40 M. Sait Özervarli
The Muʿtazilīs overlooked the omnipotence of God in order to prove
His justice, and the Ashʿarīs ignored justice in order to demonstrate
His omnipotence, and therefore, Ibn Taymiyya argued, both schools
failed to present a complete picture of divinity, since both qualities
need to be equally underlined. In his view, since all His actions wisely
and purposefully take place of His free will, He cannot be determined-
ly in need of purposes or become perfected by them. If He were con-
sidered to be in need of purposes, then he would also be regarded as
being in need of attributes, which is pointless. The purposes are parts
of actions, and mutually brought into being by God without any pre-
ceding source. Therefore, there is no obstacle to the existence of causes,
motives, or purposes in His actions.^8 Moreover, he says, if there is no
other argument, God’s infinite knowledge would be enough to prevent
aimless acts by Him. The idea of an aimless creation would be against
the divine essence and qualities.^9
It is clear that Ibn Taymiyya held a more rational approach to divine
actions than other Sunni theologians and particularly the Ashʿarīs. As
Fazlur Rahman pointed out:
Ibn Taymiyya reinstates into Muslim theology the doctrine of the pur-
posiveness of the Divine behaviour, a doctrine so strenuously denied by
Ashʿarism, Maturidism, and Zahirism as compromising the omnipotence
of God’s will and His dissimilarity to His creation. This purposiveness
is God’s involvement in the destiny of man and from this he directly
deduces the idea of God as the Commander or the Shariʿa-Giver. He next
strives to distinguish the planes at which the Will and Wisdom of God are
respectively meaningful.^10Furthermore Ibn Taymiyya does not see a real problem with divine
wisdom in apparently evil situations in nature or human life. A lack of
comprehension of the hidden purposes behind evil should not affect a
broad approach regarding divine wisdom. We cannot deny our definite
knowledge about many purposeful actions in the universe because of
some cases, certain details of which may have not been discovered. If
the being of a thing is more important than the partial harms it causes,
8 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn: Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawiyya fī naqḍ kalām
al-shīʿa wal-qadariyya, edited by Muḥammad Rashād Sālim, Cairo 1989, vol. 1,
pp. 145–147; Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿat al-Rasāʾil, vol. 5, p. 337; Ibn Taymiyya,
Majmūʿ Fatāwā, vol. 8, p. 146.
9 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn: Kitāb al-Nubuwwāt, Beirut 1985, pp. 258–259 and
271–274.
10 Rahman, Fazlur: Islam, Chicago 1979, pp. 113–114.
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