Islam's Reformers .pdf

a man of bid’a, a heretic. Even those who said he was a hereticdid not deny his knowledge, intelligence and zuhd, but, a hadîthwritten in Mishkât states, “The worst of the bad is the badman of religion.” Hadrat al-Imâm ar-Rabbânî Ahmad al-Fârûqîwrote in his fifty-third letter:“The good scholar is the best of mankind. The evil scholar isthe worst of mankind. Men’s happiness and doom depend uponscholars. A great man saw the Satan sitting unoccupied andasked why he was loitering. The Satan said, ‘The hereticalscholars of the peresent time do my work. They do not leaveany work for me to lead the people astray.’ ”Imâm as-Subkî, too, used to praise Ibn Taimiyya’sknowledge and intelligence much. Burhân ad-dîn ibn Muflihwrote in his Tabaqât that Imâm as-Subkî praised Ibn Taimiyyamuch in the letter he had written to az-Zahabî. However, Imâmas-Subkî, in his work Ar-raddu li Ibn Taimiyya, and his son’Abd al-Wahhâb, in his Tabaqât, wrote that Ibn Taimiyyadeparted from the Ahl as-Sunna and went astray. Many personswhom he imbued with his ideas, especially his disciples Ibn al-Qayyim and az-Zahabî, praised him too much. ’Alî al-Qârî ’ andMahmûd Âlûsî, who are considered as religious scholarsbecause of their annotations to famous books and who lived onwriting on the Qur’ân and valuable books, and Muhammad’Abduh, who claimed to be a mujtahid, followed in his footstepsand departed from the Ahl as-Sunna.Yûsuf an-Nabhânî, one of the profound scholars of thepresent century, in his book Shawâhid al-haqq, and Shaikh al-Islâm Mustafâ Sabri efendi, one of the great Ottoman scholars,in his book Al-’ilm wa ’l-’aql, and Abu Hâmid ibn Marzûk, aDamascene scholar, in his two-volume work, which was partlypublished by offset under the title At-tawassulu bi ’n-Nabî waJahalat al-Wahhâbiyyîn in Istanbul in 1395 A.H. (1975),proved Ibn Taimiyya’s heresy with documents.Those who approve Ibn Taimiyya, in order to prove that hewas judged and imprisoned unjustly, write: “His writings againstthe men of tasawwuf offended them. His fatwâs about divorcemade the scholars of fiqh feel hostile towards him. And hisfatwâs about the Divine Attributes hurt the scholars of Kalâm.Therefore, the scholars of Kalâm, fiqh and tasawwuf cooperatedagainst him, and he was punished.” They think thatthey can make everybody believe that religious scholars would- 137 -