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nity of the Fire. This, he explains, spurred him to search widely for
texts in support of that view:
Emanating from Ibn al-Qayyim’s withholding judgment on this great
issue is the scent of a new position for him concerning it. On the basis
of my knowledge acquired from the writings of shaykh al-islām Ibn
Taymiyya and his disciple imām Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya that they rank
among the rejuvenators of Salafi doctrine and those who raise its ban-
ner, this is what prompted me to search anew in the books of Ibn al-
Qayyim and his Shaykh. By the success of God – Exalted and majestic is
He – I arrived at the desired objective, which is the agreement of the two
Shaykhs and [their] unity in maintaining the everlastingness of the Fire.^35Al-Ḥarbī overstates the extent of his new search in Ibn Taymiyya’s
and Ibn al-Qayyim’s works. Most of the texts and arguments that
he employs are already considered in al-Albānī’s introduction to
al-Ṣanʿānī’s Rafʿ al-astār,^36 and, as we will see, al-Ḥarbī is well aware
of this discussion even if he does not acknowledge his full debt to it.
However, al-Albānī and al-Ḥarbī offer opposing assessments of the
evidence. While al-Albānī cites texts in which Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn
al-Qayyim affirm the eternity of the Fire, he is not certain that these
indicate their final views, and he criticizes them for otherwise slip-
ping into serious error. Al-Albānī concludes that however great Ibn
Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim might have been, their opinions must be
treated with caution. Al-Ḥarbī on the other hand insists that such great
reformers must certainly have believed in the eternity of the Fire. We
will first examine how al-Ḥarbī tries to prove this for Ibn Taymiyya
and then for Ibn al-Qayyim.
3. Trying to Demonstrate that Ibn Taymiyya
Upholds the Eternity of the Fire
Al-Ḥarbī states frequently that there is no evidence in Ibn Taymiyya’s
corpus showing that he believes in the passing away of the Fire. How-
ever, in a nod to the witness of Ibn al-Qayyim’s Ḥādī al-arwāḥ that
Ibn Taymiyya reported two views from the Salaf on this issue, al-Ḥarbī
imagines that he might first have leaned toward the passing away of the
Fire and then shifted to the “correct” view. To make this plausible,
35 Al-Ḥarbī, Kashf al-astār, p. 49.
36 Al-Albānī’s introduction is found in al-Ṣanʿānī, Rafʿ al-astār, pp. 5–51.
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