Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Yahya Michot
Hartford Seminary
2
was called Father of the Islamic Revolution by Emmanuel Sivan.4
Twenty years later, he became the spiritual ancestor of Usama bin
Laden. In The Age of Sacred Terror, Daniel Benjamin and Steven
Simon notably wrote that, to grasp the worldview of al-Qaeda
and its leader, Usama bin Laden, it is essential to start with Ibn
Taymiyya.5 The Syrian theologian is even mentioned by name
in the official 9/11 Commission Report, which states: Usama Bin
Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition
of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority
tradition), from at least Ibn Taymiyyah, through the founders of
Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb.6
6
theology of war, developed ad hoc against potential invaders in
a particular, specific, historical context, into a general, absolute,
rule on how believers should relate to their own Muslim rulers,
in all time and everywhere. The ignorance of such Mongolizing
Islamists might be forgiven. When it is mediocre orientalist
academics who hold similarly distorted views, it becomes more
difficult to show them any indulgence.
THE MAMLKS
32 IBN TAYMIYYA, Istiqma, vol. i, p. 330. The meaning of this shaving of the
religion is that nothing remains of it. On this hadth, see AB DD, Sunan,
Adab (ed. M. M. D. ABD AL-HAMD, vol. iv, p. 280, no 4919); AL-TIRMIDH,
Sunan, Qiyma (ed. A. R. M. UTHMN, vol. iv, p. 73, no 2627); IBN HANBAL,
Musnad (Blq ed., vol. vi, p. 444-445).
12
kull shay). The Muslim shall nevertheless implement thereof what
he is capable of (wa lkin yaf al al-muslim min dhlika m yaqdiru
alay-hi).33
THE QALANDARS
37 On all this, see Y. MICHOT, Ibn Taymiyya, Salafism and Mercy, in Ahmet KA-
VAS (ed.), Tarihte ve Gnmzde Seleflik. Milletleraras Tartmal lm Toplant
(08-10 Kasm 2013, Topkap Eresin Hotel, stanbul) (Istanbul: Ensar Neriyat,
2014), p. 411-430. Also on https://www.academia.edu/20632454/Yahya_Michot_
Ibn_Taymiyya_Salafism_and_Mercy_
38 See A. GALLAND, Les Mille et Une Nuits. Contes arabes traduits. dition
illustre, revue et corrige sur ldition princeps de 1704, augmente dune dis-
sertation par S. DE SACY, 3 vols (Paris: E. Bourdin et Cie, n. d. [19th c.]), Nuit
XXXII, vol. i, p. 118-119.
39 A. KARAMUSTAFA, Gods Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic
Later Middle Period, 12001550 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994),
p. 3.
16
abhorred. Asked about their identity and belonging to Islam,
he indeed wrote a fetwa about them,40 the content of which
deserves to be examined here for its quite surprising progression
and conclusion. Six steps can be discerned in the Syrian muftis
thinking.
44 IBN TAYMIYYA, Majm al-fatw, vol. xxxv, p. 165. This hadth is reported
only by IBN MJA, Sunan, Fitan (ed. M. F. ABD AL-BQ, vol. ii, p. 1344-1345,
no. 4049).
19
among the statuses (hukm) fixed by God and His Messenger. It
is not something of which people will judge according to their
opinions and caprices! For any individual making such statements
one must [however] not judge that he is an unbeliever until the
conditions for accusing [someone] of unbelief (takfr) have been
established for him, and [until] the reasons forbidding doing so
have been reduced to nothing (hatt yuthbata f haqqi-hi shurt al-
takfr wa tantafiya mawniu-hu).45
THE RFIDS
49 For a longer analysis of the Fetwa on the Qalandars and similar texts, see Y.
MICHOT, IBN TAYMIYYA. Against Extremisms, p. 19-82.
22
Companions and the wives of the Prophet.
CONCLUSION