Ibn Taymiyyah

Finally, Abdul Wahhab declared it incumbent upon his followers to wage “Jihad” against all the Muslims, and that it was permitted for them to enslave their women and children. This approach was derived from the influence of Ibn Taymiyyah, a controversial Islamic figure, who had remained largely in obscurity until his reputation was revived by a number of reform movements that emerged beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, and who remains to this day an important influence guiding the principles of Islamic terrorism.

Ibn Taymiyyah’s life was marked by persecutions. As early as 1293, he came into conflict with local authorities for protesting a sentence, pronounced under religious law, against a Christian accused of having insulted the Prophet. In 1298, he was accused of having criticised the legitimacy of the Islamic scholarly establishment, and of anthropomorphism, or ascribing human characteristics to God, despite a tradition in Islam of avoiding all such allusions. Ibn Battuta, the famous traveler and chronicler, reported that while Ibn Taymiyyah was preaching in the mosque, he said, “God comes down to the sky of this world just as I come down now,” and descended one step of the pulpit.

Opinions about Ibn Taymiyyah varied considerably. Even his enemies, like Taqi ud Din al Subki, were ready to concede to his virtues: “Personally, my admiration is even greater for the asceticism, piety, and religiosity with which God has endowed him, for his selfless championship of the truth, his adherence to the path of our forbearers, his pursuit of perfection, the wonder of his example, unrivalled in our time and in times past.”⁷¹

And yet, he was chided by one of his own students, the famous historian and scholar, Al Dhahabi, who said, “Blessed is he whose fault diverts him from the faults of others! Damned is he whom others divert from his own faults! How long will you look at the motes in the eyes of your brother, forgetting the stumps in your own?”72 It was for his intemperance that Ibn Battuta declared that Ibn Taymiyyah had a “screw loose”.⁷³

During the great Mongol crisis of the years 1299 to 1303, and especially during their occupation of Damascus, Ibn Taymiyyah led a party of resistance, and denounced the faith of the invaders which he considered suspect, despite their conversion to Islam. Until the Mongol invasion, Ibn Taymiyyah had lived in Harran, the seat of the occult Sabian community, and may have come under their influence. Their texts expounded on anthropomorphic visions of the cosmic Adam, in a manner similar to the Kabbalistic idea of Shiur Khomah. During the ensuing years, Ibn Taymiyyah was engaged in intensive polemical activity against the Sufis and Shiah. In 1306, however, he was summoned to explain his beliefs to the governor’s council, which, although it did not condemn him, sent him to Cairo. There, Ibn Taymiyyah appeared before another council on the charge of anthropomorphism and was imprisoned for eighteen months.

If he adhered to such ideas, as was customary among Ismailis, he shared them only secretly with select disciples advanced to higher grades. Abu Hayyan, who knew him personally, held him in great esteem, until he was introduced to a work, in which Ibn Taymiyyah offered anthropomorphic descriptions of God.⁷⁴

The book had been acquired deceptively by a man who had pretended to be among his supporters in order to receive the instructions that Ibn Taymiyyah reserved only for his inner-circle of initiates. This demonstrates that Ibn Taymiyyah had one doctrine he espoused in public, and a more esoteric doctrine he confided only to initiates, a doctrine similar to occult ideas.

Ibn Taymiyyah’s repudiation of praying to saints was perceived by him as an attempt to purify Islamic monotheism. The pillar of Islamic belief is the unity of God, or monotheism. Islam began as a message that confronted the paganism of the Arabs and called for a return to the worship of the one God, the same worshipped by the Prophets of the Old Testament. Therefore, worshipping any being or object other than God was considered tantamount to apostasy. This idea Abdul Wahhab carried to the extreme. Also inherited from Ibn Taymiyyah was his anthropomorphism, which continues to pollute the Wahhabi conception of God, as exemplified in Tawheed, by Muslim convert Abu Ameena Bilal Phillips, who studied at the University of Medina.

Footnotes:

71 quoted from Little, Donald. "Did Ibn Taymiyya Have a Screw Loose", p. 100
72 al Nasiha al Dhahabiyya li Ibn Taymiyya, quoted from Little, "Did Ibn Taymiyya Have a Screw Loose", p. 100
73 Rihla, quoted from Little, "Did Ibn Taymiyya Have a Screw Loose". p. 95.
74 Nuh Ha Mim Keller, The Re-Formers of Islam. “Question 3 Re-Forming Classical Texts” ; al-Nahwi, Tafsir al-nahr al-madd, 1.254 and Taqi al-Din Subki, al-Sayf al-saqil (85)