Law and Order According to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 411
al-ḥukmiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim seems to pay more attention to the social
aspects of corruption than Ibn Taymiyya did. As an illustration, in the
following passage, he states:
There is no doubt that enabling women to mix with men is the root of all
calamities and evils. It is also one of the greatest causes of disaster affect-
ing everybody. In addition, it is one of the causes of corruption in public
and private affairs, and the mixing of men and women causes the spread
of immorality, adultery, pandemics and plagues.^50Additionally, Ibn al-Qayyim appears to be more concerned with legal
evidence in dealing with anti-system political violence. As a result, he
considers that the testimony of convinced heterodox theological fol-
lowers including Shiites and Muʿtazilīs could be accepted in the court.
He justifies such an exceptional judicial solution with the necessity to
uphold a judicial system. If the country is predominantly populated
or governed by heterodox sects or if the judges and the muftis belong
to such sects, he asserts, then one cannot reject their witnesses. Doing
so would disable the whole judicial procedure and eventually lead to
great corruption.^51 Thus, the prior function of any public policy is to
keep the community away from corruption. Barber Johansen points
out that what is at stake in siyāsa sharʿiyya is “not a system of rules and
norms but the religious purpose underlying these norms in its practical
political form”.^52 To put it another way, what is important to Ibn al-
Qayyim is how to prevent fasād as a chaotic situation in which religion
loses control over people.
In a similar vein, but in the opposite way, Ibn Taymiyya adopts
a preventive approach to fasād by assimilating a political assassin
to a bandit, since the former creates a state of a public corruption
(al-fasād al-ʿāmm).^53 On this point, Ibn Taymiyya seems to come
under al-Ghazālī’s influence. Ann Lambton noted that the latter,
“impelled by the fear of civil war (fitna) and corruption (fasād) lead-
ing to disorder and anarchy [...] attempted to incorporate the sultan-
ate into the Caliphate and thereby to maintain the religious unity of
50 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, al-Ṭuruq al-ḥukmiyya, p. 724.
51 Ibid., p. 465.
52 Johansen, Signs as Evidence, p. 181.
53 Abou El Fadl, Khaled: Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law, Cambridge and
New York 2001, p. 277. In addition, see Bin Mohd Sharif, Mohd Farid: Baghy
in Islamic Law and the Thinking of Ibn Taymiyya, in: Arab Law Quarterly 20
(2006), pp. 289–305.
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