no form, he could not possibly speak, and therefore the Quran could not the the word or God, instead saying that it was created by God.

I'm interested in the opinions of other AE forumers on the vices & virtues of the Mutazilis, and also to the extent that their thinking has influence modern Islamic thought. Is it fair to say that the Wahabbis rejection of blind adherence to scholars is a descendent of the Mutazilis rejection of blind adherence to scholars?
Is Mutazili thinking naturally dominant in educated societies with limited Islamic scholarship?

Originally posted by Al Jassas The claim that Mutazilah were "rational" and enlightened people is one of the biggest lies that have propagated especially the last few years.

Personally, just because they are supposed to have relied on rationalism and logic to derive their views, I don't see that in anyway implies that they were rational & enlightened people. The clear counter case in my mind is their opinion on the createdness of the Quran, which applies logic to such an extreme that the answer is irrelevent and the question stupid. However this was a belief they were prepare to forcable prosetlyise through whippings.

The only part they used reason in it was faith. In theology the mutazilis who knew how weak Hadiths may be and how complex the quranic text is so they thought it was safer from a theological perspective to use reason in analyzing those text because come on dude, we are talking about God not some minor judicial ruling.

As I had understood it the mutazilis generally did not have a good knowledge of Hadiths, and rarely used them (and even more seldomly correctly).