Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview and the Challenge of Modernity 515
modernists who praised him as their role model in fact chose a rath-
er selective approach. Rashīd Riḍā admired the legal theory of Ibn
Taymiyya,^79 appreciated his opposition against most aspects of Sufism
and even praised him and Ibn Ḥanbal for defending the integrity of
Islamic beliefs against the influx of non-Islamic ideas.^80 However the
stance he took on the interpretation of the Koran exposes this adula-
tion as lip service, because he cautiously avoided any reference to their
exegetical concepts when he had to cope with concrete issues like the
istiwāʾ.^81 When readers asked for his counsel with regard to the inter-
pretation of cosmological verses, he denied the validity of the respec-
tive Hadiths and claimed – alluding to al-Ghazālī like Thanāʾ Allāh
79 Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān, al-Manār 9 (1906/07), p. 44; 18 (1915),
pp. 321–352, here pp. 342–344, 327–329, 334–336. The outstanding example for
the influence of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya is the fictional Muḥāwarat al-muṣliḥ
wal-muqallid (Dialogue between a Reformer and an Imitator) resp. Munāẓara
bayn al-muqallid wa-ṣāḥib ḥujja (Debate between an Imitator and the Possessor
of a Proof), which al-Manār began to publish when Muḥammad ʿAbduh was
still alive: Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, p. 53. Similar texts were also produced
by the Ahl-i Ḥadīth: Anonymous: Taqlīd awr ʿamal bil-ḥadīth, in: Haft Roza
Ahl-i Ḥadīth, Nov. 15/22 (1912), pp. 6–8; ul-Mulk, Muḥsin: Taqlīd awr ʿamal bil-
ḥadīth, Amritsar 1909, pp. 57–59. This author (1837–1907) was the successor of
Sayyid Aḥmad Khān as director of the Anglo-Muhammadan College at Aligarh;
Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 171–173. These texts follow the model of
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shams al-Dīn: Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn, Cairo 1374/1955,
vol. 2, pp. 182–196. However, Rashīd Riḍā’s muḥāwara differs in so far he pro-
ceeds from reforms in legal theory to social reform and political awareness, on
this also: Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob: Portrait of the Intellectual as a Young
Man. Rashīd Riḍā’s Muḥāwarat al-muṣliḥ wal-muqallid (1906), in: Islam and
Christian-Muslim Relations 12 (2001) pp. 93–104; via al-Manār these fictional
discussions became also popular among Ottoman Turkish Islamic intellectuals:
Anonymous: Muhavara, bir muhakkık ile mukallid arasında, in: Sebilürreşad
222 (Nov. 11, 1328), pp. 250–252, 223; (Dec. 6, 1328), pp. 265–268; see also Uçar,
Bülent: Recht als Mittel zur Reform von Religion und Gesellschaft. Die türkische
Debatte um die Scharia und die Rechtsschulen im 20. Jahrhundert, Würzburg
2005, p. 139; another approach in legal theory which Rashīd Riḍā appreciat-
ed like the Ahl-i Ḥadīth were the Ẓāhirī ideas of Ibn Ḥazm and al-Shawkānī:
Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad: al-Asʾila al-jāwiyya fī samāḥat al-lahw, in: al-Manār
9 (1906/1907), pp. 35–51, here pp. 37, 43–44; Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad: Ḥukm
man radda kalām al-ulamāʾ alladhī lā dalāl ʿalayhi, in: al-Manār 9 (1906/1907),
pp. 139–147, here pp. 144–147; Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān, in:
al-Manār 9 (1906/1907), pp. 327–328, 334–342; Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad: Uṣūl
al-fiqh ʿinda al-Ẓāhiriyya, in: al-Manār 18 (1915), pp. 379–386, 423–431.
80 Preface to al-Sahaswānī, Ṣiyānat al-insān, pp. 7–9.
81 Rashīd Riḍā, Muḥammad: Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ḥakīm al-shahīr bi-tafsīr
al-Manār, n. p. 1973, vol. 8, pp. 451–453.
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