136 Y. Tzvi Langermann
The same question was taken up, and the same affirmative answer
given, by Mashhūr Salmān on a Salafi website in April 2005. In order
to come to a decision, Salmān studied the book closely, making use also
of a manuscript in his possession. He found a cross-reference to Kitāb
al-Rūḥ in yet another book of Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Tabyīn fī aqsām
al-qurʾān.^34
It has been intimated that the late ʿAbd al-Azīz b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn
Bāz, “grand mufti” of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was behind the
allegations that the book was not written by Ibn al-Qayyim. I gather
as much from the response of a Kuwaiti scholar, Sayyid Yūsuf al-Rifāʿī,
a respected jurist (of the Shāfiʿī school), a Sufi leader, and a former
government minister, in his “Advice to Our Brothers the Scholars of
Najd”. In section 47, al-Rifāʿī says,
You accuse the Muslims who differ with you of being deviant Jahmis or
Muʿtazilīs. The truth is, you are the Jahmiyya because you agree with
them in some of their doctrines and you are the Muʿtazila because you
concur with them in denying sainthood and saints as well as their miracu-
lous gifts, the life of the dead, and the arbitration of reason in matters of
the unseen in religious issues.There is a footnote after the phrase, “the life of the dead”, which
reads: “Hence they deny that Ibn al-Qayyim authored al-Rūḥ!”^35
Another website identifies “ʿAbd al-Azīz b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Bāz, the
late (d. 1999) nescient mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, gov-
ernment scholar par excellence, and major innovator whose influence
on spreading deviant beliefs is incalculable” as the target of al-Rifāʾī’s
Naṣīḥa li-ikhwāninā ʿulamāʾ najd (Advice to Our Brothers the Scholars
of Najd).^36
34 http://www.aqsasalafi.com/vb/showthread.php?p=12052, (accessed April 4, 2010).
35 http://www.rifaieonline.com/advice.htm (accessed April 4, 2010). The “life of
the dead”, I presume, is a poor English rendering of the revivification of the
dead. Jahm’s (d. 128/746) role here seems to be very much that of the arch-
heretic. Ibn al-Qayyim (Kitāb al-Rūḥ, p. 151), beginning of 17 masʾala accuses
the mutakallimūn who deny that spirit is created of being followers of Jahm;
see also the conspectus of that query below. On Jahm and his connection to the
early Muʿtazila, see Pines, Shlomo: Studies in Islamic Atomism, Jerusalem 1997,
appendix A, pp. 142–150.
36 Http://answeringwhabismandsalafism.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/abd-al-
aziz-ibn-abd-allah-ibn-baaz-a-concise-guide-to-another-primary-innovator-
in-islam/ (accessed April 4, 2010).
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