INTRODUCTION

Ibn Taymiyya is notorious as the ‘spiritual father of Modern Muslim terrorism’. This reputation derives from the fact that some modern Muslim perpetrators of violence, most famously the assassins of Egyptian President Anwār al-Sādāt in 1981 and more recently Usāma b. Lādin (Osama Bin Laden), have appealed to Ibn Taymiyya's anti-Mongol fatwās to justify their acts. These fatwās advocated jihād against the Mongols who invaded Syria at the turn of the fourteenth century. Although the Mongols had recently converted to Islam, Ibn Taymiyya deemed them beyond the pale of true religion and maintained that they thus had to be fought. It is not clear that Sadat's assassins and their ilk can reasonably turn to Ibn Taymiyya to support attacks against their own governments. Ibn Taymiyya was hardly a revolutionary, and he never rebelled against his own Mamlūk rulers. Moreover, it has been argued that even though he did justify violence against open and inveterate deviants, he was generally forbearing with the sins of the morally lax and religiously ill-informed and he wrote his anti-Mongol fatwās merely to mobilise Syrians against a foreign invader. Be that as it may, what appears to make best sense of Ibn Taymiyya's thought on violence is a distinction between political and theological conflict. He completely rejected involvement in political violence. Muslims should not engage in armed rebellions because their benefits never outweigh their harm, and they should not support rulers in quelling rebellions either. Only theological rebellion and religious error should be opposed with force. So, in addition to his anti-Mongol fatwās, Ibn Taymiyya wrote fatwās declaring the Nuṣayrīs of Syria the worst of heretics and apostates to support the squashing of Nuṣayrī resistance in Syria,6 and he was especially rigorous in prescribing the death penalty for grievous religious offences. A Muslim who deifies a human being, prays to the dead or gives saints priority over the Prophet Muḥammad and refuses to repent should be beheaded, and anyone – Muslim or non-Muslim – who curses the Prophet Muḥammad should be killed without further recourse.

Alongside Ibn Taymiyya's reputation for justifying religious violence, recent research has made apparent that he also set forth arguments for universal salvation. The mainstream view of his day was that Muslims would attain Paradise, perhaps after some time in Hell-Fire to expiate their sins, while unbelievers would spend eternity in the Fire as just retribution for their unbelief.