Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya as Changing Salafi Icons^1
Annabelle Böttcher
Introduction
The Sunni scholar and Ḥanbalī legal expert Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya
(d. 1328) has become known in the non-Muslim world as a refer-
ence for radical Sunni Muslims, who frequently take recourse to him
when searching for religious and historical justifications for their vio-
lent acts.^2 This has led terrorist hunters and experts to identify him
as the negative icon of the Salafi jihadi movement. His works have
been described as one of the “obscure sources” used to justify rebel-
lion in a tradition of submission to the ruler in Sunni political theory.^3
However, reducing his influence to one of the catalyzing factors for
radical Islam and so-called Islamic terrorism^4 does not at all grasp the
1 This article is the fruit of many years of intensive discussions and research with
and about armed and unarmed Salafis in Germany, Jordan, and Iraq. Even though
I was often struck by the violence of their discourses, I was always welcomed to
share in the thoughts and pains of those who suffered and made others suffer
even more.
2 See for example Worth, Robert: The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Ter-
ror, in: The New York Times (Oct. 13, 2001), online: http://www.nytimes.
com/2001/10/13/arts/13ROOT.html, accessed Dec. 2, 2010. Jansen, Johannes
J. G.: The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism, Ithaca 1997, pp. 32–33; Kra-
wietz, Birgit: Ibn Taymiyya, Vater des islamischen Fundamentalismus? Zur west-
lichen Rezeption eines mittelalterlichen Schariatsgelehrten, in: Manuel Atienza,
Enrico Pattaro, Martin Schulte, Boris Topornin and Dieter Wyduckel (eds.):
Theorie des Rechts in der Gesellschaft, Berlin 2003, pp. 39–62, here pp. 50–52.
3 Sivan, Emmanuel: Sunni Radicalism in the Middle East and the Iranian Revolution,
in: International Journal of Middle East Studies 21 (1989), pp. 1–30, here p. 9.
4 Bascio, Patrick: Defeating Islamic Terrorism. The Wahhabi Factor, Wellesley
2007; Brewer, Paul and Downing, David: September 11 and Radical Islamic Ter-
rorism, Strongsville 2005; Taheri, Amir: Holy Terror. Inside the World of Islamic
Terrorism, Bethesda 1987.
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