Ibn Taymiyya and his Times pdf download

Ibn Taymiyya and his Times by Yossef Rapoport editor Shahab Ahmed

IBN TAYMIYYA AND HIS TIMES

On 22 May 2003, ten days after a series of suicide bombings in Riyadh, a leading Saudi newspaper published an article entitled “The Individual and the Homeland are more valuable than Ibn Taymiyya”.

The author, Khaled al-Ghanami, placed ultimate responsibility for the terrorist attacks on the medieval theologian and jurist Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328). For al-Ghanamī, it was the blind adherence to Ibn Taymiyya, and his long posthumous shadow, that stimulated violence and intolerance:

How did these murderers justify the shedding of the blood of Muslims and children?

They did this based on a fatwā of Ibn Taymiyya on jihad, in which he rules that if infidels take shelter behind Muslims, and these Muslims become a shield for the infidels, it is permitted to kill the Muslims in order to get at the infidels.

 Ibn Taymiyya did not base his fatwā on any verse in the Qur’ān, nor on any saying of the Prophet.

I don’t see this fatwā as bringing about the ultimate goals of the Sharī‘a, but rather it is a mistaken legal opinion, that goes against the way of the Prophet.

Let us say this honestly: Our problem today is with Ibn Taymiyya himself. Some of our jurists have taken Ibn Taymiyya to be their sole yardstick, and elevated him to a position he never enjoyed in his own lifetime, in his own land.1

Not for the first time, Ibn Taymiyya had been identified as the ultimate trouble-maker.

A refugee from a city in northern Syria that had been devastated by the Mongols, and a member of the minority Ḥanbalī community in Damascus, Ibn Taymiyya rose to public prominence during the brief Mongol occupation of Syria in 1300 C.E.

While most of the civilian and military elite fled, Ibn Taymiyya stayed put, bravely representing the ravaged city in front of the Mongol generals.

When the Mongols withdrew and the authority of the Cairo-based Mamluk sultans was restored, he set out to preach an increasingly radicalized program of religious reform. Committed to a direct action on a few occasions he even led bands of disciples against what he perceived to be un-Islamic practices.