Written By: Mohamed Abdifitah Mohamoud (AMEEN GUULED)
Date: September 06 2022.
Ibnu-Taymiyah was a great
Islamic thinker and the founder of the so called salafi movement which is
widely practiced in the gulf Countries and some other parts of the
Islamic world, his doctrine of Islamic Understanding became more influenced
among some Muslims in the late of 18th century after the Wahhabi
movement emerged is Saudi Arabia.
He was born in Hernan
turkey on 22 January 1263 and most of his life he lived in Damascus where he
studied and flourished most of his life time.
Ibnu-Taymiyah become the
most controversial Islamic scholar in his era because he harshly criticized
many practices which were practiced by the main stream during his time.
In his life time he was
arrested for several times, first time in 1306 after he was accused of
Anthropomorphism (tajsim) which is the fact of stating physical attributes to
God, he described that God has physical attributes, he also
believed Muslims should accept the physical attributes God has assigned to himself in the Quran without without manification whereas his contemporary especially the theologies of Elmul-kalam like AL-ashariya
believed God was incorporeal. Formless, he is outside time and space and not in
the world or space and ultimately God is beyond description, his first and
second arrests were associated with the accusation of being corporeal and anthropomorphism.
In August 1309, Ibn-Taymiyah was taken into custody and placed under house arrest for seven months in the sultan's palace in Alexandria Egypt, He was later freed when al-Nasir Muhammad retook the position of sultan on 4th March 1310.
In 1310 he has written a
fatwa that was about the validity and permissibility of making a journey to the
grave of prophets and saints including the tomb of prophet Muhammad peace be
upon him and he called this kind of practices an innovation and for this reason
Ibnu-Taymiyah was again arrested in Damascus, He was very famous for opposing
the ideas and the practices of intercession (Tabaruk) which is widely
practiced in variety of Muslim countries till today
He was also arrested in
1320 for teaching against divorce orthodox whereby he rejected the validity of
3 divorce oaths in one setting he even believed if one divorce oath is uttered
but not intended was not valid and not actual divorce
This was relief for the
Muslim men in divorce oaths although till today it is not widely accepted by
all Muslims and it is still a disputed topic.
Ibnu-Taymiyah called an
innovation to anything that was not practiced by the prophet and his well
guided predecessors, he categorized the customs of law into 3 categories
1.
The revealed law
2.
The interpreted law
3. The adulterer law
1)
The
revealed law is the
law which is revealed by God and it is only found in the original scripted text
of the Quran and Sunnah
3) The adulterer law: which is the last law in Ibnu-Taymiya’s categories of custom laws contains anything that’s not the revealed and the interpreted law and he called them Innovation.
He blames Sufis to be
responsible for all the innovations in the Islamic religion and that’s the
reason he condemns the famous practices of Sufism like
Dhikr: The
act of gathering in circles while reciting some remembrance to Allah.
Sama: The
practice of listening and chanting with music for spiritual tranquility.
Fanna/
Annihilation: Experiencing
the death of oneself and absorbing into the divine
He criticized the famous Muslim philosophers like Ibnu Arabi he opposed him for his famous ideology of “Wahdatul Wujud/ oneness” which he said it is making the Creator and the creation as one entity and for this act of opposing the most respected elites of Islam in his timeline and even before him made him a lot of enemies.
Ibnu-Taymiyah also accused Imam fakhrudin razi of apostasy, polytheism and idle worship in his book ‘Bayan talbis aljahmiya’
After such multiple
incidents whereby Ibnu-Taymiyah excommunicated some Sufi sheikhs, the leader of
the Shadali Sufi order Ibnu Ada'ullah gathered a group of 500 people to protest
against him and they both had a formal public debate.
Although one of the students of Ibnu-Taymiyah called Shams-Din al-Dahabi(d:1348) reported “Towards the end of his life, our teacher Ibn Taymiyya would state: ‘I do not deem anyone from among the Muslims to be an unbeliever.’” (Siyar A’lam al-Nubala’),
there are many incidents were Ibnu-Taymiyah himself declared Takfir or excommunicated some of his other fellow Muslims including Sufis and Shia, he also accused polytheism to the mangolis and ordered jihad against them in one of his fatwa’s.
Ibnu-Taymiyah Stated the
following statement about the Alwaites who currently occupy 17.2% of the Syrian
population
“They are heretics and
apostates whose repentance cannot be accepted rather they should be killed wherever
they are found and they may be cursed of what they are doing”.
Ibnu-Taymiyah also
believed the destruction of the Mongols was a curse and punishment
from the almighty God because the Muslims strayed and turned away from the righteous
path that the prophet has left behind for them because the Sufis and Rationalists
brought huge innovations into the revealed religion of Islam and that’s the
main reason the writings and ideologies of Ibnu-Taymiyah were harsh and strict because
he emphasized people to return to the right path and the source of knowledge
should not be taken from the interpretations of the imams, rather he called the
only source which is permissible to use is the original scripted text of the Quran and the Hadith.
For this reason, Ibnu-Taymiyah
rejected the idea of TAQLIID which means imitation to a certain imam that you
trust instead of going directly to original scripted source which can mislead you
if you misunderstand it by your own perspective.
Instead of TAQLIID he emphasized the idea of
IJTIHAD which is to strive to your best level of understanding of the original
scripted text of the Quran and Hadith.
For various reasons today all the terrorist
groups in the world uphold the doctrine and the ideas of Ibnu-Taymiyah and they
use him as their influencer they also call him ‘sheikh AL Islam’.
Salafism Wahhabism and
the Takfir are contingent from the ideas of Ibnu-Taymiyah especially the idea
of excommunicating fellow Muslims and calling Jihad against them especially
against the Sufis and Shia.
Ibnu -Taymiyah left behind plenty of
works which made him one of the most controversial figure in the late of medieval
error, the following are some of his legacy
- Great
compilation of fatw (MAJMU’UL FATAWI).
- The
rejection of the conflict between reason and revelation
- Diseases
of the Hearts.
- Minhaj
As-Sunnah an-Nabawiyyah
- Al-Aqidah
Al-Waasitiyyah.
- Bayan
Talbis Al‑Jahmiyyah
He died on 26 September 1328
at the age of 65, he died while he was in a jail in Damascus, thousands
of people gathered for his funeral in Umayyad mosque, four funeral prayers offered
on him, it is reported that two hundred thousand people gathered in his funeral
and Ibnu kathir says in the history of Islam only imam Ahmad Ibnu Hanbal recieved such similar large crowd in his funeral , after his death his personal belongings
were in high demand his skull cup was sold to 500 dirhams, he was buried in Damascus
in ‘maqbara al sufiya (the cemetery of Sufis)’.