The Poison of Philosophy 271
tion, he mentions his annoyance at seeing many of those who deal with
logic justifying themselves by pointing to the weakness of arguments
by which Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ had forbidden it.^74 Therefore, al-Suyūṭī feels
obliged to show that the four “founders” of the law schools and other
eminent righteous forefathers forbade innovation (bidʿa) and specula-
tive theology (ʿilm al-kalām). He argues that since logic represents an
innovation, they had clearly forbidden it.^75 Al-Suyūṭī repeats the claim
that logic was forbidden by the main religious scholars in an apparently
far-reaching fatwa entitled al-Qawl al-mushriq fī taḥrīm al-ishtighāl
bil-manṭiq (The Illuminating Statement about the Prohibition of the
Study of Logic), enumerating nearly 50 persons whom he classifies by
juridical schools.^76 Therein, he declares logic to be
a harmful (khabīth) and reprehensible (madhmūm) discipline, the study
of which is forbidden, being partly based on the theory of the primary
matter (hayūlā), which is unbelief leading to philosophy and heresy (zan-
daqa) and bearing no religious nor worldly fruit whatsoever.^77His few further arguments against logic are very simplistic, reducing
it to a science whose proofs are based on universals and consequently
have no extramental existence. He only mentions inference by signs
or indicators as an alternative (see chapter twelve).^78 Thus, al-Suyūṭī’s
rejections take into account only some points of Ibn Taymiyya’s
sophisticated critique and leave his epistemological considerations
completely aside.
There seems to have been no further elaborate refutation of logic
based on Ibn Taymiyya’s works or on al-Suyūṭī’s compilation of Ibn
Taymiyya’s al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn.^79 The reason might be that any
logic that he likewise titles al-Ghayth al-mughriq fī taḥrīm al-manṭiq (Sar-
tain, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, vol. 2, p. 241) or al-Qawl al-mushriq fī taḥrīm
al-ishtighāl bil-manṭiq (ibid., p. 114; al-Suyūṭī, Ṣawn al-manṭiq, p. 1); edited
in al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn: al-Ḥāwī lil-fatāwā fī al-fiqh wa-ʿulūm al-tafsīr wal-
ḥadīth wal-uṣūl wal-naḥw wal-iʿrāb wa-sāʾir al-funūn, Beirut 1395/1975, vol. 1,
pp. 255–257.
74 Al-Suyūṭī, Ṣawn al-manṭiq, p. 2.
75 Ibid., pp. 14–190.
76 Al-Suyūṭī, al-Qawl al-mushriq, pp. 255–257. See also below, n. 165.
77 Al-Suyūṭī, al-Qawl al-mushriq, p. 255.
78 Ibid., p. 256.
79 ʿAlī al-Wardī regards Ibn Khaldūn’s (732/1332–808/1406) critique of logic (Ibn
Khaldūn, Muqaddima, pp. 209–220; see Mahdi, Muhsin: Ibn Khaldūn’s Phi-
losophy of History. A Study in the Philosophic Foundation of the Science of Cul-
ture, London 1957, pp. 100–112) as having been influenced by Ibn Taymiyya
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