3. The Doors of Ijtihad

Taqlid

When we look at the history of Islam, and how it was hijacked in the same way through subversive occult forces, working behind the scenes through secret societies, there is a great similarity in the development of Reform Judaism and its offshoot, Zionism, to the bastardizations introduced by Wahhabism and Salafism. The growth of the financial resources of the British Empire allowed them to expand their colonial objectives beyond the Caribbean and the Americas. A little known project was the attempt to free territories from Ottoman control through the British creation of the first and foremost of the modern Revivalist sects of Islam, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia, who continue to be the dominant interpretation of the religion in that country to this day. The purpose of the creation of the Wahhabi sect was to serve imperialist designs of the British, by undermining the Ottoman Empire from within. The plan was to rile the Arabs of the Hijaz, what came to be known as Saudi Arabia, against the tremendous empire of the Muslim Turks. The means of doing so was to create a “reform” movements that callied for a re-opening of the Doors of Ijtihad.

Initially, the followers of Mohammed, known as the Sahabah, would seek advice from those amongst themselves who had attained reputations for piety and advanced knowledge of the religion. However, as the Muslim empire expanded, the cases that required rulings became increasingly complex, and because new cases were not necessarily explicitly addressed in the Quran, it became necessary for judges (Qadis) to make use of their independent reasoning (Ijtihad). The word “Ijtihad” is derived from the same root as the word “Jihad,” and means to strive with one’s utmost effort. The practice is considered legitimized in a Hadith that refers to a consultation between the Prophet Mohammed and Muadh Ibn Jabl, a jurist who was on his way to Yemen. The Prophet asked Muadh how he would decide matters brought before him. He responded: “I will judge matters according to the Quran.” He then said, “If the Book of God contains nothing to guide me, I will act on the precedents of the Prophet of God, and if it is not in that either, then I will make Ijtihad [use his reason] and judge according to that.” The Prophet is said to have been very pleased with the reply.[1]

Over time, rulings became increasingly codified through consensus (Ijma), unanimous agreement that was considered to reflect divine sanction. However, a new group appeared that challenged these developments, known as the Traditionists, or Ahlul Hadith (People of Hadith). The Traditionists rejected the use of reason and personal opinion, choosing to rely exclusively on Hadith. Though their methodologies were rejected by the rest of the scholarly community, they were nevertheless forced to concede to their premise, and to give primacy to the increasing number of Hadith becoming available. Therefore, while Ijtihad had been used to refer to a freer use of independent reasoning, with the increasing codification, the use of Ijtihad came to be restricted to reasoning confined by recourse to available sources of evidence and accepted methodologies. These included the Quran, the Sunnah of the Prophet, Ijma, and analogy (Qiyas) or systematic reasoning.

Imam Shafi (767 – 820 AD) had been instrumental in bringing about this change, producing a system known as Usul al Fiqh. Then, through the communal process of collating the evidence and developing rulings, there initially emerged many different schools of thought and interpretation, but the reputations of only four surpassed and finally eclipsed all the others. These are known as the four Madhhabs, or schools of jurisprudence, each named after the scholars who founded them, being the Shafi of Imam Shafi, the Hanafi of Imam Abu Hanifa (699 – 767 AD), the Hanbali of Ahmed Ibn Hanbal (780 – 855 AD), and Maliki of Imam Malik (711 – 795 AD). According to a well-known Hadith, the Prophet Mohammed said, “differences of opinion among my community are a blessing,” and therefore, despite their differences, each school was considered as founded on valid conclusions, arrived at through the rigorous process of Ijtihad. Ultimately, as noted by Schacht:

 

By the beginning of the fourth century of the hijra (about A.D. 900)… the point had been reached when the scholars of all schools felt that all essential questions had been thoroughly discussed and finally settled, and a consensus gradually established itself to the effect that from that time onwards no one might be deemed to have the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at the most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all.[2]

 

This consensus is referred to as the “Closing of the Doors of Ijtihad.” As for the common Muslim, he would from then on be required to follow one—and only one—of the four Madhhabs, a practice known as Taqlid. The closing of Ijtihad effectively acted as a fortress to protect Islamic law from any further controversy, and preserve the formulations of the most pious and talented of the Muslim scholars from corruption. As explained by Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406), considered one of the fathers of modern historiography, and as one of the greatest philosophers of the Muslim world:

 

The people after that were able to close the door in the face of dispute at a time when terminology became more complex, and it was harder to achieve the rank of Ijtihad, and when it was feared that [Ijtihad ] might get attributed to someone not from its people [an incompetent], who is not to be relied upon in neither his opinion nor his religion.[3]

 

Therefore, from that point forward, the free use of Ijtihad was restricted to only those most qualified, known as a Mujtahid, being the four Imams. While it is possible, and even commendable, for any Muslim to read the Quran and Hadith on his own, when it comes to formulating rulings from these sources, or performing Ijtihad, it requires an advanced degree of knowledge. Abu’l-Husayn al-Basri (d. 1044 AD) provides the earliest, complete account for the qualifications of a mujtahid, in his book al-Mu’tamad fi Usul al-Fiqh (“The Canon of the Foundations of Jurisprudence”). Demonstrating how stringent they are, and how absurd it is for modern Salafis to pretend that it is possible to surpass them, they include:

 

  • being an upright person whose judgment people can trust.

  • competence in Arabic allowing correct understanding of the Quran and Sunnah.

  • adequate knowledge of the Quran, the events surrounding its revelation and its legal contents, and with all the classical commentaries, especially the views of the Companions of the Prophet (Sahabah) and with incidences of abrogation, as well as the use of narratives and parables and sections relating to the hereafter to infer a legal ruling; a thorough knowledge of the rules and procedures which allows the application of revealed law to an unprecedented case.

  • adequate knowledge of the Sunnah, especially as related to one's specialization, the relative reliability of the narrators of the Hadith, distinguishing between the general and specific, the absolute and the qualified. One estimate suggests that 400,000 Hadith (including variants in wording and chains of testimony) need to be known.

  • ability to verify the consensus (Ijma) of the companions of the Prophet, the successors and leading Imams and Mujtahideen of the past, especially with regard to his specialization, and familiarity with issues on which there is no consensus.

  • understanding the revealed purpose of the Sharia as related to considerations of public interest including the Five Pillars of the good; the protection of "life, religion, intellect, lineage and property" and of general maxims for the interpretation of Sharia, which include the "removal of hardship,” that "certainty must prevail over doubt" and the achievement of a balance between too rigid and too free an interpretation.[4]

 

But the point of the critics is moot, because, as Wael al Hallaq clarified in an article entitled “Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?” Ijtihad did continue to be practiced during the ensuing centuries, but it was merely confined from this point forward to the methodologies of one of the four schools. Ijtihad was not only permitted, but required. What was not allowable, in effect, was creating a new Madhab. And, regardless, even if such a decision were possible, it would have to receive the unanimous consent of the entire Islamic community. Deviation and conflict is introduced into the Islamic community when dissent to this obligation is carried out without first assuring such a consensus. Otherwise, as Hallaq relates:

 

It can be stated with certainty that from Tabari’s [838-923 AD] time onwards an Ijma [consensus] on the validity of the existing Sunni schools had begun to be finalized… and it seems that in the last three or four decades of the tenth century a comprehensive but implicit agreement on the illegality of establishing new schools and of any ‘separatist’ tendencies was reached.[5]

 

Ultimately, Islam is not intended to guide only what a Muslim is supposed to believe, or define how he is to preform ritual, but the purpose of Sharia is to define how Muslims are to govern themselves as a society. As God commands in the Quran, the believers are “those who, if We give them authority in the land, establish prayer and give Zakat and enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong. And to God belongs the outcome of [all] matters.”[6] Zakat (alms), one of the five pillars of Islam, was implemented under the Rashidun Caliphate in the seventh century, creating a form of democratic socialism, centuries before the same concept was developed in the West. The first Muslim Caliph Abu Bakr (c. 573 – 634 AD), introduced a guaranteed minimum standard of income, granting each man, woman and child ten dirhams annually, which was later increased to twenty dirhams.[7] Abu Bakr’s successor, the Caliph Umar (c. 582/583 – 644), introduced innovative welfare reforms that included social security, such as unemployment insurance, which did not appear in the Western world until the nineteenth century. In order to determine the poverty line, Abu Bakr’s successor, the Caliph Umar (c. 582/583 – 644) ordered a survey to test how many Sihr (a traditional unit of mass and volume used in large parts of Asia) of flour would be required to feed a person for a month. Determining that 25 seers could feed 30 people, he ordered that the poor each receive a food ration of 50 seers of flour per month.

In the Rashidun Caliphate, whenever citizens were injured or lost their ability to work, it became the state’s responsibility to make sure that their minimum needs were met, with the unemployed and their families receiving an allowance from the public treasury (Bayt ul Mal).[8] Umar introduced innovative welfare reforms in social security that included unemployment insurance, which did not appear in the Western world until the nineteenth century. One hundred dirhams was spent annually on each orphan.[9] Umar also introduced the concept of public trusteeship and public ownership when he implemented the Waqf, or charitable trust.[10] Retirement pensions were provided to elderly people.[11] Further reforms later took place under the Umayyad Caliphate. Disabled veterans received an invalidity pension, while similar provisions were made for the disabled and poor in general. Caliph al-Walid I (c. 674 – 715) assigned payments and services to the needy, which included money for the poor, guides for the blind, servants for the crippled, and pensions for all disabled people so that they would never need to beg. The caliphs Al-Walid II (709 – 744) and Umar ibn Abdul-Aziz (c. 680 – 720) supplied money and clothes to the blind and crippled as well as servants for the latter. This continued with the Abbasid caliph Al-Mahdi (744 or 745 – 785).[12]

 

Sufism

The word “Salafi” does have a pre-modern heritage and was not merely an invention of the Revivalists. However, the term was revived and appropriated by the neo-Salafis to proffer themselves an ancient pedigree, and thereby purported legitimacy. The term refers to a distinctive theological group that is identified with the original medieval Ahl-i Hadith, but not to be confused with the neo-Ahl-i Hadith of India. The term is found, for example, in a number of Ibn Taymiyyah’s works as well as those of other pre-modern authors, like al Samani, Ibn al Qayyim and al Dhahabi.[13] According to al Dhahabi, in his biography of Ibn Taymiyyah, “He has made victorious the pure Sunnah of the Salafiyya way.”[14] As Joseph Schacht explains in An Introduction to Islamic Law:

               

Ibn Taymiyyah did not explicitly advocate the reopening of the “door of Ijtihad,” let alone claim Ijtihad for himself; but as a consequence of his narrowly formulated idea of consensus he was able to reject Taqlid, to interpret the Quran and the traditions from the Prophet afresh, and to arrive at novel conclusions concerning many of the institutions of Islamic law. The Wahhabis, who constitute the great majority of the present followers of the Hanbali school, have adopted, together with Ibn Taymiyyah's theological doctrines, the whole of his legal theory, including his rejection of Taqlid; but at the same time they have retained, unchanged, Hanbali positive law as it had been developed in the school before Ibn Taymiyyah, apparently without being troubled by the resulting inconsistency.[15]

 

Although Ibn Taymiyyah’s views have been exploited to bolster modern attacks again Sufism, he himself not only had an ambivalent regard for Sufism, but he heralded from Harran, a part of the world that gave rise to the cult of the Sabians, who not only influenced the rise of Sufism, but who are believed to have preserved the essential Gnostic doctrines of the Kabbalah. The Sabians, acting as translators and astrologers, were responsible for infecting the Islamic world with the occult tradition of philosophy and of contributing to the formation of a mystical version of Islam, known as Sufism. It is generally accepted that the first exponent of Sufi doctrine was the Egyptian or Nubian, Dhun Nun, of the ninth century AD, whose teaching was recorded and systematized by al Junayd of Baghdad (830 – 910). The doctrines expressed by al Junayd were then boldly preached by his pupil, Abu Bakr al-Shibli (861 – 946) of Khurasan in the tenth century. A fellow-student of ash-Shibli, was al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (c. 858 – 922 AD) whose thought demonstrated some clearly heretical elements, such as reincarnation, incarnation, and so on. He was ultimately put to death by the son of Saladin, the great Muslim leader who recaptured Palestine from the Crusaders, for declaring “I am the truth,” identifying himself with God. However, later Sufi writers nevertheless regard him as a saint and martyr, who suffered because he disclosed the great secret of the mystical union of man and God.

According to Raphael Patai, Muslims were the main channel through which the ideas and practices of Hindu mysticism could reach the European Kabbalists:

 

Although the origin of Sufism antedated this period, many mystic practices— meditation, concentration, control of breath, and so on— were borrowed by Indian Islam from the Hindu Yogis and the Buddhists. … On the popular level, the Hindu faith in magic, sorcery, miracles, grave-worship, apotropaic practices, and the like could not be resisted by Muslims. Also, after their conversion to Islam, many Hindus continued in their customs and traditions. Inevitably, these influences could not remain isolated in Indian Islam but spread all over the Caliphate. To mention only two instances, the great Muslim mystic al-Hallaj (857-922) under took a long tour in India and after his return to Baghdad won many followers to his teachings.[16]

 

Sufism is considered a branch of mysticism, the basis of which is considered by scholars to be union between the mystic and God. Therefore, similar to the mysticism of other religions, the experiences of the Sufis usually involve trance states, visions, and other such psycho-spiritual experiences. Michael Winter, writing in the sixteenth century, wrote that, “The number of Sufis who practiced occult sciences at that time was legion,” especially alchemy, divination, magic astrology and Kabbalah.[17] According to the eminent Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun, the path of the Sufis comprised two directions. The first was founded in the Sunnah of the Prophet Mohammed, while the other was corrupted with heretical innovations. Among the deviations addressed by Ibn Khaldun were the beliefs in a Mahdi, whose themes he attributed to Shia influence; the existence of the “Pole” (Qutb) and other members of the spiritual hierarchy; the extravagant theosophical speculations, including magic, astrology and sorcery and pretentions of predicting the future and purported miracles worked by saints and holy men. Lastly, Ibn Khaldun denounced the other-worldliness of Sufi aspirations, which he regarded as a departure from addressing the pressing needs of the here and now exemplified by the earliest generations of Muslims. James Morris explains that Ibn Khaldun was concerned with:

 

…the much more and down-to-earth consequences of diverting substantial societal and human resources to the pointless, imaginary distractions and pastimes of such large groups of "simpletons," and the perhaps even more debilitating long-range consequences of their attempting to lead a moral and religious life somehow separate from what they allegedly viewed as the “corrupting” sphere of political and military power and authority.[18]

 

Ibn Taymiyyah revered Abdul Qadir al Gilani (1077 – 1166 AD), the founder of the Qadiriyya Sufi order, which is particularly venerated in the Western occult tradition, where it is seen by some as the origin of the Rosicrucian movement. A famous Jewish historian, Chacham Israel Joseph Benjamin II (1818 – 1864 AD), wrote Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855, in which he reported that there was a mosque in Baghdad where the grave of al Gilani is highly venerated, and mentioned that, “the Mosque was a Synagogue before,” and that “the Marabut was nothing less than the famous Talmudist Joseph Hagueliti.”[19] Gilani was a pupil of Ibn Aqil (d. 1119 AD), who had been required by other Hanbalis to denounce his heretical tendencies and retract a work which he had written glorifying Mansur al-Hallaj, the notorious Sufi who was executed in 922 AD for declaring himself God. However, Hanbali scholar Ibn Qudama (d. 1223 AD), in his Censure of Speculative Theology, doubted the sincerity of his retraction and George Makdisi concurs, suggesting that Ibn Aqil practiced prudent dissimulation (taqiyya). Gilani himself, according to Ibn Rajab, was condemned for harboring heretical works in his school, particularly the writings of the Brethren of Sincerity.[20]

The Brethren of Sincerity exercised an important influence on the famous Sufi mystic, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (1165 – 1240 AD), in whose works al Gilani is mentioned as a just man, the Qutb of his time.[21] One of his most famous works, the Bezels of Wisdom, was conceived in the course of a “vision” which he experienced near the Kabbah in Mecca. Ibn Arabi claimed that he received the work directly from Mohammed who had appeared to him in Damascus in 1229. Although Ibn Arabi is widely regarded among Sufis as al-Sheikh al-Akbar (“The Greatest Sheikh”), he was consistently denounced as an apostate by orthodox scholars. The famous Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun (1332 –1406) produced a Fatwah that Ibn Arabis’ book should be burned.[22] Imam Burhan al-Din al-Biqa‘i (d. 885) wrote a book titled Tanbih al-Ghabi ila Takfir Ibn ‘Arabi wa Tahdhir al-‘Ibad min Ahl al-‘Inad (“Warning to the Ignoramus Concerning the Declaration of Ibn Arabi’s Disbelief, and Cautioning the Servants of Allah Against Stubborn People”) in which he quotes many Fatwas (Islamic rulings) by scholars from different Madhhabs criticizing Ibn Arabi. The famous Meccan historian Taqi al-din al-Fasi (1373 – 1429 AD) in massive biographical dictionary, al-‘lqd al-thamin (“The Precious Necklace”) also collected the legal opinions issued against lbn Arabi by the respected scholars of over almost two centuries. Among them Ibn Taymiyyah (1263 – 1328 AD) and his students, but also Ibn Taymiyya’s fiercest opponent al Taqi al Din Al Subki (1284 – 1355 AD), chief judge of Damascus. Also included was Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. Against Ibn Arabi and his followers, the Yemeni scholar al-Husayn lbn al-Ahdal (d. 1451 AD), who cites Ibn al-Dhahabi (1274 – 1348 AD), a student of Ibn Taymiyyah, wrote “As for their writings, they are worse than any unbelief. That’s why the just rulers and those who guide on the straight way prevent people from studying them and advise their destruction.”[23]

 

Ibn Taymiyyah

Ibn Taymiyyah’s legal ideas remained largely in the framework of the Hanbali school, but his more controversial doctrines of faith (Aqida) and literalist interpretations of the attributes of God were adopted for the most part from the more anthropomorphic faction of the Hanbali school, though not representing the tenets professed by Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal or his Madhhab. This Hanbali faction was opposed to the Ashari and Maturidi schools who have represented the Aqida, or “tenets of belief,” of the majority of Sunni Muslims, just as the Madhhabs have represented the Sharia or “Sacred Law.”[24] Those opposed to these two schools of regarded as people of Biddah, defined in a Fatwa or formal legal opinion the sixteenth century by Imam Ibn Hajar Haytami (b. 909 AD), who represents the foremost resource for legal opinion in the entire late Shafi school, as: “whoever is upon other than the path of Ahl al-Sunna wa l-Jama‘a [people of the Sunnah and of the majority]… meaning the followers of Sheikh Abul Hasan Ash‘ari and Abu Mansur Maturidi, the two Imams of Ahl al-Sunna.”[25]

Unlike the imagery that is common in other religions, which often depict God in human form, in Islam ascribing any similarity to God with anything in creation is considered contrary to its most fundamental tenets. Because, in Islam, God is considered fully transcendent and as not possible to describe in terms of similarities to anything created. God is known only through His divine qualities as revealed in the Quran. As stated in the Quran: “He is God, the One. God, the Absolute. He does not beget, nor is he begotten. There is nothing like Him whatsoever.”[26] However, there are instances in the Quran and Hadith literature where God is referred to allegorically as having features like a hand, face and so on. But it was the unanimous opinion of traditional scholars that these attributes not be compared to human ones, and to not delve into their meaning or significance. According to the Quran 3:7:

 

He it is Who has sent down to you the Book: In it are verses basic or fundamental (of established clear meaning); They are the foundation of the Book: Others are those that have abstractions. But those in whose hearts is evil follow the part within it that is abstract seeking disharmony, in searching for hidden meanings; But no one knows its hidden meanings except Allah: And those who are firmly grounded in knowledge say: “We believe in the Book: The whole of it is from our Lord:” And none will grasp the Message except men of understanding.

 

A tenth century Shafi scholar, Abu Sulayman al Khattabi (931 – 998), addressed the issue saying: “as for us we narrate those Hadiths but we do not smear them with meanings.”[27] However, for Ibn Taymiyyah and those who followed his tradition, to even suggest that these references were to be interpreted allegorically was to speculate about their meaning. Thus, Ibn Taymiyyah used a very slippery argument by which he opened the door for anthropomorphic interpretation, by claiming that he was merely “affirming” the literal meaning of the verses, without supposedly speculating further as to their semblance.[28] The problem is that, in Sunni tradition, the meanings were not affirmed either, to avoid all possibility of identifying God’s attributes with anything created. Imam al Bayhaqi, a scholar of the Shafi school of the tenth century AD, related that Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal is to have said: “a person commits an act of apostasy (Kufr) if he says God is a body, even if he says: God is a body but not like other bodies.”[29]

Ibn Battuta, the famous traveler and chronicler, reported that while Ibn Taymiyyah was preaching in a mosque he descended one step of the pulpit and said, “God comes down to the sky of this world just as I come down now.” The origin of Ibn Taymiyyah’s anthropomorphism could be attributable to occult sympathies, possibly explained by the fact that he happened to have been born in the city of Harran of the Sabians, which he was forced to flee as a child due to the Mongol conquest in 1268. The Mandaeans, who were related to the Sabians, practiced a well-known anthropomorphic doctrine. The basis of scholars’ conclusion of an affinity between the Kabbalah and the Mandaeans is the existence in both traditions of a body of literature that provides elaborate anthropomorphic descriptions of God. This Kabbalistic tradition is exemplified in the Shiur Komah, a Midrashic text that is part of the literature of Merkabah Mysticism, which records in anthropomorphic terms, the secret names and precise measurements of God’s bodily limbs and parts. Al Kawthari (1879 – 1951), the adjunct to the last Sheikh al-Islam of the Ottoman Empire and a well-known Hanafi jurist, claimed that among the works from which Ibn Taymiyyah derived his anthropomorphic doctrines was the Kitab al-sunna, falsely attributed to Abdallah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the son of Imam Ibn Hanbal. The work offers blatant allusions to the Cherubim of Merkabah described in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation: “He saw Him on a chair of gold carried by four angels: one in the form of a man, another in the form of a lion, another in that of a bull, and another in that of an eagle, in a green garden, outside of which there was a golden dais.”[30]

It was because of his tendencies towards anthropomorphic interpretations—denounced as Mujassimah by the Islamic jurists—along with several other rulings considered extreme, that Ibn Taymiyyah spent much of his career in prison, put there by the religious establishment of his time. Opinions about Ibn Taymiyyah during his lifetime varied widely. One of his opponents, who had the most success in refuting his views, was Taqi al Din Al Subki (1284 – 1355), who was eventually appointed chief judge of Damascus. Of him Ibn Taymiyyah admitted, “no jurist has refuted me except al Subki.”[31] Al Subki was nevertheless ready to concede to Ibn Taymiyyah’s 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.”[32] And yet, al Subki remarked, “his learning exceeded his intelligence.”[33] It was for his typical intemperance that Ibn Battuta declared that Ibn Taymiyyah had a “screw loose.”[34]

During the great Mongol crisis of the years 1299 to 1303 AD, Ibn Taymiyyah led the resistance, justifying the revolt by denouncing the faith of the invaders and their accomplices as apostates (Kuffar), despite their outward conversion to Islam. According to Charles Allen:

 

It is in the context of this last subject, jihad, that Ibn Taymiyya is best remembered – and both admired and execrated. And not without reason, since his reinterpretation of jihad lies at the heart of modern Islamist revivalism.[35]

 

After three centuries of his views being scrutinized by the leading scholars of the time, like al Subki and others, a Fatwa was finally pronounced by Ibn Hajar al Haytami in the sixteenth century, who declared:

 

Ibn Taymiyyah is a servant whom God forsook, misguided, blinded, deafened, and debased. That is the declaration of the imams who have exposed the corruption of his positions and the mendacity of his sayings. Whoever wishes to pursue this must read the words of the Mujtahid Imam Abu al Hasan al Subki, of his son Taj al Din Subki, of the Imam al Izz ibn Jama and others of the Shafi, Maliki, and Hanafi scholars... It must be considered that he is a misguided and misguiding innovator and an ignorant who brought evil whom God treated with His justice. May He protect us from the likes of his path, doctrine, and actions.[36]

 

The Wahhabis in particular, have inherited a vociferous hatred of Sufism from Ibn Taymiyyah, who is widely considered the leading exponent of the kinds of attacks on Sufism that were thought characteristic of the Hanbali school. However, Henri Laoust has written of Ibn Taymiyyah’s affinities with Sufism, and commented that one would search in vain to find in his works the least condemnation of Sufism.[37] Ibn Taymiyyah showed admiration for the works of prominent Sufis like al Junayd, Abdul Qadir al Gilani and Abu Hafs as-Suhrawardi (1145 – 1234 AD). Ibn Taymiyyah referred to al Gilani as Sheikhuna, “our Sheikh,” a title which he doesn’t proffer on anyone else in all of his works.[38] In his own words, Ibn Taymiyyah confessed in his work al-Masala at-Tabriziya: “I wore the blessed Sufi cloak of Abdul Qadir (al Gilani), there being between him and me two (Sufi Sheikhs).”[39] In a lost work titled Itfa hurqat al-hauba bi-ilbas khirqat at-tauba, by Ibn Nasir ad-Din, Ibn Taymiyyah is quoted as affirming having belonged to more than one Sufi order and praising that of al Gilani as the greatest of all. The Bahdjat al-asrar contains the narrative of many miracles performed by al Gilani, corroborated by chains of witnesses, which Ibn Taymiyyah declared credible, despite the fact that others, namely al Dhahabi, condemned the book as containing frivolous tales.[40]

 


[1] Abu Daud, Aqdiya, 11.

[2] Schacht. An Introduction to Islamic Law, p. 70-71.

[3] Cited in Sheikh Dr. Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al Buti. Al la-Madhhabiya: Aban-

donin Madhhabiya the Madhhabs is the Most Dangerous Bid’ah Threatening the Islamic Shari’ah. Damascus: Sunni Publications. 2007. p. 84.

[4] Abu’ Husayn al-Basri. al-Mu’tamad fi Usul al-Fiqh (“The Canon of the Foundations of Jurisprudence”). Retrieved from https://ahkaamislam.wordpress.com/2016/02/12/qualifications-for-performing-ijtihad

[5] International Journal of Middle East Studies. 16: 1 (March, 1984).

[6] Quran, 22:41.

[7] Grace Clark. Pakistan’s Zakat and ‘Ushr as a Welfare System (University of Maryland, 1985).

[8] Shadi Hamid. “An Islamic Alternative? Equality, Redistributive Justice, and the Welfare State in the Caliphate of Umar.” Renaissance: Monthly Islamic Journal, 13: 8 (August 2003). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20030901100155/http://www.renaissance.com.pk/Augvipo2y3.html

[9] Al-Biladhuri. Ahmad Ibn Jabir, Kitab Futuhu’l-Buldan, trans. Philip Khuri Hitti (New York: AMS Press, 1969).

[10] Munawwar Iqbal. Distributive Justice and Need Fulfillment in an Islamic Economy (Leicester, U.K: The Islamic Foundation, 1986).

[11] Patricia Crone. Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 308–9.

[12] Ibid., p. 307.

[13] Bernard Heykal, Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, p. 38.

[14] Ibn Nasr al Din al Damashqi, al Radd al wafir, ed. Zuhayr al Shawish, Beirut, 1393, p. 34; quoted from Bernard Heykal, Global Salafism, p. 43.

[15] An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 73.

[16] Raphael Patai. The Hebrew Mind (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977), p. 147.

[17] Michael Winter. Society and Religion, 173; cited in Barbara De Poli. Freemansonry and the Orient Esotericisms between the East and the West (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2019), p. 56.

[18] James W. Morris. “An Arab “Machiavelli”?: Rhetoric, Philosophy and Politics in Ibn Khaldun’s Critique of 'Sufism’” (Proceedings of the Harvard Ibn Khaldun Conference, ed. Roy Mottahedeh, Cambridge, Harvard, 2003).

[19] Chacham Israel Joseph Benjamin II. Eight Years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855 (Hanover, Germany, 1861), p. 117.

[20] Ibn Rajab. Dhayl (i. 415-20). Laoust, H. “Ibn al-Dhawzi,” Encyclopedia of Islam. Brill Online, 2012.

[21] Meccan revelations, i. 262; cited in D.S. Margoliouth. “ʿAbd al-Kadir.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936). (Brill Online, 2012). Retrieved from http://www.paulyonline.brill.nl/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-1/abd-al-kadir-SIM_0102

[22] M. al-Tanji’s edition of the Shifa' al-Sa’il fi Tahdhib al-Masa’il, (Istanbul, 1958), pp. 110–11.

[23] lbn al-Ahdal. Risala fi sha'n, fol. 30b; cited in Alexander D. Knysh. “Ibn ‘Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam.” (SUNY Press, 1999), p. 127.

[24] George Makdisi. “Ashari and the Ash’arites in Islamic Religious History I.” Studia Islamica, No. 17 (1962), pp. 37-80; “Islam.” Encyclopædia Britannica, (Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 01 Jan. 2013). Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/295507/Islam/69167/The-way-of-the-majority; Duncan B. MacDonald. Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903), chap. III; W. Montgomery Watt. “Ash’ariyya.” Encyclopedia of Islam (Brill, 1999).

[25] Haytami, al-Fatawa al-hadithiyya, 280.

[26] Al Ikhlas, 112: 4.

[27] Commentary on Abu Dawud’s Sunan: Abu Ubayd.

[28] Sherman Jackson. “Ibn Taymiyyah on Trial in Damascus.” Journal of Semitic Studies, XXXIX/1 (Spring 1994).

[29] Manaqib Ahmad.

[30] ‘Abd Allah ibn Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. Kitab al-sunna (Cairo: al-Matba`a al-Salafiya, 1349/1930) p. 35; the book has been denounced as a forgery by Sufi scholar Nuh Ha Mim Keller. “Question 5: Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal,” masud.co.uk. Retrieved from http://masud.co.uk/cms/sheikh-nuh-keller/question-5-imam-ahmad-ibn-hanbal

[31] Al Safadi. A’yan al ‘Asr, vol. 111, 1196, cited in Michael Winter & Amalia Levanoni (ed.). The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics and Society (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 207.

[32] David Little. “Did Ibn Taymiyyah Have a Screw Loose.” Studia Islamica xli (1975) p. 100.

[33] Ahmad ibn al-Naqib al-Misri. Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law.

[34] Little. “Did Ibn Taymiyyah Have a Screw Loose,” p. 95.

[35] Charles Allen. God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad (Da Capo Press, 2006), 45.

[36] Fatawa al Hadithiyyah (Maktaba Mishkaat al Islamiyyah), p. 105,

[37] H. Laoust. Essai sur les idées sociales et politiques d’Ibn Taimîya (Le Caire: Publications de L'Institut Français Archéologie Orientale, 1939), 89 et passim; cited in Georges Makdisi “The Hanbali School and Sufism” Actas IV Congresso de Estudos Arabes e Islamicos (Leiden 1971) p. 121.

[38] Sh. G. F. Haddad. “Ibn Taymiyyah on ‘Fotooh al-Ghayb’ and Sufism.” Living Islam. Retrieved from http://www.abc.se/~m9783/n/itaysf_e.html

[39] G Makdisi. “The Hanbali School and Sufism,” p. 123.

[40] D. S. Margoliouth. “‘Abd al-Kadir.”

Divide & Conquer