Islam's Reformers .pdf

Damascus. It is written on the 137th page of the book Mir’ât alkâ’inât,“Sultân Mahmûd Ghâzân Khân, Hulago’s grandson,became the Mogul ruler in 694 A.H. That year, upon the advicesof Amîr Nawruz, his vizier, he embraced Islam with 400,000Mongols including his commanders, viziers and soldiers. Heread the Qur’ân and fasted [in the Ramadân of] that year.” Andon the 930th page of Qisâs-i Anbiyâ’ is written, “GhâzânMahmûd Khân wrote to Egyptian Sultân Nasser to cooperatewith him and work fraternally for the cause of Islam. Nasser,who was the ninth Turkoman sultan, did not listen to him.Nasser’s soldiers plundered the neighborhood of Mardin. Uponthis, Ghâzân Khân came to Aleppo in 699 A.H. Nasser’s armywas routed in Homs. Ghâzân Khân left a commander namedKapchak and a number of fighters to capture Damascus and hehimself went back home. Nasser recruited soldiers in Egypt andsent them to Damascus. Upon hearing this, Kapchak gave upbesieging Damascus and returned.” It is seen that Ibn Taimiyya,who is praised falsely to be a spiritual leader in the front row, infact, incited the war between the two Muslim rulers and causedthe shedding of fraternal blood and the death of thousands ofMuslims. As for Ghâzân Khân, whom Sayyid Qutb slanders inorder to represent Ibn Taimiyya as a fighter for Islam, he had anunequalled, artistically invaluable mosque built in Tebriz andestablished twelve big madrasas, innumerable tekkes, inns andcharitable deeds. He sent many gifts to Mecca and Medina anddevoted many villages. He was a Sunnî Muslim. ShemseddînSâmî Beg wrote that he loved to establish justice and right andpossessed many virtues and superiorities and that he wasreverent to sayyids and scholars. If Ibn Taimiyya had preachedto these two Muslim sultans and had told them that they werebrothers by following the âyat, “Reconcile your brothers!” asthe Ahl as-Sunna scholars had done, Ghâzân Khân and SultanNasser, who were goodwilled themselves, would have cooperatedand, perhaps, he would have caused theestablishment of a greater Islamic empire, which might havechanged the course of history and the appearance of today’sworld. He did not perform this benevolent deed but set men ofknowledge and rulers at loggerheads.Long before Ibn Taimiyya when the Tatarian unbelieversruined and burned Muslim countries and martyred millions ofMuslims, not the men of bid’a like Ibn Taimiyya but the- 195 -