480 Annabelle Böttcher
of Cyprus under the aforementioned title.^85 The translation was car-
ried out by a convert named Sahib Mustaqim Bleher and published
in 1984 by a person named Darunnur in the city of Würselen near
Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the short introduction on the
back of the book cover, Ibn Taymiyya is presented as “one of the
most important scholars and renewers of Islam”. In addition, some
information is given about the translator, the printer, and the pub-
lisher. According to the publisher, this work by Ibn Taymiyya was
chosen for translation because it describes the relationship between
Islam and Christianity in a way “which has lost nothing of its attrac-
tion and relevance to the current situation”.^86 Since the booklet was
already available in the German language, the Salafis from Leipzig
merely made it accessible on the Internet. In the section “Biography
and History/General”, one finds a document about Ibn Taymiyya
entitled “The Virtues of Ahmad Ahmad Taqiyuddin ibn Taymiyya”.^87
It is a collection of statements made by famous scholars and assem-
bled by a certain Abu Imran, most probably a member of the group.^88
Ibn Kathīr, also a student of Ibn Taymiyya, appears once with a text
entitled “Explanation of Misunderstood Verses” in the “Qur’an” sec-
tion of this website.^89
All in all, the Salaf.de website under discussion is simply a virtu-
al library offering a selection of translated texts of an admonishing
nature from a wide historical and geographic spectrum of the mod-
ern Salafi tradition. For a group that is deeply suspicious of “innova-
tions” and distortions, the website reflects surprisingly little effort to
go directly to the sources. The Hadith-section is poorly developed
apart from a number of charts about how to check their soundness.
For this reason, the outlined selection of texts is a contradiction in
85 Raff, Thomas: Das Sendschreiben nach Zypern. Ar-Risaala al-Qubrusiyya von
Taqī ad-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (661–728 A. H.=1263–1328 A. D.); Edition, Überset-
zung und Kommentar, Ph. D. thesis, Bonn 1971.
86 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn: Das ist die aufrechte Religion. Brief des Ibn Taymiya
an den König von Zypern; aus dem Arabischen von Sahib Mustaqim Bleher,
Würselen 1984.
87 Abu Imran: Die Vorzüge von Schaich al-Islam Ahmad Taqiyuddin Ibn
Taymiyya (1263–1328) anhand Aussagen berühmter Gelehrter, compiled by
Abu Imran, 2002; online: http://www.salaf.de/swf/sir0021.swf, accessed Dec.
04, 2010.
88 http://www.salaf.de/hp/Muslima/muslima.html, accessed Dec. 04, 2010.
89 Ibn Kathir: Erläuterung von missverstandenen Versen, 2001; online: http://
http://www.salaf.de/swf/qur0008.swf, accessed Dec. 04, 2010, five pages.
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