Appropriation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 13
tual vigour”,^45 for others he mutated into a convenient code word for
evil, most often based on the snowballing hearsay of experts, such as
Irshad Manji: “And if that doesn’t attest to Ibn Tammiya’s contempo-
rary reach, get this: Sayyid Qutb’s exiled brother, Muhammad, taught
Osama bin Laden in Saudi Arabia”.^46
However, both camps agree that Ibn Taymiyya sometimes imple-
mented his teachings by vigilantism, enacting his doctrines in a two-
fold manner.^47 His intransigence emerges not only in the trials as such,
but also in his excesses against, for example, Christians and those Mus-
lims he perceived to be deviant. His is a case of radical activism^48 in the
form of jihad and intervention in public space against individual evil-
doers (al-amr bil-maʿrūf): “Ibn Taymiyya is an activist, convinced that
God calls upon Muslims to undertake the responsibility of combating
external enemies as well as internal evils.”^49 As such, his life appears as a
constant construction site, as a rushing back and forth between differ-
ent fronts, and as a ceaseless migration between the spheres of political
intervention, teaching, personal enmities and chastisement of colleagues
and contemporaries, intrigues against the establishment, military inter-
ventions and key points of contention as expressed in certain fatwas
or epistles. Because of his special combining of political activism with
intellectual production and his simultaneous combat on numerous bat-
tlefields, Ibn Taymiyya’s life has attracted extraordinary biographical
attention.^50 It is probably due to his various interventions, his harsh
rhetoric of “us versus them” and his pointed statements that the life of
45 Sivan, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 42.
46 Manji, Irshad: The Trouble with Islam Today. A Muslim’s Call for Reform,
Toronto 2005, p. 147.
47 An example is already his first public appearance. In 1294, Ibn Taymiyya orga-
nized a riot against a Christian scribe named ʿAssāf al-Naṣrānī, who was accused
of blasphemy against the Prophet Muḥammad, Henri Laoust: La biographie
d’Ibn Taimīya d’après Ibn Kaṯīr, in: Bulletin d’études orientales 9 (1942–1943),
pp. 115–162, here p. 118. Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise al-Ṣārim al-maslūl ʿalā shātim
al-rasūl was written in this context, see Turki, Abdelmagid: Situation du “tribu-
taire” qui insulte l’islam, au regard de la doctrine et de la jurisprudence musul-
manes, in: Studia Islamica 30 (1969), pp. 39–72.
48 Makari, Victor E.: Ibn Taymiyyah’s Ethics. The Social Factor, Chico 1983, p. 27:
“To strive in the divine way was for him to stand up and to take action in the
name of God.”
49 Michel, Thomas: Ibn Taymiyya’s Sharḥ on the Futūḥ al-Ghayb of ʿAbd al-Qādir
al-Jīlānī, in: Hamdard Islamicus 4 (1981), pp. 3–12, here p. 7.
50 Bori, Caterina: The Collection and Edition of Ibn Taymiyya’s Works. Concerns
of a Disciple, in: Mamlūk Studies Review 13 (2009), pp. 47–67, here pp. 51–52.
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