Islam's Reformers .pdf

titled Kawâkib, in which he quoted Ibn Taimiyya’s writings thatdenied the necessity of following the imâms of madhhabs andeven the ijmâ’. Though he attacked the Ahl as-Sunna scholarsbecause they had done qiyâs, he himself did qiyâs on manymatters, especially in his book Majmû’at ar-rasâ’il wa ’lmasâ’il.He did not believe in the greatness of Awliyâ’ andattacked visiting graves. He mutilated the hadîth, “Only threemosques are visited at the expense of a journey,” to distortit into “Only three mosques are visited,” and said that it was asinful act to visit even Rasulullah’s (sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam)grave. Hadrat Ibn Hajar al-Hîtâmî answered this in detail in hisbook Fatâwâ al-fiqhiyya. In the 222nd article of the bookNuzhat al-hawâtir by ’Allâma ’Abd al-Hayy al-Hasanî (d.1341/1923), it is written that Muhammad ’Abd al-Hayy al-Luknawî, an Islamic scholar of India (d. 1304/1887), debatedupon this subject with Muhammad Bashir, a lâ-madhhabiteIndian. Ibn Taimiyya was aggressive against the madhhab ofHadrat Abu ’l-Hasan al-Ash’arî, one of the greatest Ahl as-Sunna scholars, and against this profound scholar’s explanationof qadar and of the Names of Allâhu ta’âlâ and against hisexplanations of the âyats about the punishment in the nextworld. He said that the punishment in Hell would not be eternalalso for disbelievers and that every kind of tax paid to the Statewould stand for zakât. He did not admit that the wordsincompatible with what the four madhhabs had unanimouslydeclared were disbelief. He strived to rebut the honour andfame of the Ahl as-Sunna scholars. In al-Jabal mosque inSâlihiyya, he said that Hadrat ’Umar (radiy-Allâhu ’anh) hadmade many mistakes. In another gathering, he said that Hadrat’Alî (radiy-Allâhu ’anh) went wrong three hundred times. Ahadîth, which is written in the book Kunûz by al-Manâwî, inImâm Ahmad’s Sahîh and in the book Mir’ât al-kâ’inât, states:“Allâhu ta’âlâ has put the true word on ’Umar’s tongue,” bywhich Rasûlullah (’alaihi ’s-salâm) meant that Hadrat ’Umar(radiy-Allâhu ’anh) would never go wrong. Ibn Taimiyyaopposes this hadîth by saying, “ ’Umar made many mistakes,”Indeed, he was learned enough to have known of this hadîth.He was vastly learned on the Hadîth, yet the multitude of hiserrors counterbalanced the amplitude of his knowledge. It wastrue that many of the Sahâbat al-kirâm except ’Umar (radiy-Allâhu ’anh) might have made mistakes in those matters that- 135 -