Table Of ContentIbn Taimiya's Struggle against Popular Religion
Religion and Society 1
GENERAL EDITORS
Leo Laeyendecker, University of Leyden
Jacques Waardenburg, University of Utrecht
Mouton · The Hague · Paris
Ibn Taimiya's Struggle against
Popular Religion
With an Annotated Translation of his
Kitah iqtida) as-sirat al-mustaqim mukhalafat
ashab al-jahim
MUHAMMAD UMAR MEMON
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Mouton · The Hague · Paris
ISBN: 90-279-7591-4
Cover and jacket design by M. U. Memon and Jan Nijland
Book design by Antoon van Vliet
© 1976, Mouton & Co
Printed in Hungary
To my parents
Preface
On October 8, 1326, the Shâfi'ite Grand Qätfi Ibn Jumla visited Ibn
Taimiya in prison to question him about his position on the problem of
pilgrimage to local shrines. Ibn Taimiya handed him his views in writing,
to which Ibn Jumla appended this remark : Ί have examined Ibn Taimiya's
statement written in his own hand. Briefly, according to him, visitation
of the sepulchre of Muhammad or of any other prophet constitutes
disobedience to God, as established by the Consensus (ijmä1).'
There was a measure of truth in Ibn Jumla's statement, no doubt,
but the verdict as a whole was little more than a tendentious distortion
of the real ideas of the Hanbalite Ibn Taimiya on the question of pil-
grimage to local saints and shrines. Thus, on that fateful day in October,
there was laid, wittingly or not, the foundation of what now tends to be
a tradition of distortion and misrepresentation half a millenium old.
Ibn Taimiya has up until quite recently remained a victim of distortion.
Of course this is not to say that he has not had his admirers. But, in
all fairness, his detractors have been by far the more numerous and
formidable.
Entering Damascus two years before the death of this Hanbalite
reformer, the Maghribi traveller Ibn Battuta finds himself bearing elo-
quent testimony to the great erudition of Ibn Taimiya and to the immense
popularity he enjoyed among fellow Damascenes. But then, almost as
an afterthought, he hurriedly adds that Ibn Taimiya was also a man
'with some kink in his brain'.1 A most uncharitable remark which was
picked up in earnest by the Western detractors of this Hanbalite doctor.
Five hundred years after the Maghribi traveller, Ignaz Goldziher pro-
duced his variation on the theme of'kinkiness' by dubbing him as a man
who carried 'a bee in his bonnet',2 while D. B. MacDonald, a few years
1. See H. A. R. Gibb, The Travels of Ibn Baffuta (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society,
1958), vol. 1, p. 135. For the original Arabic expression, '... ilia anna fi '•aqlihl shaúarí,
see Ibn Battflta, Rifila (Beirut: Där Çâdir, 1964), p. 95.
2. See his Die gdhiriten: Ihr Lehrsystem und ihre Geschichte. Beitrag zur Geschichte
vin Preface
later, continued the tradition by describing him as a man 'with a screw
loose'.3
Coming as they do from two of the most outstanding Western scholars,
who have otherwise done so much to enhance our understanding of
Islam, these remarks are not only tragic, but also cruel. They, moreover,
betray that ease of attitude which rather than recognize the necessity
of disturbing the status quo gives slavishly in to the force of tradition, to
notions received intact from the past, without so much as even doubting,
let alone questioning, their validity. But it would be equally harsh - in
the best spirit of the Persian hemistich, khatä bar bozorgän giriftan khatäst -
to doubt the integrity of these scholars, though one does nonetheless wish
them to have been more cautious in making these statements.
Whether indeed this Hanbalite polymath had 'some kink in his brain'
or had 'a screw loose' or carried 'a bee in his bonnet' is by itself a subject
awaiting a detailed and by no means unrewarding study. The present
book, however, does not attempt to answer this question, though it does
provide enough data in that direction, if only because our understanding
of this colossal figure of Islam has all along suffered from an unhealthy
bias, so that one simply cannot afford the luxury of leaving out a discus-
sion of his sanity from whatever purports to be an evaluation of his
thought.
With the sole exception of Henri Laoust, and now, lately, George
Makdisi, Ibn Taimiya has been all along depicted as the sworn enemy of
mysticism. Unfortunately, the word 'Sufism' has been bandied about
quite a bit, almost 'profaned', as P. B. Shelley would have called it.
Like the two concepts 'fana>' ('annihilation' of the individual ego) and
'Wahdat al-Wujüd' ('Transcendent Unity of Being') that it has helped
create, it, too, has come to mean different things to different people.
Some prefer to see it as a phenomenon existing independently of, or even
contrary to, Islam. To say the least, this is to dramatize a polarity which
does not exist. This attitude, while it readily sees, even capitalizes on
Islam's inadmissibility of mystical extravaganzas within its purview of
orthodoxy, does not address itself to a prior, more basic question:
der muhammedanischen Theologie, in English translation by Wolfgang Behn, The
Zähiris: Their Doctrine and Their History. A Contribution to the History of Islamic
Theology (Leiden: E. J. Bill, 1971), p. 173.
3. See his Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory
(New York, 1903), p. 273.
Preface ix
What, if anything, is the exact status of these extravaganzas within the
Sufi tradition itself?
Can one meaningfully reconcile many Sufi thaumaturgical feats
- glass-eating, fire-walking, serpent-playing so popular among the Rifäciya
Order, a sub-sect of the Qâdirïya - with the spirit of charity and humani-
tarianism pervading the teachings of the great Sufi saint (Abd al-Qädir
al-Jiläni? Can one think of Sufism without al-Jiläni? Can pandering to
man's innate superstition and fascination with the supernatural be even-
tually what Sufism is all about? One cannot even begin to think of the
compatibility of diverse Sufi shamanistic practices with Islam until one
has asked whether these practices are even compatible with the Sufi
tradition itself.
Our failure to ask these questions would necessarily mean perpetrating
and subsequently perpetuating a grossly unrealistic view of both Ibn
Taimiya and his ideas on Sufism. It would also be tantamount to our
lending support to the common accusation that the Hanbalite tradition
was almost pathologically averse to Sufism. Are metaphysical concerns
or the terribly mundane preoccupations of pedestrian saints the mainstays
of Sufism? Or does it also have a moral content? And if it does, then in
how is this moral content at cross-purposes with Islam?
A serious inquiry into the life and works of Ibn Taimiya does not
sustain the view that he was against Sufism per se - a view which has
been handed down by tradition through a phlegmatic complacency of
conscience. In spite of the vitriolic campaign that he mounted against
the fire-treading Rifä'lya mendicants as well as against the more subtle
and urbane, if also more ruthless, jurists of Cairo priding themselves in
their espousal and support of the doctrine of Wahdat al-Wujüd, Ibn
Taimiya was not, in all fairness, against Sufism or its spiritual values.
He had the greatest esteem for some of the Sufis of Islam. He, for instance,
repeatedly calls the Saint (Abd al-Qâdir al-Jïlânî, 'al-wali al-wäsil,
alJärif al-kämil, saiyidl ash-Shaikh (Abd al-Qädir al-Kiläni' - epithets
bearing unmistakable Sufi identity. Again, his unreserved and uncon-
cealed admiration for men like al-Junaid, Dhü'n-Nün, Bishr al-Häfi, etc.,
is too well known to need further comment. Moreover, contrary to
D. B. MacDonald's most unkind remark that he was a self-serving man
who 'had no use for the mystics, philosophers, Ash(arite theologians,
or, in fact, for anyone except himself',4 the plain fact, as so cogently
4. See ibid.
χ Preface
demonstrated by Henri Laoust, by far the most serious scholar of our
Hanbalite reformer, is that Ibn Taimiya's highly comprehensive concept
of Sharia could have, by its own inner logic, no more rejected the validity
of whatever element of spiritual truth the Sufi had to offer than it would
have the validity of the rational truth of the philosopher. But whether
spiritual verity or rational, both must complement and not override the
Sharia. The tenacity and bitterness of his attack on the mystic can be
fully appreciated from this perspective alone. His attack, however, need
not be interpreted as stemming from a wayward impulse or unbridled
desire to wipe out the very font of Sufi spirituality.
In Ibn Taimiya's system of thought, there is room enough for both
the inner lyricism of the soul and the harsh, almost blinding effulgence
of the intellect. Where the latter is concerned, we have only to remind
ourselves of the unequivocal terms in which he approves of dialectic
(jadal) per se, but, of course, as always with him, with one proviso
that in order to be 'true', it must be 'based on the valid sources of the
law'.5 This ability to see an essential dichotomy at work in many or
most concepts is, it may be observed, a peculiar feature of his mind.
Just as there is a 'true' and a 'false' dialectic, there is also a 'praiseworthy'
and an 'abominable'/««^', but neither censurable per se. Censure results
from deliberately adopting the 'false' and abandoning the 'true'.
So, not only was Ibn Taimiya not averse to Sufism, but he was also,
as we shall soon see, a Sufi himself. Lest this remark appear unreason-
able, or even gratuitous, especially in view of his many and unceasing
tirades against the Sufi and his craft, let it be admitted that he was a
moderate Sufi who wanted to rid Sufism at once of the metaphysical
overgrowth it had come to acquire with the slow maturation of Islamic
thought over centuries of brisk interaction with neo-Platonic philosophy
and of the antinomian accretions the pedestrian saints had allowed to
take root within it.
Unfortunately I could not get Professor George Makdisi's recent ar-
ticle, 'Ibn Taimiya: A Süfi of the Qädiriya Order',6 until after this
5. See George Makdisi, 'The Tanbih of Ibn Taimiya on Dialectic: The Pseudo-
'Aqilian Kitäb al-Farq', in Sami A. Hanna (ed.), Medieval and Middle Eastern
Studies in Honor of Aziz Suryal Atiya (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), p. 292.
6. In The American Journal of Arabic Studies, 1 (1973), pp. 118-29.
