Ibn Taymiyya Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Taqi al-Din Ahmed Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) was a prominent Muslim scholar and jurist of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He is noted for his contribution to debates about the combination of secular logic and Islamic faith, his attachment to a conservative and totalizing notion of Islam, and his defense of jihad as a primary responsibility of Muslims. Ibn Taymiyya resisted contemporary forms of innovation in religion and castigated Muslim rulers such as the Mongols who did not abide by the customs of Islamic unity, all the while defending Islamic practice as a pillar of state policy. He is therefore often credited as a forerunner of modern Salafist or Islamist movements that condemn both non-Muslim governments and their secular Muslim counter parts. His approach to jihad is widely viewed as a significant development in the tradition of Islamic militancy.

Ibn Taymiyya was born in 1263 in Harran, now located in southeastern Turkey. His birth came at a time of widespread political instability and ferment. The invasion and sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258 brought an end to the Ayyubid Empire and left all of Southwest Asia in danger of raids and violence. When he was about seven years old, Ibn Taymiyya’s family left Harran for the more stable confines of Damascus, at that time ruled by the Egyptian Mamluks. Both his father and grandfather were noted Sunni scholars of the Hanbali tradition. His father became a teacher in Damascus, and upon his death in 1284, Ibn Taymiyya took his place.

Ibn Taymiyya taught at a time when Arab Muslim societies were being forced to respond to the political challenges of the Mongols and the Crusaders. In 1291 the last Crusader kingdom of Acre was defeated by the Mamluks, and Ibn Taymiyya joined in the defense of Damascus against invading Mongol armies in 1300.The need to maintain a unified defense against external opponents shaped his attitude to politics and to jihad.

An extensive collection of Ibn Taymiyya’s teaching has come down in the form of religious rulings (fatawa) and monographs. He worked to renew and reinvigorate traditional scholarship, particularly in opposition to the Ash’ari school, which was premised on the unity of creation that fused Greek philosophic thought with the Islamic tradition. His opposition to the Sufi theologies of hulul (God’s indwelling of man) and wahdat al wujud (unity of creation) set him against standard Sufi practices of seclusion and mantric repetition. On the other hand, he counseled Muslims to support the political mobilization of the citizenry of the Islamic state in jihad from the example of the prophet Muhammad, affirming the offensive jihad as a “collective obligation” (fard kifaya) and the defensive jihad as an “individual obligation” (fard ayn).

Ibn Taymiyya’s strong denunciation of popular religion put him in conflict with the Mamluk authorities, and he was imprisoned in Cairo from 1305 to 1306 on charges of heresy. He was also imprisoned in Damascus for his outspoken conservative views from 1320 to 1321 and in 1328. He died in prison in 1328.

Bibliography:

Hallaq,Wael. Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek Logicians. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1993.
Ibn Taymiyyah,Taqi al-Din. Ibn Taymiyyah Expounds on Islam. Translated by Muhammad Abdul-Haqq Ansari. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: General Administration of Culture and Publication, 2000.
Public Duties in Islam:The Institution of the Hisba. Translated by Muhtar Holland. Leicester, UK: Islamic Foundation, 1982.
Michel,Thomas F., ed. A Muslim Theologian’s Response to Christianity: Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Jawab al Sahih. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan, 1984.

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