The Poison of Philosophy 259
Research on Ibn Taymiyya in the last decades has revealed strik-
ing similarities between some of his tenets and those of other philoso-
phers. Special attention has been paid to affinities between Ibn Rushd
and Ibn Taymiyya in respect to their concepts of causality^19 and of the
creation of the world.^20 Also mentioned are their common rejection of
Aristotle’s scientific method and the use of terms like qidam (eternity)
or ḥudūth (origination) in the sphere of religion; and in general, their
attempt to clearly separate religion from philosophy.^21 With respect to
theodicy, several remarkable common features between Ibn Sīnā’s and
19 Al-Ṣughayyir points also to a correspondence of Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn
Rushd’s theory of causality (Mawāqif “rushdiyya” li-Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya?
Mulāḥaẓāt awwaliyya, in: al-Ṭāhir Waʿzīz (ed.): Dirāsāt maghribiyya. Muhdāt
ilā al-mufakkir al-maghribī Muḥammad ʿAzīz al-Ḥabbābī (Lahbabi), ed. by
al-Ṭāhir Waʿzīz, Casablanca 1987, pp. 176–177, refering to Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī
al-Dīn Aḥmad: Kitāb al-Nubuwwāt, Cairo 1346/1927–1928, p. 219 and idem:
al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn, ed. by ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Sharaf al-Dīn al-Kutubī,
Bombay 1368/1949, p. 270). Harās considers the Damascene even “strongly
influenced” by the Andalusian (Harās, Muḥammad Khalīl: Bāʿith al-nahḍa
al-islāmiyya. Ibn Taymiyya al-salafī; naqduhu li-masālik al-mutakallimīn wal-
falāsifa fī al-ilāhiyyāt, Beirut 1984, p. 168, refering to Ibn Taymiyya’s Minhāj
al-sunna and his Majmūʿat al-Rasāʾil al-kubrā, Cairo 1323/1905. See below,
chapter 11.2.
20 ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Ṣughayyir and Jon Hoover have shown that Ibn Taymiyya’s
theory of God’s “perpetual creativity” disclose a great similarity to Ibn Rushd’s
theory of continuous creation from eternity; Hoover, Perpetual Creativity,
especially pp. 290, 295. Ibn Taymiyya does, however, not refer to Ibn Rushd
in regard to that theory (ibid., p. 295). A very simple explanation for it would
be that he was not aware of it, since he apparently did not know Faṣl al-maqāl
and he might have been not in the possession of the whole Tahāfut al-Tahāfut.
Still, an exhaustive study of Ibn Taymiyya’s position towards Ibn Rushd, tak-
ing Ibn Taymiyya’s main purposes into account, might reveal other reasons. It
is noteworthy that Ibn Rushd’s theory of continuous creation, developed from
the Koran, enjoys much more attention among Arab intellectuals in the 20th
century than the theory of eternity he exposes in his commentaries on Aristotle
(von Kügelgen, Anke: Averroes und die arabische Moderne. Ansätze zu einer
Neubegründung des Rationalismus im Islam. Leiden 1994, pp. 385–398) and
that these intellectuals are obviously not aware of Ibn Taymiyya’s very similar
theory.
21 Von Kügelgen, Anke: Dialogpartner im Widerspruch. Ibn Rushd und Ibn
Taymīya über die “Einheit der Wahrheit”, in: Rüdiger Arnzen and Jörn Thiel-
mann (eds.): Words, Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea. Studies
on the Sources, Contents and Influences of Islamic Civilization and Arabic Phi-
losophy and Science Dedicated to Gerhard Endress on His Sixty-fifth Birthday,
Leuven 2004, pp. 455–481, here 474–475.
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