Sheikh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, his positions with the ruling regime, what he offered to Islam, and his wisdom, Part 9
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00:00Biography of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah
00:05Was he suffering from the ruling political system?
00:08His qualities and morals since the emergence of the Islamic message and its spread in the
00:12world?
00:14Part 9
00:15We continue to narrate a stage in the life of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah.
00:20However, he explains, that is no different from the equally difficult problem of identifying
00:26the middle term in a categorical syllogism.
00:29If the middle term is certainly the cause and the premises are certain, that forms a
00:33demonstration.
00:35Otherwise, the major premise in the syllogism will be only probable, and the conclusion
00:39will likewise be only probable.
00:42As noted above, Ibn Taymiyyah maintains that it is not possible to acquire certain knowledge
00:47of universal propositions in extramental reality, e.g., that all flames burn, and so he effectively
00:53reduces the categorical syllogism to the epistemic level of analogy as a tool for acquiring new
00:59knowledge of the world outside the mind.
01:02Ibn Taymiyyah furthermore explains that once the necessitating cause in an analogy has
01:06been identified, e.g., intoxication as the cause of forbid dance, it becomes a universal,
01:13and the original case in the analogical argument is no longer needed.
01:17Whenever the cause obtains, the ruling follows necessarily.
01:21Yet, Ibn Taymiyyah continues, a universal only exists with respect to a particular case,
01:27and specifying the original case is how the universal comes to be known.
01:32For Ibn Taymiyyah, it is divine revelation that makes the cause of a ruling known.
01:37In the case of date wine, it is known from the consensus of the Muslim community and
01:41unambiguous revealed texts that every intoxicant is forbidden.
01:46Among unambiguous texts are two statements of the Prophet Muhammad in the Hadith collection
01:50of Muslim.
01:52Every intoxicant is wine, and every intoxicant is forbidden.
02:02Divine revelation can provide certain knowledge of the world outside the mind even if empirical
02:07observation of extramental particulars cannot.
02:11This leads Halak to call Ibn Taymiyyah an ardent skeptic, but a skeptic saved by religion.
02:17However, Halak's comment is apt only to a point because, as will be seen below, Ibn
02:22Taymiyyah maintains that knowledge about God may be derived through rational inferences
02:27as well.
02:28Ibn Taymiyyah's refutation of the logicians received very little attention from logicians
02:33in his own day or in the following centuries.
02:36One possible reason for this is that he does not take the later logical tradition into
02:40account.
02:42Arab logicians from the 12th century onward are not uniformly committed to the existence
02:46of extramental universals, as noted above, nor to the Avicennan claim that definitions
02:52and demonstrative syllogisms are the only means to acquire certain knowledge through
02:56rational reflection.
02:59Another possible reason is that Ibn Taymiyyah is sometimes imprecise.
03:04For example, he reports baldly that the logicians claim, no assents are known except by means
03:09of the syllogism.
03:11As a few modern scholars have noted, this is not true when taken at face value.
03:16Avicennan logicians also recognize a variety of primary assents, as well as probable assents
03:21acquired through induction or analogy.
03:25Ibn Taymiyyah is aware of this wider teaching about assent, and it becomes apparent during
03:29his refutation that he is addressing the more limited claim that no acquired, certain assents
03:34are known except by means of the categorical syllogism.
03:38In sum Ibn Taymiyyah's imprecision and the fact that he gives later logical developments
03:42minimal attention may help explain why pre-modern logicians did not interact with his criticism.
03:48As a theological traditionalist within the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam, Ibn Taymiyyah
03:54affirms that God must be described as the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad describe him,
03:58both negatively and positively, in accord with the Quranic verse, There is nothing like
04:03him, and he is all-hearing, all-seeing.
04:06Q42-11
04:09On the one hand, God's revealed names and attributes are incomparable, tanza, and they
04:14must not be likened, tamthal, or assimilated, tashbih, to creatures.
04:20On the other, attributes like God's hearing and seeing must be affirmed in their plain
04:25sense, zahir, according to the interpretation, tafsir, of the salaf and not distorted, tarif,
04:31or stripped away, tatl.
04:33The polemic against likening and stripping away is aimed at two broad trends.
04:38First, according to Ibn Taymiyyah, Mudazili and post-classical Ash'ari Kalam theologians
04:44liken God's attributes to those of creatures.
04:47Then, they strip God of those attributes that imply anthropomorphism and corporealism and
04:53sometimes reinterpret them.
04:56God cannot have a literal, hand, for example, and so the literal sense must be denied and
05:01perhaps reinterpreted non-literally as God's power.
05:05Likewise, it must be denied that God's sitting has anything to do with motion, place, or
05:11space, and it may perhaps be reinterpreted as God's possessing.
05:16Ibn Taymiyyah rejects the Kalam approach and insists that all God's attributes must be
05:20affirmed equally as uniquely befitting God.
05:24Divine attributes that could imply corporeality may not be denied while other attributes are
05:29affirmed.
05:30The second target of Ibn Taymiyyah's polemic is the esotericism of Ismaili sheikhs, philosophers
05:36in the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian traditions, and the Sufi theorist Ibn al-Arabi and his
05:41followers.
05:43Esotericism affirms two meanings for revelation, one for the commoners and another for an elite.
05:49The philosophers Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, for example, understand the corporeal imagery
05:54of exoteric revelation as pious fiction for the commoners.
05:59The commoners should not be told what the philosophers know to be true, namely, that
06:03God and the Hereafter are incorporeal.
06:07That would too easily suggest to commoners that God and the Hereafter do not exist at
06:11all and so undermine their faith.
06:14Ibn Taymiyyah welcomes the philosophers' rejection of Kalam reinterpretation at the exoteric
06:19level, but he fiercely condemns their esoteric interpretations confined to an elite.
06:24The revelation that is accessible to all is true for all in its plain sense.
06:30A major stream of theological traditionalism prohibits debating with Kalam theologians
06:34and shuns all attempts to understand God's attributes.
06:38This traditionalist non-cognitivism deems the meaning, manna, and the condition or modality,
06:44kephia, of the attributes to be entirely inaccessible to human comprehension.
06:50While the verbal forms of hearing and hand are the same when applied to God and creatures,
06:55the meanings of these words when applied to God are unknowable and must not be probed.
07:00Ibn Taymiyyah retains the unknowability of the modality of God's attributes, as well
07:05as their ultimate reality, haqqiqa, but he rejects traditionalist non-cognitivism.
07:12He also rejects the literalism of Kalam theology.
07:16Attributes like, hand, and, sitting, do not have literal meanings that must be denied
07:20and perhaps replaced with other terms when applied to God.
07:24Rather, Ibn Taymiyyah affirms, the plain senses of God's attributes are accessible to human
07:30cognition and shaped by their theological context.
07:33Ibn Taymiyyah's theory of meaning is contextual and pragmatic.
07:38Words have no meanings apart from context, and their meanings are modulated according
07:42to contextual indicators.
07:45Words and attributes applied to both God and creatures have meanings in the human mind,
07:50but they apply to God and creatures in different ways according to the precedence of God over
07:54creatures.
07:56Universal meanings occur only in the mind, and there are no real universals outside the
08:00mind.
08:01Yet, the mind identifies features in the particulars of extramental reality that can be said to
08:07be shared, albeit differently in the particulars that are God and creatures because God is
08:11necessary while creatures are merely contingent or possible.
08:15Using distinctions developed by Ibn Sina and his successors, Ibn Taymiyyah construes the
08:20relation between the meanings of terms applied to both God and humans as neither equivocal
08:24nor purely univocal but analogical or modulated, mashakik.
08:29Ibn Taymiyyah elaborates in a passage from his Refutation of the Logicians.
08:34The names applied, both, to, God, and others are applied by way of modulation, tashkik,
08:40which is a kind of general univocity, al-tawwatu al-am.
08:45It is neither a matter of equivocity nor a matter of univocity in which the individuals
08:49to which it applies are alike.
08:52Rather, it is a matter of univocity in which the individuals to which it applies take precedence
08:57over each other.
08:59For example, the word, white, or, black, is applied to what is intense, like the whiteness
09:05of snow, and to what is less intense, like the whiteness of ivory.
09:09Likewise, the word, existence, is applied to, both, the necessary and the possible.
09:16Modulated names must have a shared universal meaning, even if that occurs only in the mind.
09:22The fact that the existence of the necessary is more perfect than the existence of the
09:26possible does not prevent what is called, existence, from being a universal meaning
09:30shared between the two of them.
09:33This is likewise the case with regard to the other names and attributes applied to the
09:37Creator and the creature, like the names living, knowing, powerful, hearing, and seeing,
09:43and likewise with his attributes, like his knowledge, his power, his mercy, his good
09:48pleasure, his anger, and his joy, and the rest of his names and his attributes that
09:53the messengers applied to him.
09:55Ibn Taymiyyah's willingness to discuss the meanings of God's attributes opens the door
09:59to theological explanation and argumentation.
10:03With his traditionalist sensibility, he often reminds readers that the modality and reality
10:08of God's names and attributes cannot be known.
10:12He also prefers to speak of God only in words found in revealed texts.
10:17Nonetheless, he permits engaging the terminologies of theological opponents as needed to clarify
10:22the meanings of the Revelation, and he justifies this by analogy to the permission to translate
10:27the Qur'an into other languages to convey its message.
10:31He condemns the Kalam theologians for introducing innovated and non-scriptural technical terms
10:36like substance, jahar, accident, arad, body, jism, and spatial extension, tahayyus, into
10:44theological discourse, but he permits using such terms when necessary to translate the
10:49Revelation into the idiom of the day, Hoover with Mahogany 2018.
10:54It is also Ibn Taymiyyah's conviction that much of what is known about God through Revelation
10:59is known equally and primally from reason and the human natural constitution, fitra.
11:05Prophets complete and perfect what humans already know, and Revelation reiterates rational
11:09proofs relevant to religion and exposes incorrect reasoning for what it is.
11:14There is therefore no conflict between true Revelation and correct reason, and this is
11:19the main claim to which Ibn Taymiyyah's devotes his masterwork averting the conflict, Dar Tariq.
11:25Ibn Taymiyyah condemns philosophers and post-classical Kalam theologians like the Ash'ari Far al-Din
11:31al-Razi for demoting the Qur'an to mere information and subjecting it to alien and erroneous regimes
11:36of reason that lead to stripping God of His rightful attributes.
11:40Ibn Taymiyyah's apologetic aim is to take the rational high ground away from philosophers
11:45and Kalam theologians by showing that his theology is what both reason and the texts
11:49of Revelation indicate.
11:52What follows here and in the following subsections will focus more on clarifying Ibn Taymiyyah's
11:57theological concepts than on their textual indicants.
12:01We begin with the basics of his natural theology.
12:04As noted above, Ibn Taymiyyah affirms that everything originated requires a cause for
12:09its existence, and creatures thereby know immediately that God exists by virtue of their
12:14need for a Creator.
12:16There is no need for the prolix reasoning of the Kalam cosmological argument for the
12:20existence of God from atoms and accidents.
12:24Ibn Taymiyyah furthermore upholds causal priority.
12:27A cause is more perfect than its effect, and the cause is the source of the effect's perfections.
12:33Likewise, the Creator is more perfect than creatures, and it is from the Creator that
12:37creatures derive their perfections.
12:40The perfections of God may therefore be inferred from the perfections of creatures, apart from
12:46Revelation.
12:47However, Ibn Taymiyyah does not permit inferring God's attributes from the attributes of creatures
12:52with an analogy or categorical syllogism because that would involve comparing God and creatures
12:56on equal terms.
12:58Instead, a fortiori argumentation must be used to respect God's incomparability.
13:05An a fortiori argument, qiyas al-Allah, transfers the judgment of one case to a second case
13:10that is all the more worthy of that judgment than the first.
13:14Applied to theology, God is all the worthier of whatever perfections are found in creatures
13:19than are the creatures themselves, and so perfections found in creatures must be all
13:23the more so ascribed to God.
13:26Ibn Taymiyyah explains, It is not permissible that God, exalted is He, and another be included
13:32in a categorical syllogism whose terms are on the same level or in an analogy in which
13:36the judgment of the original case and that of the assimilated case are on the same level.
13:41Indeed, God, exalted is He.
13:44There is nothing like Him, neither in His essence which is mentioned through His names,
13:48nor in His attributes, nor in His acts.
13:51However, the a fortiori argument is followed with respect to Him.
13:57As He said, And to God is the highest similitude, al-mathil al-Allah.
14:02Q. 16-60.
14:05With respect to every perfection an attribute praiseworthy in itself and devoid of imperfection
14:09that belongs to some created, originated existence, it is known that the Lord, Creator,
14:15self-subsistent, everlasting, eternal and necessary existent in Himself is all the worthier
14:21of it.
14:22And, with respect to every imperfection and defect from which some originated, possible
14:27creatures must be exonerated.
14:29The Lord, Creator, holy, peace, eternal, necessary of existence in Himself is all the worthier
14:36of being exonerated from it.
14:39On these grounds, Ibn Taymiyyah reasons that God must be living, knowing, powerful, seeing,
14:45hearing, and speaking.
14:47Otherwise, God would be dead, ignorant, impotent, blind, deaf, and mute, respectively, and He
14:55would be less perfect than living creatures that He has created.
14:59Moreover, God must be moving and not immovable.
15:02Otherwise, God would be inferior to inanimate objects, which can at least be moved by something
15:08else.
15:09In similar fashion, God has hands because having the ability to choose to act with hands
15:14is more perfect than not having that ability.
15:18God also has the attributes of laughter and joy to exclude crying and sadness which imply
15:22weakness.
15:24God furthermore loves perfection and hates imperfection because it is more perfect to
15:28distinguish perfection and imperfection through love and hate than not to do so.
15:33However, God does not eat and drink because eating and drinking imply need whereas having
15:38no need is more perfect than being in need.
15:41Moreover, Ibn Taymiyyah contends that it is in God's perfection to be qualified by attributes
15:46of perfection such that He is unlike created things.
15:50Ibn Taymiyyah rationalizes a strand of traditionalism found in earlier figures such as Uthman b.
15:56Sa'd al-Darimi, d.
15:59between 280-893 and 282-895 that distinguishes God above from the world below spatially.
16:08Ibn Taymiyyah deems it a necessary truth of reason and the natural constitution, fitra,
16:14that God is located above and distinct from the universe in a spatial sense.
16:19God is above the sky and not found anywhere within the created world.
16:24Ibn Taymiyyah also regards this as the plain witness of revelation, as in the Quranic verses
16:29they fear their Lord above them, q. 1650, and the all-merciful sat over the throne,
16:35q. 20-5.
16:37He works out the implications of God's spatial aboveness most fully in explicating the deception,
16:42a refutation of Far al-Din al-Razi's Tasis al-Taqdish, establishing sanctification.
16:50According to al-Razi, God is not accessible to the senses, and God is not spatial, mutahiyas,
16:56or subject to location, jihā.
16:59God is also neither inside the world nor outside of it.
17:03God is a non-spatial entity accessible only to the intellect.
17:07Al-Razi provides several arguments for his position, which Ibn Taymiyyah refutes in turn
17:12and thereby clarifies his own view.
17:15Al-Razi argues that a God located in space would need that space.
17:20Al-Razi here adopts a Platonic conception of space that subsists independently of the objects
17:25it contains.
17:26Adamson 2017.
17:27A space-occupying God is thus dependent on the space in which He is located, and this
17:33impugns His self-sufficiency.
17:34Ibn Taymiyyah denies the existence of space that subsists independently of other existence.
17:43He takes inspiration from Ibn Rushd who denies the existence of void space and defines place,
17:48makān, in Aristotelian terms as the inner surface of the body surrounding and containing
17:53it.
17:54The place of one celestial sphere, for example, is the inner surface of the celestial sphere
17:59surrounding it, but the universe has no place because it is not surrounded by anything at
18:04all, not even void space.
18:06Ibn Taymiyyah likewise affirms that there is no void space.
18:10Space, āyās, is the boundary of an object inside of which the object extends and obtains.
18:18The boundaries are part of the object and do not exist apart from it.
18:22Without the object, no space exists.
18:25To put it differently, existence do not occupy space, instead, existence are spatially extended,
18:32mudāhyās.
18:33So, nothing exists except God and the world below.
18:38There is nothing above the world except God, and there is no space above God that God could
18:42be said to occupy.
18:45Along with Kalam theology more generally, al-Razi contends that a spatial God would
18:49be divisible and composite, which would violate God's unity.
18:54Ibn Taymiyyah agrees that God cannot be divided into parts or composed out of them, but he
18:59does not concede that spatiality implies divisibility and composition in the case of God.
19:05God can be both indivisible and very big.
19:08Ibn Taymiyyah affirms that God is so immense that no one can measure God truly, but he
19:13also explains that God's size is finite because an infinite spatial extension is impossible.
19:19Al-Razi argues furthermore that a God located above in a spatial sense would lie above people
19:24standing on one side of the spherical earth but below those on the opposite side, which
19:28is absurd.
19:29Ibn Taymiyyah replies that the sky is above the earth no matter where one stands on the
19:34earth.
19:35Likewise, God is always located above from any point on the earth.
19:40God in fact surrounds the universe.
19:43The Creator of all things is above all things and surrounds them from His location that
19:47surrounds all of the celestial spheres.
19:49And Yakuna Qalik al-Jami' faq al-Jami' wa-Muhitun bi-hai min-jihadi-hai al-Muhitajamiha.
19:57The notion of God's spatial extension easily suggests that God is a body.
20:02Ibn Taymiyyah is, however, reticent to speak of God as a body, jism, because the revealed
20:08texts and the early Muslims, salaf, do not affirm or deny this term of God.
20:14He is also wary of the term because Kalam theologians understand the very definition
20:18of body to involve divisibility and composition.
20:23Yet, Ibn Taymiyyah does allow calling God a body so long as it is completely clear that
20:28God is indivisible.
20:30To sum up Ibn Taymiyyah's views on God in space, God is a huge indivisible, spatially
20:35extended existent that surrounds the entire universe.
20:40God is not an existent in space, nor does God transcend space.
20:44Rather, God is spatial in God's essence.
20:48There is no void space, and no space exists apart from God and the universe that God has
20:54created.
20:55According to Ibn Taymiyyah, God's perfection entails perpetual dynamism and not timeless
21:00eternity as in Kalam theology and Avicennan philosophy.
21:05Ibn Taymiyyah's understanding of time, much like his interpretation of space, is Aristotelian
21:10in tenor.
21:12God does not transcend time, but God does not exist within time either.
21:17Rather, time derives from God's internal dynamism and God's perpetual creation of the world.
21:23Furthermore, there has always been time.
21:27The genus of time is eternal because God has been doing one thing after another from eternity.
21:32However, time does not subsist as an eternal entity independently of God.
21:38Time has no independent existence apart from the movement from which it derives.
21:43Ibn Taymiyyah's understanding of God's internal dynamism is similar to views held earlier
21:48by the philosopher Abu Barakat al-Baghdadi, D.C.A. 1165, and the Karami theologians who
21:56thrived in what is today Iran and Afghanistan.
22:00He also acknowledges that his position is tantamount to what Kalam theologians identify
22:05as temporally originating events, hawadith, subsisting in God's essence.
22:11However, Ibn Taymiyyah prefers to avoid the non-scriptural term hawadith and speak instead
22:16of God's dynamism in terms of God's voluntary attributes, al-sifat al-iqtiyaraya.
22:23God's voluntary attributes include God's creation, love, mercy, wrath, justice, sitting and descending.
22:31These attributes subsist in God's essence, and God exercises them by means of His will
22:36and power.
22:38Ibn Taymiyyah contrasts his view with those of the Asherites and Mutazilites, taking speech
22:43as a prime example.
22:45The Asherites maintain along with Ibn Taymiyyah that God's speech, will, and power subsist
22:50in God's essence, but they insist that these attributes are timelessly eternal to avert
22:55temporality in the essence of God.
22:58Ibn Taymiyyah counters that the Asherites thereby abolish the instrumentality between
23:02God's will and power on the one hand and God's speech on the other.
23:07They impugn God's perfection by making it impossible for God to speak by means of His
23:11will and power.
23:13Additionally, Ibn Taymiyyah does not believe that it is possible to correlate a timelessly
23:17eternal attribute of speech with temporal events in the world.
23:22The Mutazilites for their part do affirm that God speaks by His will, but they seek to safeguard
23:27God's timeless eternity by understanding God's speech to be something created in a substrate
23:31disjoined from God's essence.
23:34I stop at this point today.
23:36Until next time, stay curious.
23:39Stay informed, and keep exploring the world's incredible stories.
23:44Soon we will publish.
23:46Part.
23:4710.
23:49For watching.