Appropriation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 31
into theirs. Since the voluminous compendia seem to be too over-
whelming for casual readers, the modern book market offers all sorts
of single chapters, piecemeal selections, shortened versions or antholo-
gies with other authors. While such editors often hail themselves for
the service done to religious knowledge, for the most part readers –
and not only the average ones – become all the more confused. Not
infrequently, a 20th century or (post)modern consumer even combines
his own musings or his leftover university manuals with quotations
from Ibn al-Qayyim; as a consequence, a rising flood of publications
claiming Ibn al-Qayyim as the author, including many paperbacks,
is pouring forth. Accordingly, the authenticity of the contents of the
shorter publications, in particular – but also of several larger syn-
thetic works – must be thoroughly tested. At times, these pious self-
appointed editors dress up their medleys with fancy titles deliberately
reminiscent of famous, authentic titles of Ibn al-Qayyim’s or some-
one else’s real oeuvre. Ardent readers often seek a profound elevation
of spirit. Religiosity flourishes and sells – especially if not protected
by copy-right regulations. Ibn al-Qayyim is an extreme example of
a premodern Arabic scholar being dismembered, in terms of schol-
arly corpus, into the minutest entities imaginable then reconstructed
in multiple ways. Perhaps one should not join in the bashing of “Salafi
primitivists”^113 but acknowledge – from a scientific point of view – that
such maneuvers can raise awareness of the highly structured nature of
Ibn al-Qayyim’s work, which still itself displays many seams of com-
position and integration. “Ibn al-Qayyim lite” is available everywhere
and has entered the rhetoric of many contemporary Muslim authors,
such as Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī (himself a great recycler or, better, appro-
priator). Such processes of nostrification led to a completely different
breadth of effect in the Muslim audience which in turn reacts with
enhanced or modified structures of needs and desires. On the Internet,
Ibn al-Qayyim may still not generate more hits than Ibn Taymiyya,
especially due to political polemics, but the contexts in which – one
meanwhile hesitates to say – his “teachings” are employed are tremen-
dously variegated and diverse. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya has in almost
no way been “the first man on the moon”, but we suggest depicting
him as the master of appropriation.
***113 We take this expression from Christopher Melchert in the present volume.
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