Islam's Reformers .pdf

egan to observe minutely the way he had taken, and it wasconcluded that he was heretical and harmful. The chair ofprofessorship that he had inherited from his father was takenback from him. However, he did not keep quiet. He reproducedthe words of the heretical group called “Mushabbiha” and saidthat Allâhu ta’âlâ was material and an object. He supposed thatthe Creator was in the shape of man. By giving wrong meaningsto symbolic (mutashâbih) âyats and hadîths according to hisown comprehension, he went wrong. He was so badly fixed inthis heretical belief that one day he said on the pulpit of themosque in Damascus, “Allâhu ta’âlâ descends on the earthfrom the sky as I descend now,” and got down from the pulpit.Ibn Battûta reported this. The ’ulamâ’ of the four madhhabs, bywriting answers refuting these words of Ibn Taimiyya, preventedthe deterioration of Muslims’ i’tiqâd. The book Ar-raddu ’ala ’lmushabbihifî qawlihi ta’âlâ ar-Rahmânu ’ala ’l-Arsh-istawâby Muhammad ibn Jamâ’a, who was a Shâfi’î scholar of fiqhand hadîth and had been the qâdî Of Egypt, Damascus andJerusalem and passed away in 733 (1333), is full of theseinvaluable answers. In the fatwâ book Tâtârhâniyya and in Almilalwa ’n-nihal and in many other books, it is written that thegroups of Mujassima and Mushabbiha, i.e. those who believeAllâhu ta’â’lâ to be a material being who sits, gets down andwalks on the ’Arsh, are disbelievers. In 705 A.H. scholars andofficials, who had been convened in the presence of EgyptianSultan Nâsir, sentenced Ibn Taimiyya to confinement in the wellof Cairo fortress because he spread such heretical words.Because he gave wrong fatwâs which the Ahl as-Sunnascholars did not consider permissible, he was again imprisonedin the Damascus fortress in 720. His words about visitingprophets’ graves and blessed places also made a mess andcaused fitna. For this reason, he was imprisoned again inDamascus in 726. In 728 (1328), he became ill in the dungeonand died.Ibn Taimiyya said that he was in the Hanbalî madhhab.However, one has to adapt one’s belief to that of the Ahl as-Sunna so that one can be in one of the four right madhhabs.Many words of his indicate that he did not belong to the Ahl as-Sunna and, on the contrary, he disliked the Ahl as-Sunna. Herepresented himself as a mujaddid, as a reformer. Hanbalîscholar Mar’î (d. 1033 A.H.) wrote a biography of Ibn Taimiyya- 134 -