Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview and the Challenge of Modernity 513
The affair did not calm down in the immediate aftermath. Thanāʾ
Allāh demonstrated that he had found an eminent supporter abroad.
Thanāʾ Allāh’s son ʿAṭāʾ Allāh sent Rashīd Riḍā an extensive request
for a legal opinion (istiftāʾ) written by Thanāʾ Allāh’s best friend and
most important collaborator Ibrāhīm Mīr Siyālkothī (d. 1874–1956),
in which he asked whether the metaphorical interpretation of istiwāʾ as
proposed by the speculative theologians (mutakallimūn) was accept-
able. Rashīd Riḍā endorsed their point of view and justified his posi-
tion also with references to figures revered by the Ahl-i Ḥadīth such as
al-Shawkānī and Walī Allāh.^73 In 1930 he advertised in al-Manār that
the new edition of the Tafsīr al-qurʾān bi-kalām ar-raḥmān was avail-
able from his office.^74
Thanāʾ Allāh’s opponents bothered to demonstrate that he misin-
terpreted the spirit of the mediation document. ʿAbd al-Aḥad wrote a
pamphlet titled al-Fayṣla al-ḥijāziyya al-sulṭāniyya bayn ahl al-sunna
wal-jahmiyya al-thanāʾiyya (The Hijazi Decision by the Sultan between
the Followers of the Prophetic Tradition and the Thanāʾian Jahmism)
in which he drew again the conclusion that Thanāʾ Allāh was a “heretic
to be decapitated” (zindīq maʿnūq). Finally, in 1929 Thanāʾ Allāh and
his main opponents the Ghaznawīs signed a pledge to abstain from
further defamations which they finally both kept.^75
4. Beyond the Punjab:
The Global Significance of a Local Conflict
The line of conflict in this controversy can be summed up as follows: a
scholar coming from a tradition imbued with the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya
nis zwischen Ägypten und den Wahhābiten, 1923–1936, anhand von in Kairo
veröffentlichten pro- und antiwahhābitischen Streitschriften und Presseberich-
ten, Frankfurt/Main 1991; see also Ende, Werner: Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad,
in: EI^2 , vol. 8 (1994), pp. 446–448 and Jomier, Jacques: al-Manār, in: EI^2 , vol. 6,
pp. 360–361; Yasushi, Kosugi: al-Manār Revisited. The „Lighthouse“ of the
Islamic Revival, in: Stéphane A. Dudoignon and Komatsu Hisao (eds.): Intel-
lectuals in the Modern Islamic World. Transmission, Transformation, Communi-
cation, Abingdon 2006, pp. 3–39.
73 Istiftāʾ fī fatwā wa-ṭalab iqrārihā wa-taṣḥīḥihā, in: al-Manār 28 (1927/1928),
pp. 261–271.
74 Taqrīẓ al-maṭbūʿāt al-jadīda, in: al-Manār 31 (1930/1931), pp. 396–397.
75 Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, p. 362. ʿAbd al-Aḥad did not realize that fayṣla
(decision/judgment) does not exist in Arabic.
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