416 Abdessamad Belhaj
policy as the policy that allows rights to be restored from the unjust
sinner. As such, justice has two roles for him; on the one hand, it should
restore the rights of the victim and correct the injurer. On the other
hand, it should be punitive to the vicious.^71 Despite its importance, the
distinction made by Ibn al-Qayyim between a just public policy and
an unjust one (siyāsa ẓālima), was not a starting point of reflection on
the mechanisms of unjust policies applied in his time.
Furthermore, Ibn al-Qayyim draws attention to the understanding
faculties of the judge (fiqh al-ḥākim) stating that the judge should be
perspicacious in understanding the signs and the verbal and the contex-
tual proofs as much as the general rules of law. Otherwise, he would be
guided by prejudices and would violate common sense. He certainly
would do so if he considered only the apparent elements of a case rath-
er than paying attention to the conditions of legal evidence as well.^72
Equally, Ibn al-Qayyim distinguishes between two legal understand-
ings: first, the one that is related to the general elements of a legal case;
and the other, an understanding of the reality of the case and of human
psychology. In the second understanding, the judge should be aware of
the difference between the truth and lies, right and wrong; he should
compare this and give legal judgement in accordance with reality; the
judge does not regard duty and the reality as two different things.^73
Ḥisba (an agency that controls commercial practices as well as moral
conduct in public space), one of Islamic public policy’s main institu-
tions supporting the principle of commanding right and forbidding
wrong, did not appear in Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya. Bear-
ing in mind that he already dealt with this subject in a separate treatise,
Risālat al-Ḥisba, he probably did not want to repeat himself. At any
rate, more than a few studies have analyzed the conception of ḥisba
in Ibn Taymiyya’s understanding. Notably, Ahmed Abdelsalam draws
the conclusion that Ibn Taymiyya forbids the use of violence against
rulers, as long as they practice praying. Likewise, he warns “against the
offensive practice of iḥtisāb without specific knowledge, mildness and
patience”.^74 Ibn al-Qayyim devoted a long chapter to the subject of
ḥisba.^75 Ibn al-Qayyim briefly reminds us of the muḥtasib’s authority
71 Ibid., pp. 7–8.
72 Ibid., pp. 6–7.
73 Ibid., p. 7.
74 Abdelsalam, Ahmed: The Practice of Violence in the ḥisba-Theories, in: Iranian
Studies 38 (2005), pp. 547–554, here p. 552.
75 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, al-Ṭuruq al-ḥukmiyya, pp. 620–683.
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