The Mahdi and His Helpers - Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society

4will levy the poll-tax 7 and call (mankind) to God with the sword, so that whoever refuseswill be killed, and whoever opposes him will be forsaken.He will manifest Religion as it (really) is in Itself, the Religion by which the Messengerof God would judge and rule if he were there. He will eliminate the different schools (ofreligious law) so that only the Pure Religion (Kor. 39:3) remains, 8 and his enemies willbe those who follow blindly the 'ulama', the people of ijtihad, 9 because they will see theMahdi judging differently from the way followed by their imams (i.e., the historicalfounders of the schools of Islamic law). So they will only accept the Mahdi's authoritygrudgingly and against their will, because of their fear of his sword and his strength andbecause they covet (the power and wealth) that he possesses. But the common people ofthe Muslims and the greater part of the elite among them will rejoice in him, while thetrue Knowers of God among the People of the (spiritual) Realities will pledge allegianceto him because of God's directly informing them (of the Mahdi's true nature and mission),through (inner) unveiling and immediate witnessing.7 The jizya--literally, "compensation" (for remaining non-Muslim)--required of each individualfrom the peoples of the protected religions under the various systems of Islamic law; see the long article"Djizya" in EI 2 , pp. 559 ff.8 For the full significance of Ibn 'Arabi's use of the Koranic expression "the Pure Religion" (al-Dinal-khalis), see the references at n. 98 below; sections II-7 and II-9 are an extended commentary on thesituation to which he briefly alludes here."Schools" here translates the Arabic madhahib; Ibn 'Arabi sometimes applies this term morebroadly to all the "ways" or individual forms of religious belief and/or practice, but here, judging fromwhat follows (especially sections II-7 and II-9 below), he clearly seems to be referring more specificallyto the widely accepted "schools of law" (Hanafi, Maliki, etc.) in Islam.9 muqallidat al-'ulama' ahl al-ijtihad: the 'ulama' in this case clearly refer to the jurists followingthe respective founders (the "imams" al-Malik, al-Shafi'i, etc.) of the established Islamic legal schools, allof which, for Ibn 'Arabi, were originally grounded in the effort of independent legal judgment (ijtihad) ofthe early Muslim jurists, based on their use of personal opinion (ra'y) or rational analogy and inference(qiyas) concerning the supposed grounds of the particular divine commandments or prescriptions(hukm/ahkam). In several of the following sections, Ibn 'Arabi goes on to contrast their approach(whether or not they still admit the possibility of ijtihad) with the immediate--and necessarily individualand specific--divine inspiration characterizing the judgments of the Mahdi, the Prophet and the awliya'.The roots of his criticism of the 'ulama' and their ijtihad (in this legalist sense) are brought out in muchgreater detail in sections II-7 and 9 below.Ibn 'Arabi's own very different conception of the individual spiritual obligation of ijtihad (and hiscontrasting sharp criticisms of any claims to an obligation of taqlid on the part of others) are explained inmuch greater detail, along with their bases in the Koran and hadith, in our article cited at n. 3 above.