506 Martin Riexinger
behavior, nicknamed as “Ibn Taymiyya of Rawalpindi”^48 with refer-
ence to his place of residence wrote a 450 page attack on Thanāʾ Allāh,
motivated by his opinion that in the India of his day the efforts of
Ibn Ḥanbal had to be repeated. Hence he wanted to subject Thanāʾ
Allāh to “the judgment of Ibn Taymiyya”,^49 who extensively criticized
al-Ghazālī and al-Rāzī for partially accepting philosophical arguments.
He mainly attacked Thanāʾ Allāh’s stance on ʿuluww and fawqiyya.
By ridding God of his attributes, he declared, Thanāʾ Allāh deprives
him of his divinity.^50 But apart from that the vitriolic diatribe consisted
mainly of unfounded allegations such as the denial of the Judgment
and the Resurrection^51 or God’s will because the “philosopher” Thanāʾ
Allāh allegedly considers him someone who makes the existence of
something necessary due to his own essence (mūjib bil-dhāt).^52
The harsh opposition of many scholars did not at all isolate Thanāʾ
Allāh among the Ahl-i Ḥadīth. To outsiders he even became their main
representative, thanks to his magazine Haftroza Ahl-i Ḥadīth (pub-
lished without major interruption from 1904–1947, possibly a unique
case among South Asian Islamic periodicals) and his leading role in
Ahl-i Ḥadīth organizations. He founded the All India Ahl-i Ḥadīth
Conference in 1912. The first initiatives in this direction date back
to 1906, hence to those years in which the conflict on Koran exege-
sis (tafsīr) began.^53 Furthermore he was a religious scholar whom the
Muslim educational organizations throughout India liked to invite to
lecture at their annual sessions. Notably both his activities as a maga-
zine editor and his efforts to create an effective organizational struc-
ture for the Ahl-i Ḥadīth were directed at non-scholars whose par-
ticipation in the affairs of the community Thanāʾ Allāh encouraged. In
addition to his activities among the Ahl-i Ḥadīth Thanāʾ Allāh was an
ardent supporter of the many local associations (most of them called
anjuman-i islāmiyya) which consisted mainly of businessmen, profes-
sionals and members of the civil service who intended to overcome the
48 For a biography see Khānpūrī, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh: Tadhkira-i ʿulamāʾ-i
Khānpūr, Lahore 1985, pp. 35–142, on his battlesome behaviour, here pp. 132–
134.
49 Khānpūrī, ʿAbd al-Aḥad: Kitāb al-Tawḥīd wal-sunna fī radd al-ilḥād wal-bidʿa,
Rāwalpindī n. d., p. 3.
50 Ibid., pp. 11–13, 36–37, 42.
51 Ibid., pp. 140, 252–254.
52 Ibid., p. 139.
53 Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 513–521.
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