414 Abdessamad Belhaj
ity of the state over the community should be extended because the
purposes and interests of Islamic law include political authority.^61 For
him, the ultimate objective in legal coercion is commanding right and
forbidding wrong.^62 Consequently, the ruler should make prayers
compulsory and punish delayers as much as he should use power to
enforce order and law.^63 Ibn Taymiyya does not call to an ideal Islamic
policy that would replace the policies adopted by the Mamluks. Rath-
er, he appears to be in favour of a strict public ethics supervised by
existing states. However, Ibn Taymiyya underlines the limits of this
extended authority he offers rulers. Unsurprisingly, he goes back again
to Muslim ethics criticising the political and moral corruption of some
princes and commanders.^64 He does not condemn the Mamluks as such
or any other Muslim sultanate. Rather, he emphasizes two features that
should qualify a good ruler: power (quwwa) and honesty (amāna).^65 In
other words, he perceived legal coercive public policy as a combination
of force and responsibility. For the most part, Ibn Taymiyya tries to
deal with a de facto situation. He did not perceive the state as suspect
or view it as a necessary evil, as is argued by Sachedina.^66 What remains
essential for him is Sharia as an ultimate source of authority.
In the same way, Ibn al-Qayyim argued in favour of extending the
authority of the judges for the sake of the effectiveness of the judicial
system. Nevertheless, he also underlines the necessity for a judge to
understand the context in which he applies fiqh. That is to say, the
judge should consider the public order before implementing Sharia
rules. Hence the importance of contextual evidence (qarāʾin) and signs
(amārāt) in the judicial process. Admittedly, Ibn al-Qayyim strong-
ly defends the normative dimension of Sharia; but since the subject
of judicial procedures is, by nature, a technical subject, al-Ṭuruq
al-ḥukmiyya has much in common with the manuals on judicature
61 Ibid., p. 30.
62 Ibid., p. 96. See Ibn Taymiyya on forbidding wrong, in: Cook, Michael A.:
Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought, Cambridge
2000, pp. 151–158. See also: Laoust, Henri: Essai sur les doctrines sociales et poli-
tiques de Taki-al-Din Ahmad b. Taimiya, canoniste Ḥanbalite. Né à Ḥarrān en
661/1262, mort à Damas en 728/1328; thèse pour le doctorat, Cairo 1939.
63 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya, p. 96.
64 Ibid., pp. 240–243.
65 Ibid., p. 17.
66 Sachedina, Abdulaziz: Guidance or Governance? A Muslim Conception of
“Two Cities”, in: George Washington Law Review 68 (2000), pp. 1079–1097,
here p. 1087.
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