Against Islamic Universalism 389
tant counter-evidence that he struggles to marginalize. As mentioned
above, al-Albānī edited a text by al-Ṣanʿānī in 1984 refuting the passing
away of the Fire. In the introduction to this edition, al-Albānī sug-
gests that Ibn al-Qayyim got his basic ideas on the duration of the Fire
from Ibn Taymiyya. To back up his claim, he prints three pages from
a previously unknown manuscript containing a text by Ibn Taymiyya
called Fī al-radd ʿalā man qāla bi-fanāʾ al-janna wal-nār (Concerning
the Refutation of Whoever Maintains the Passing Away of the Garden
and the Fire). Al-Albānī surmises that the Arabic handwriting comes
from the 11th/17th century, and he adds that the name of the scribe is
unknown.^42
Al-Ḥarbī reports briefly that these pages speak of two views on
the duration of the Fire among the salaf and later generations, but he
devotes little effort to describing their contents. Instead, he seeks to
discredit their authenticity: these unknown fragments oppose what
Ibn Taymiyya says elsewhere in his corpus; al-Albānī’s edition of them
fails to meet scholarly standards; and it is not known who copied them.
Moreover, they do not state unequivocally that the Fire will end, and
their title speaks of refuting those who say that the Fire will pass away,
not of affirming them. Al-Ḥarbī also accuses al-Albānī of trying to
discredit Ibn Taymiyya by publishing these pages.^43 He adds that if the
pages quoted by al-Albānī truly came from Ibn Taymiyya, his enemies
would have long quoted them and distributed them widely to discredit
him.^44 At the very end of his treatise, al-Ḥarbī is more open to the
possibility that these pages might come from Ibn Taymiyya, but he is
no more eager to read them. Rather, he suggests that they might come
from the same treatise mentioned in Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥādī’s list of Ibn
Taymiyya’s works noted previously and called Qāʾida fī al-radd ʿalā
man qāla bi-fanāʾ al-janna wal-nār (A Rule in Refutation of Whoever
Says that the Garden and the Fire will Pass Away). Based on this title,
al-Ḥarbī again says that it is very likely that the treatise denies that the
Fire will pass away.^45
As I have already indicated above, Ibn Taymiyya did in fact write a
treatise called al-Radd ʿalā man qāla bi-fanāʾ al-janna wal-nār, which I
have been calling Fanāʾ al-nār for short. The entire work was published
in Saudi Arabia in 1995, and, as the editor argues, its authenticity is
42 Al-Albānī in his introduction to al-Ṣanʿānī, Rafʿ al-astār, pp. 8–14.
43 Al-Ḥarbī, Kashf al-astār, pp. 32–33.
44 Ibid., pp. 58, 82.
45 Ibid., pp. 83–84.
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