Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya as Changing Salafi Icons 489
“drove Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Gadhafi, Hafez Assad, Saleh, Fahed –
Allah’s curse be upon the non-believing leaders – and all the apostate
Arab rulers to torture, kill, imprison, and torment Moslems”.^131 Ibn
Taymiyya is quoted by Ibrahim al-Masri as saying that Muslims have
to assemble, cooperate, and assist each other under a chosen leader
in order to govern their affairs. Hereby God’s commands have to be
implemented, be it by force, jihad, justice, pilgrimage, or otherwise.^132
One of the leading Salafi religious authorities, the Jordanian Abū
Muḥammad al-Maqdisī, described how often his house in Jordan was
searched and his personal belongings confiscated.^133 After his arrests,
he and his followers lived in solitary confinement “isolated from the
outside world for periods unmatched by prisoners before them in this
country except for a few” and “experiencing a range of mental and phys-
ical torture crafted by the authorities, who were forced to hide many
brothers from the occasional visits of international organisations”.^134
Under such circumstances, detainees often (re-)discover Ibn Taymiyya
and his students. They might be able to access religious books during
or after their initial period of interrogation. Depending on whether or
not they are held in solitary confinement or in collective cells, they can
have books through family visits or they exchange them with other
detainees.^135
One rare piece of evidence of reading experiences in detention is given
by a young Salafi of Yemeni descent named Anwar al-Awlaki. He was
born in 1971 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and later studied civil engi-
neering and education in the United States. He also worked as the Imam
of an Islamic centre in Virginia.^136 In 2006 he returned to Yemen and was
subsequently arrested and imprisoned for more than 18 months without
131 Ibid, p. 9.
132 Ibid., p. 12.
133 Al-Maqdisī, Shaykh Abū Muḥammad ʿĀsim (May Allāh hasten his escape):
This is Our ʿAqīdah, n. p. n. d., p. 6.
134 Ibid, p. 4.
135 In Guantanamo, one of the requests by the detainees after the hunger strike
in the first half of the year 2006 was for the circulation of religious books. See
Golden, Tim: The Battle for Guantanamo, in: The New York Times (Sept. 17,
2006); online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/magazine/17guantanamo.
html?pagewanted=print, accessed Dec. 10, 2010.
136 Al-Awlaki, Anwar: Understandig Ramadan. The Muslim Month of Fasting,
in: Washington Post (Nov. 19, 2001); online: http://www.washingtonpost.
com/wp-srv/liveonline/01/nation/ramadan_awlaki1119.htm, accessed July 8,
2008.
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