Ibn Taymiyyah: Influence and Controversy
The Bank of England, On This Day, Modesty Laws & Modus Vivendi
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TITLE PIECE: FROM BOOKS TO JIHAD, HOW IBN TAYMIYYAH INFLUENCED GENERATIONS…
Ask any devout Muslim to name a classical scholar whose work has most influenced the Islamic creed, and they’ll most likely point to Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah. While his notoriety in Islamic circles has long been cemented, he’s seldom recognized by the secular laity. His reach and influence has, knowingly or unknowingly, touched the lives of millions of Muslims across the globe. He is so revered, in fact, that he carries the honorous yet cumbersome title of Shaykh al-Islam (roughly translated as Master of Islam), and is cited by almost all modern jurists when considering rulings and verdicts on religious matters.
Born in 1263, the Muslim theologian and legal scholar is said to have penned eighty pages of religious commentary a day, accumulating an archive of some five-hundred volumes of work. While his writing went on to inspire the ideas of Mohammed Ibn Abdul-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement in the 18th century, his contributions to Islamic thought and theology remain highly revered amongst the vast majority of Sunni Muslims worldwide. That being said, as Jon Hoover of Nottingham University points out, his work has also been cited by the likes of Osama Bin Laden.
Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah was born into a family of Hanbali scholars in the ancient town of Harran in what was Syria. To be a Hanbali meant that one subscribed to the creed of the early Muslim jurist Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, the smallest of the four Sunni legal schools of thought.
Ibn Hanbal was a religious purist of the Abbasid-era who “took a bulldog stand against the primacy and sufficiency of reason…[he] favored the most literal reading of the Qur’an and the most literalist methods for applying it, for the most part rejecting even analogical reasoning as a way of expanding the doctrines, and so did Ibn Taymiyyah.”1
A common thread of strict orthodoxy could thus be said to have passed from Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (780-855), through Ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328), and on to Abdul-Wahhab (1703- 1792); three giants of Islamic orthodox scholarship.
Ibn Taymiyyah grew up during the Mamluk-Mongol wars, a period marked by the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258; an attack that saw Hulagu’s army perpetrate a genocide against hundreds of thousands of Baghdadi citizens, as well as the destruction of schools, libraries and hospitals. At the age of seven, with his books in tow, his family slipped away from the oft attacked town of Harran and headed for Damascus. Ahmad’s intelligence, memory, speed of perception and debating skills were notable at this young age, and in 1284, he succeeded his father as a teacher at a madrasa. But this didn’t keep him out of trouble.
Being the zealot he was, his religious fervor was roused in 1294 when he led a throng of men demanding the execution of a christian scribe who’d insulted the Prophet Mohammed. The Christian would eventually convert in an attempt to avoid punishment, and Ibn Taymiyyah would soon find himself behind bars; a theme that would follow him until his death in 1328.
Ibn Taymiyya’s school of thought relied on the uncompromising texts of the Quran and a rigorous reliance on the life of the Prophet Mohammed as preserved by the pious forebears that passed on the torch of Islamic orthodoxy. His distaste for the ‘cult of saints’, the practice of asking the dead for intercession led him to hone in on a pure form of Islamic monotheism that was to become his trademark. This monotheistic zeal would be supported by his famed loyal student Ibn al-Qayyim, and was later reinforced by Abdul-Wahhab who would join forces with Ibn Saud to unite the Arab tribes under a single Wahabi-Saudi banner that would give birth to modern day Saudi Arabia.
To begin with, Taymiyyah’s strict orthodox code only attracted a moderate following as the hoi polloi didn’t much fancy his admonition of folk practices such as the excessive praise of ‘great men’, and the visiting of shrines, both of which were deemed to be a distortion of the purest forms of Islamic theological doctrine i.e. Shirk; the practice of associating partners with God.
During his time in an Alexandrian jail, he penned one of his most important works, The Refutation of the Logicians, which would be abridged two-hundred years later. The title of the book is itself testament to his distaste for the application of philosophy and logic in the interpretation of scripture. Taymiyyah believed that logic was an infestation that diluted the religious sciences.
Ibn Taymiyyah was no stranger to the rulers, occasionally doing their bidding. But in 1309 when five-hundred sufis marched on the Mamluk citadel in Cairo in protest of his criticisms of their leaders, he was tried and imprisoned yet again. Sufism instigated the wrath of Taymiyyah due to their insistence in parting with classical interpretations of God’s divinity and nature.
With Mongol invasions increasing at the turn of the fourteenth century, Ibn Taymiyyah called for Jihad in the form of three famous fatwas (legal rulings). The first of these fatwas was issued around the time of the first Mongol invasion, the second was during the second or third invasion (1300-1303), and the last of the three fatwas was issued during a later invasion (1312-1313). Although the Mongols were Muslim, he argued that they were fair game due to their refusal to uphold the obligations of Islam.
In the late 1970s, an Egyptian by the name of Abdul Salam Faraj would go on to cite Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwas against the Mongols in reference to the Egyptian government. President Anwar Sadat was to be overthrown, he argued, because like the Mongols, he failed to uphold and implement the obligations of Islam.
In 2015, Ibn Taymiyyah’s books were being prevented from entering Egypt and Jordan due their uncompromising calls for Islamic orthodoxy and association with jihad. One of his most frequently sold books today remains Al-Aqidah Al-Waasitiyyah, a treatise on the Islamic creed with a focus on the attributes of God.
Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah died in a Damascus prison on 26th September 1328, but his work and influence continues to shape and Islamic theology, jurisprudence and politics to this day.
DID YOU KNOW…
“In 1694, a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,200,000 to the king (William III). In return they received a royal monopoly on the issuance of banknotes. What this meant in practice was they had the right to advance IOUs for a portion of the money the king now owed them….in effect, to circulate or “monetize” the newly created royal debt. This was a great deal for the bankers (they got to charge the king 8 percent annual interest for the original loan and simultaneously charge interest on the same money to the clients who borrowed it), but it only worked as long as the original loan remained outstanding. To this day, this loan has never been paid back. It cannot be. If it ever were, the entire monetary system of Great Britain would cease to exist.” - Debt: The First 5,000 Years.
ON THIS DAY: 29th SEPTEMBER
British Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was fatally wounded during his famous victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, was born on this day in 1758. Nelson’s Column at Trafalgar Square (named after the Battle of Trafalgar) was constructed in his honour in 1840. The 52m tall structure was completed with the addition of four Barbary lions at its base in 1867.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, was formed on this day in 1954. The organizations Large Hadron Collider which is located on the Franco-Swiss border is 27 km in circumference and collides particles at the speed of light in an attempt to recreate the conditions of the early universe.
The cruise ferry MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea on 28th September 1994. Rescue efforts and reports continued into the 29th. Over 850 people lost their lives in what is now considered one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. It was caused by a faulty bow door.
PHOTO OF THE WEEK:
1922 in Washington: Police Officer Bill Norton measures women’s bathing suits in conjunction with Modesty Laws.
WORD OF THE WEEK
MODUS VIVENDI:
(Latin) Frequently interpreted literally as ‘way of life’, some of the more conservative authorities insist that its application should be limited to the arrangements following a truce between two disputing parties. i.e. The two neighboring nations developed a modus vivendi to avoid conflict while they awaited final negotiations for a peace treaty.
WANT MORE? READ: The Man Who Wired The Atlantic
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, Tamim Ansary
What do you think was responsible for Ibn Taymiyyah’s fame? As you say, most people tend to find the harsh demands of fundamentalism a challenge (or at least one would have thought so.) Is it that the people he influenced became famous and that he therefore did by association? Or something else completely? Great article as always!