Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law

The Poison of Philosophy 317

ate realist” and not a “nominalist.” The following quotations support
these assumptions:

One of the greatest attributes of the intellect is the apprehension of simili-

tude and difference. Once the intellect conceives of two similar things, it

knows that they are alike, and thus it applies the same judgement to both

of them, such as, for example when it observes two pools of water, two

piles of soil, or two portions of air. The intellect thus applies a universal

judgement (ḥukm kullī) to the common factor.^271

Ibn Taymiyya then states in the course of his explanation of the co-
extensive and the co-exclusive analogy:

God said that He sent down the Balance just as He revealed the Book, so

that people may uphold equity (qisṭ). The means by which similar quali-

ties and measures are known belongs to the Balance. And so does that by

which differences among different things are known.^272

As an example, he mentions the prohibition of grape wine and what
resembles it in respect to the reason for the prohibition^273 and con-
cludes that

the common factor – namely, the middle term^274 – is the Balance^275 which

God has revealed into our hearts so that we may weigh one (thing) and

treat it as the other. By so doing we will not draw a distinction between

two similar things. Valid inference (al-qiyās al-ṣaḥīḥ) thus stems from

standing the balance as being Greek logic or at least as being limited to Greek
logic.
271 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 371; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 332; Hallaq, Ibn
Taymiyya, p. 160. The Arabic expressions in angular brackets in this and the
following quotations are mine. Otherwise I follow Hallaq’s translation.
272 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 371; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, pp. 332–333; Hallaq,
Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 161–162.
273 Al-Suyūṭī abridged the passage concerning the prohibition (see above, n. 262).
274 Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 162, translates al-ʿilla here as “middle term”, and Ibn
Taymiyya definitively uses it also in that sense (see Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd,
p. 364; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 331; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 159) and not
only in the sense of ratio legis. In this case, he obviously uses it in both senses.
275 He repeats this identification a little later in even more explicit terms: “The
Balance is the sound inference (al-aqyisa al-ṣaḥīḥa) that encompasses equating
two similar things and differentiating between two dissimilar things, whether
the form of that inference is a categorical syllogism or an analogy. But the
forms of analogy are the source, and they are more perfect [than the syllo-
gism]. The balance is the common factor, namely the middle term (jāmiʿ).”
(Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 383; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 335; Hallaq, Ibn
Taymiyya, p. 164).

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