Criticism of the Neo-Classical Salafı Understanding Forming the Discourse of Religious Exclusivism An Evaluation on the Specifics of the Critiques Aimed at Fakhr al-Dın al-Razı Regarding the Epistemological Value of Language

Al-Rāzī stated that specific criteria should exist for interpreting religious texts, with one of the two in particular prioritizing the conflict of ʿaql [reason] and naql [revelation]. Accordingly, he developed the theory of the hypothetical nature of linguistic evidence. According to al-Rāzī’s theory, literary evidence have been exposed to possible errors from transferring al-nahw [lexicography, morphology, and grammar] rules to the present day; different linguistic possibilities such as figurative speech homonymy and transfer of meanings (naql al-lugha) are likely to have occurred in the process. Therefore, religious texts do not express certainty when qarīnas [contextual clues] are absent. Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, leading names in the neo-classical Salafī understanding, described the view that literal evidence does not express ʿilm [definitive knowledge] but rather expresses Ûann [speculative knowledge] as taghūt [an idol], criticizing it to have a marginalizing and exclusionary style. The present article will examine the discourse of religious exclusivism produced within the framework of the hypotheticality of language and will show that this discourse is caused by Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s words being misunderstood. This study will first explain what is meant by religious exclusion and provide the intellectual background of the theory of the hypotheticality of language. Next, it will cover Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s questioning of al-Rāzī’s religiosity, and finish with how the accusations against Rāzī had stemmed from a misunderstanding of his ideas.

Ibn Taymiyya on theistic signs and knowledge of God

This article aims to draw on the ‘Qur'anic Rationalism’ of Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) in elucidating an Islamic epistemology of theistic natural signs, in the lens of contemporary philosophy of religion. In articulating what Ibn Taymiyya coins ‘God's method of proof through signs (istidlāluhu taʿālā bi'l-āyāt)’, it seeks aid in particular from the work of C. Stephen Evans and other contemporary philosophers of religion, in an attempt to understand the relevance and force of this alternative to natural theology within the Islamic tradition. In doing so, it aims to respond to existing criticisms of Ibn Taymiyya's perspective in the literature, and to consider the implications of a Taymiyyan reading of theistic natural signs, on the epistemic function of Qur'anic āyāt as theistic evidence.

Remembering Our Heroes: Global Jihad’s Militancy in a Comparative Perspective

Many studies have been devoted to the features of global jihad (also known as Salafi jihadism), its historical development, its difference from other Salafi groups, or its struggles with ideological rivals. Little emphasis, however, has been given to global jihadists’ ideological genealogy, and hence to locating them in a comparative perspective. How did they commemorate their formative heroes, such as the medieval jurist Ibn Taymiyya and mid-twentieth century ideologues, such as Sayyid Qutb, Abu al-Aʿla al-Mawdudi, ʿAbd al-Salam Faraj, Shukri Mustafaʾ, Marwan Hadid or Saʿid Hawwa? Were these figures still perceived as cultural heroes, or were they shunned? Did their writings continue to provide sources of inspiration, or were they replaced by new manifestos? An in-depth discussion of these questions, based on a textual analysis of jihadi sources, may shed further light on global jihadists’ ideological evolution and self-perceptions. It will provide an additional prism for analyzing modern Sunni militancy, and scrutinize the extent its protagonists’ treatises match past traditions or, alternatively, deviate from them in favor of cultivated traditions, thus advancing a dissident agenda.

Fanā’ al-Nār Within Early Kalām and Mysticism

The annihilation of the fire (fanā’ al-nār), is an expression used by Ibn Taymiyya in Al-Radd ‘alā man Qāla bi-Fanā’ al-Janna wa-l-Nār. It acts as a rejoinder to those who maintain that the annihilation of the Garden and the Fire within Islamic theology is a fascinating theory that could quite easily be confused with the Christian Patristic apokatastasis or the falsafa cosmological hypothesis, which emerged in the works of al-Kindī (d. 873) and Fakhr ad-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209). Jane I. Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, in The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (New York: OUP, 2012), supported the argument that the nature of Heaven and Hell has been subjected to a range of interpretations stretching from the purely literal to the utterly allegorical. Hell is a place of just chastisement for sin, an everlasting location for sinning believers; whether or not any punishment there would be truly eternal, has been the subject of considerable dispute. My objective in this article is not to focus on al-Ghazālī or Ibn al-Taymiyya, but on those scholars who, at an earlier stage, had elaborated a rational speculation on the fanā’ al-nār. At the same time, this article does not set out to provide a comparative analysis linked with the late Patristic authors or Manichean and Zoroastrian influences which, conversely, appear as possible theories. The main goal is to uncover the backgrounds of the authors in Islamic kalām and mysticism who, preceding the Ghazalian phase, were engaged in elaborating the annihilation of the fire. Al-Baghdādī (‘Abd al-Qāhir b. Ṭāhir, d. 1037) in Al-Farq bayna al-Firaq, argues that the Mu‘tazilite Abū al-Hudhayl al-‘Allāf (d. 850), probably influenced by Ḍirār ibn ‘Amr (d. unknown) and Jahm Ibn Safwān (d. 746), were the first to theorise on the finiteness of both Heaven and Hell. However, it is plausible that different early Muslim mystics from the same century also supported the annihilation of at least the latter. All options remain open to debate.