Conflicted S4 E6: The Firebrand from Damascus (Part 2)

Speakers: Thomas Small & Aimen Dean

Thomas: Welcome back to Conflicted. Thomas Small, here with you, alongside my ever-present co-host, Aimen Dean.

Aimen: Hello, everyone.

Thomas: Now, this is the second part of our exploration into the thrilling life of one of the most significant historical antecedents to modern day Salafi Jihadists, Ibn Taymiyyah.

Like Middle Easterners today, Ibn Taymiyyah lived in a time of change, upheaval and chaos. Mongols invading from the outside and from within, heretics and charlatans preying on the faithful.

Aimen: And into the rescue, here comes Martin Luther, who will purify, oh, sorry, Ibn Taymiyyah who will purify Islam from all the polluted evil.

Thomas: Yeah, it's true. Ibn Taymiyyah, he's a sort of Muslim Protestant like so many Salafists, I think.

[Music Playing]

Last time we left Ibn Taymiyyah with yet another Mongol Invasion poised to begin. So, without further ado, let's get right back into it.

Right, Aimen. So, one of Ibn Taymiyyah’s many disciples, a man called al-Dhahabi, someone who in the end turned against the master, he decided that Ibn Taymiyyah was a bit too extreme for his liking.

He wrote this, and I like it, “To one group of scholars, Ibn Taymiyyah was a devil, a liar, and an unbeliever. To other learned and esteemed men, he was an excellent and skilled innovator.

To yet others, he was a dark and sinister figure. And yet, to the great majority of his followers, he was the guardian of the religion, the bearer of the banner of Islam and the protector of the prophetic Sunnah.”

I think that's quite succinct. It shows you how controversial Ibn Taymiyyah was, even in his own day. Some thought he was the devil. Some thought he was the great protector of the religion.

Aimen: Well, I mean, it shows you, you can't please all the people all the time. And I don't think Ibn Taymiyyah was a crowd pleaser or people's pleaser.

The man spoke his mind and his mind was sharp, as was his tongue, as was his pen for that matter. And this is why he used to earn as many enemies as friends. While some people might say his mind was in the right place, his heart wasn't.

Thomas: As you say, he may not have set out to please the people, but he certainly became adept at whipping up the masses into something like a radical frenzy. The mature Ibn Taymiyyah in the full force of his power as a rhetorician, as a thinker, as a writer, has been described as animated by a zeal against irreligion, zeal against irreligion.

I think that's a great way of describing Ibn Taymiyyah at this phase of his life, when he is confident, when he is absolutely determined to resist the Mongol onslaught from without, and to purge wickedness, heresy, innovation from within.

He was a formidable figure, wouldn't you say, Aimen?

Aimen: He was a formidable figure because he was a genius. And no matter what we think about him, he was a genius. And I suspect he was either ASD or OCD, in a way, there was something there about him that could be more of a savant.

The man was a genius in the sense that he was able to master many arts apart from theology, mathematics, philosophy, as well as astronomy.

Many listeners would be amazed by the fact that in his book, Ar-Risalah he in fact was able to calculate the timings of the next eclipses of the sun and the moon to prove a point not only that the earth is round, and it actually orbits the sun and the moon is orbiting the earth in order to prove that this is how the sun and the moon eclipses take place.

So, you can see his brilliance, but unfortunately, brilliance wasted on endless battles that were pointless.

Thomas: We're going to cover lots of those battles in this episode. You call him a genius. A genius, he certainly was. Often, Ibn Taymiyyah’s writing seem like they contradict each other or that they can somehow come across as quite incoherent.

Ibn Taymiyyah wasn't a great systematic thinker. He was a responsive, instinctive, reactionary thinker, very brilliant, quick to summon arguments in favour of whatever he was advocating.

But for that reason, nowadays, people can cherry pick quite easily bits and pieces from Ibn Taymiyyah's writings to justify their own beliefs. Because Ibn Taymiyyah in a way, can be used to justify anything because he was such a voluminous, kind of contradictory genius mind. Does that make sense, Aimen?

Aimen: He was, Thomas. Ibn Taymiyyah’s genius, and the contradictions that are contained within this genius are not surprising because basically Ibn Taymiyyah mastered the art of writing essays.

Now, because these essays span his life, his adult life, and span many different political and military upheavals that were taking place, they are bound to contain a lot of contradictions.

Thomas: Well, genius minds like Ibn Taymiyyah’s, like yours, Aimen. Maybe like mine, we often contradict each other. We get so excited; we just start spewing forth whatever comes to our heads.

Aimen: Indeed. I mean goodness, Thomas, no one will find two more modest people like us. We ooze modesty.

Thomas: No, I think I'm the most humble. I should get an award for being so humble.

Aimen: Indeed.

Thomas: Let's get back into the story of Ibn Taymiyyah. So, we left him in 1301. The Mongols are about to invade Syria again, like before Armenian Christians are among the ranks, but this time Crusaders from Cyprus are also in the Mongol army. This is a real bad situation.

Ibn Taymiyyah, once again, he mounts the pulpit in Damascus. He preaches Jihad again, and he writes the second of his three notorious anti-Mongol fatwas.

But this time he takes things a bit further. He travels to Cairo the capital of the Mamluk Empire, and he meets with a Mamluk Sultan himself, Al-Nasir Muhammad the Sultan is only 16-years-old, mind you.

And according to the historical sources, he confronts the Sultan directly. And he says this, “If you turn away from Syria and its protection, we will raise up a Sultan for it who will care for it, who will protect it, and who will develop it securely.”

I find that really fascinating, Aimen. Because if it's true, then it's an indication Ibn Taymiyyah would have considered rebellion against the sitting ruler.

Now, he never actually openly advocated anything like that, but Salafi Jihadists today, certainly do. And this is not in keeping with Sharia as it is classically understood, to rebel against a sitting ruler.

Aimen: In fact, Thomas, this particular incident between Ibn Taymiyyah and Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad is always taken as a clear evidential text from Ibn Taymiyyah's life that if the Sultan or the head of the state of Muslims were to abandon their duty of waging Jihad against the enemy, then it is up to the scholars and the ordinary people to actually depose that Sultan and remove him from power and install someone else in his place who will do the duty.

In fact, I remember that Osama bin Laden in one of his Friday prayers in Afghanistan when he was preaching, he said this incident between Ibn Taymiyyah and Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad, where he told him, either you do your duty of Jihad or we will find someone else who will do, this proves that the older outdated Sunni principle that there is no Jihad without an Imam, in other words, only the Imam can sanction Jihad is outdated.

In fact, Ibn Taymiyyah’s position is that there is no Imam without Jihad.

Thomas: Well, Ibn Taymiyyah’s intervention in this case and his fatwas must have worked. So, when a diplomatic mission from the Mongol leader, Ghazan Khan arrived in Cairo that summer, the summer of 1301, demanding the Mamluks surrender, they refused.

Aimen: Not only did the Mamluks refuse the Mongols demands, they in fact insulted them in the same way with the same language that Ibn Taymiyyah used against them in his fatwas. They called them heretics, they called them Zandik, which means a heretical innovator. And so, it showed that Ibn Taymiyyah's rhetoric and fatwas worked magic on the Mamluks.

Thomas: What follows this is a very exciting war, but remarkably, we have to just kind of briefly summarise it because it will take us away from exploring Ibn Taymiyyah himself.

In the summer of 1302, local Syrian troops suddenly rise up against the Mongols and repel the invaders, the Mongol invaders outside Aleppo. And this causes a kind of flurry of enthusiasm, a flurry of morale amongst the Mamluks in Egypt.

And they launch a big counterattack, which results in the Mamluks finally dislodging the last Crusader outpost in the Levant, the Knight's Templars sort of headquarters in …

The following year, the Mongols invade again. It was the month of Ramadan. You can imagine, Aimen, Ibn Taymiyyah thinking these people are not Muslims. They're invading during Ramadan, a month of peace.

And this time he himself joins the army. He takes up arms, joins the Mamluk army to resist them. And the 20th of April that year, that's my birthday as it happens, the 20th of April that year the Mongols are repelled at the Battle of Marj al-Saffar and the Mamluks kind of, at least for a time, push them out.

And the pressure that they'd been exerting upon the Mamluk Empire is relieved even further the following year when Ghazan Khan, their leader dies.

And this kind of brings to an end a chapter in Ibn Taymiyyah’s life, a very important chapter where he was animated primarily by fighting the Mongols, resisting Mongol invasion, attacking the Christian allies, the heretical allies of the Mongols, who were attacking from without.

And it opens the next chapter in his life where he focuses his attention, not on outsiders, but on insiders, on the people that he felt from within the Mamluk Empire, from within the Sunni community that were causing Islam to decay from within.

Aimen: Just like all radicals, Thomas, even after all the victories, military and otherwise, you would think that Ibn Taymiyyah would go home, sit on his comfortable sofa, read some books, sip some pina colada, Damascus way, and just enjoy life, man.

However, radicals need enemies. And so, in the absence of the Mongols attacking from outside, he focused his attention on the enemies inside the Mamluk Empire, particularly two groups of people who he believed corrupted the Mamluk Empire and opened it for outside invasions as a punishment from God for the transgressions of these two groups.

These two groups are first those who promote bogus philosophical doctrine as far as he was concerned. And the second are the jurists, the Muslim scholars, who were neglecting and were complacent in their application of Sharia laws and principles.

Thomas: That’s great. And I want to focus on the second of those two. Those whom Ibn Taymiyyah believed were neglecting the law, the jurists. For the rest of his life, Ibn Taymiyyah would increasingly exercise Ijtihad.

We talked about this in the previous episode, Ijtihad, the independent exercise of juristic reasoning on original sources of revelation, the Quran, the Hadith, the Sunnah of the prophet, and the early generations of Muslims, the Salaf.

So, Ibn Taymiyyah would increasingly take the initiative, would read the Quran, read the Hadith, and come to his own conclusions about them. This is called Ijtihad. He thought that his fellow jurists had too slavishly mimicked, sort of the precedents within their own schools of law.

And he thought that that had created a stultified legal environment that was not able to resist or respond to the challenges of the day.

In fact, in his zeal, he would be accused, at least by his enemies of taking the law into his own hands. He would order floggings and other forms of corporal punishment, often outside the normal institutional sort of practices of the state. And that just gives you a sense of how serious he was.

Aimen: Thomas, we may even say that this almost amount of vigilantism, more or less what some people, and you see them sometime, not only in Muslim societies, but even when they live within Muslim communities, in western societies, those who would go around and order their women to dress modestly.

It really echoes Ibn Taymiyyah’s stepping out of the bound, within a society ignoring, I'm not saying challenging, but ignoring state institutions that are supposed to reign him in. And at the same time, basically tell him that it is not up to you to impose the law?

Thomas: There’s an example of this sort of vigilantism in a story by the historian Ibn Kathīr who was a follower of Ibn Taymiyyah. So, presumably this story is favourable to Ibn Taymiyyah's memory.

And this is a story that shows how Ibn Taymiyyah began attacking the other group that he accused of creating innovations and corruptions within Islam, namely the Sufis.

So, in this story as related by Ibn Kathīr, a Sufi Sheikh arrived in Damascus wearing a big and luxurious garment, a kind of extraordinary looking like a wizard or something but making himself out to look like some kind of mystic incarnation of the divine or something as some Sufis have done in history.

Ibn Taymiyyah ordered his followers to cut the garment up. So, they basically attacked this Sufi with knives. I don’t know if they had scissors back then, but anyway, they shredded the garment into pieces, then they shaved his head because he had long hair, which Ibn Taymiyyah thought was against the Sharia.

They cut his fingernails because they were too long, as far as Ibn Taymiyyah was concerned. His moustache, which was too long as well, was drooping down. They shaved it off, they trimmed it.

This sort of activity, it goes back to the Lebowski exegetical principle. You're not wrong, you're just an asshole to treat this man like this. Maybe the Sufi was corrupt, but still to order your followers to cut up his garment, to shave off his head. It's a bit extreme.

Aimen: Well, not just a bit extreme, it was extreme. I have some sympathy with people who want to expose charlatans, especially charlatan gurus who prey on people's superstitions to enrich themselves. That's it.

Thomas: I mean, so clearly there were charlatans among the Sufis. And yes, as you say, the Sufis, they did have some practices, which for outsiders, at least hearing about them might have caused concern, but maybe the practices themselves were pretty, pretty wacky.

So, in Arabic, these practices are called Sameeh, and especially Nazar. So, these words mean hearing and seeing.

The Nazar ceremonies, the seeing ceremonies in particular are pretty weird. I mean, they would involve often the stripping of a young boy to be naked in front of a circle of Sufis who would contemplate his naked body, and they believe enter into ecstasy and union with God through that vision.

And no judgement, I'm not going to judge anyone, but it does sound … you can imagine someone especially of Ibn Taymiyyah’s temperament thinking what?

Aimen: Oh, yes. I mean, goodness. There is a Sufi obsession as far as Ibn Taymiyyah was concerned with young boys. It was unhealthy among the Sufis. Well, some Sufis and he condemned it.

And he believed that this sort, which in today's age, we call it paedophilia, was a disease that is eating at the heart of what was supposed to be a movement that is supposed to be divorcing itself from any worldly pleasure.

Whether it is a pleasure of the flesh, or the pleasure of the food, or the pleasure of the skin in terms of basically wearing the silk and the cotton and other, I mean, beautiful garments. I mean, how could you do that?

Thomas: In general, Ibn Taymiyyah believed that all heightened states of spiritual experience were satanic. He just didn't really trust that, that sense, that feeling that these Sufis had in their ecstasy of union with God was authentic.

But this indicates one of those infamous contradictions about Ibn Taymiyyah, because I wouldn't want anyone to think that Ibn Taymiyyah was strictly anti-Sufi. It's not true.

Aimen: He was Sufi himself.

Thomas: I know, in fact, he was a Sufi until the year 1311, until he was quite old. He had a Sufi as the spiritual guide of his group of scholars, this Sufi, his name was ʿImād al-Dīn al-Wāsiṭī. He was both a Sufi Sheikh and a Hanbali jurist.

So, just to make sure that everyone understands, we're not saying that there's this strict dividing line, Sufi, anti-Sufi, Hanbali and the others. There was a mixture going on.

And so, as part of this kind of rich contradiction in Ibn Taymiyyah’s character, it wasn't Sufism exactly that he opposed, it was excesses within Sufism as he saw them, that he opposed.

Aimen: The irony, Thomas, is that Salafi Jihadists, especially in places like Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Chechnya where there is a huge population of Sufis living there. Naqshbandis, Qadiris, Rifaʽis, Jilanis, they looked down upon them. They believed that they were practising shirk and heresy.

I mean, they truly believed that this is not the righteous way. They believed the only true Jihadists are the Salafi Jihadists because these people are backward. They are cowards. They are just using Sufism to shirk away their duty of Jihad.

But the reality wasn't true. In fact, the Taliban were Sufis. I remember we were walking on one of the streets of Jalalabad, and from a building on the second floor from the windows, we can see, and we can hear a Sufi Haḍra like basically when they have the drums and the dancing, and we see the men of the Taliban with their turbans, and they were doing that Sufi dance in a circle, and we were hearing the drums.

For me, I lack the sound of the drums. I mean, basically it was so hypnotic. But for my fellow Jihadists, it's like, they were saying, oh my God, what is this? This is awful. This is Haram, this is shirk, this is heresy.

They were so against it. However, all I see is that the vast majority of Jihad activity and Jihadism was actually undertaken by Sufis. In Afghanistan, it was the Taliban, and the other Mujahideen parties.

In Chechnya it was the Chechnya Mujahideen who were mostly Sufis. In Bosnia they were Sufis. So, how on earth, Al-Qaeda would look down on their allies like this? I have no idea.

I mean, you call them heretics, and then they are your allies, and they are your incubator community. They are your protectors. It was just like Ibn Taymiyyah, one of the contradictions that are contained within the Jihadist movement.

Thomas: Now, Ibn Taymiyyah in addition to kind of hating Sufi, let's say ecstasy, Sufi extravagance in worship, Ibn Taymiyyah also had basic theological problems with Sufism, especially the Sufism of an extremely important Sufi, historically speaking, possibly the most important one, the man who is known as the greatest Sheikh, and this is Ibn Arabi.

Ibn Arabi who died in Damascus. He was an Andalusian from Spain, but he died in Damascus in 1240. So, not too long before Ibn Taymiyyah was around, his tomb is still there in Damascus. I used to visit it regularly when I lived in Damascus, because I love Ibn Arabi.

My first interest in Islam was inspired by Ibn Arabi. My desire to learn the Arabic language was implanted in me out of a desire to read Ibn Arabi in the original.

Aimen: Typical heretic, typical heretic.

Thomas: Exactly. Just a Christian to the end. Now, Ibn Arabi's followers were not known for extravagant ceremonies for things like taking drugs like some Sufis were accused of doing, for dancing.

Ibn Arabi's followers were sober on the whole, but they were, in terms of their religious personality, their religious mentality, just totally opposite from Ibn Taymiyyah.

So, if we go and we take the Shahadah, the Islamic Declaration of Faith, the first half of that declaration, la 'iilah 'iilaa allah, there is no God, but God, there is no God but Allah.

This can be interpreted in many ways, let's say in two basic ways. Ibn Taymiyyah interpreted it to mean there is only one proper object of worship, Allah. And in Ibn Taymiyyah 's mind and heart, this was a way of loving God. God was an object of worship, divine worship. You loved him by obeying him.

Do you think that's a fair way, Aimen, of describing the Salafi interpretation of the Shahadah?

Aimen: I think this is mainstream Islam.

Thomas: Okay. But people like Ibn Arabi and others on the less Salafi, less even sometimes let's say Sunni Maximalist spectrum, but Muslims interpret it differently. Ibn Arabi would've interpreted that la 'iilah 'iilaa allah, there is no God, but God to mean something like everything in the end, in the final analysis, when you boil it down, everything is nothing other than God.

He's telling his followers something about reality, that even though we can't see it, everything is actually God.

Now, this is very provocative to someone of lbn Taymiyyah’s mentality, I would say, and certainly did provoke him. The Ibn Arabi view, known as Wahdat al-wujūd, the oneness of being, that all of creation is a mirror of the creator. This kind of way of being religious was antithetical to Ibn Taymiyyah’s way.

Aimen: Oh, yes. Because you remember the text from Ibn Arabi's writings when he said that, when the Israelites worshipped the golden calf, they were actually, without knowing it, worshipping God.

Well, we could say this about any pagans, any people who worshipped the sun, moon, the ancestors, worship the trees, worship nature. So, at the end of the day, who's a believer and who's not?

So, from Ibn Taymiyyah’s point of view, you have just absolved all humanity of any duty towards God. And that's it, whether you are aware of him or not, you are actually worshipping him.

Thomas: You could say it about a Christian, Aimen. You could say it about a Christian who worships Jesus Christ. And in fact, Ibn Taymiyyah explicitly accuses Ibn Arabi and his followers by their idea of divine indwelling, of union with God, of God becoming one with the person, of being similar to Christianity, of being too Christian.

So, it's true with an Ibn Arabi’s view that the boundaries of where Islam starts and stops becomes blurred. Ibn Taymiyyah did not like blurred boundaries.

Aimen: Exactly. He is a sober, rational thinker who basically said, no, no, no, no, no. And then he accused Ibn Arabi of heresy.

Thomas: Well, not just Ibn Arabi. Ibn Taymiyyah was going to go on to accuse a lot of people of heresy, and it was going to piss a lot of people off.

In 1305, this led to a clash with Cairo, with the Mamluk capital. Ibn Taymiyyah writes two letters to Cairo, one to the chief Sufi Sheikh of the Mamluk Empire, and the other to the spiritual director himself of the chief steward of the Sultan. And he says that Ibn Arabi is a greater threat to Islam than the Mongols.

Aimen: In fact, Thomas, Ibn Taymiyyah went far further than that. He accused Ibn Arabi and his followers of causing the Mongol Invasion with their heresy, that they are the ones who, with their spiritual deviancy have weakened the foundations of the Muslim empire, that the Mongols came and stormed the gates because of them.

This is now the shrill screams of a puritan mind that is abandoning reason, and actually seeing enemies everywhere.

Thomas: Well, unsurprisingly, the recipients of these two letters from Ibn Taymiyyah were greatly offended. They took the letters to the chief judge in Cairo who was a Maliki, as it happens.

And the judge convinced the Sultan to write to Damascus to the governor, there in demand that Ibn Taymiyyah be put on trial.

So now, for the first time, this is 1306, Ibn Taymiyyah is accused, is charged with a crime. This is the first of several trials that Ibn Taymiyyah would be subject to for the rest of his life.

Aimen: You have to understand, Thomas, that in these trials, Ibn Taymiyyah’s opponents found him extremely annoying, because he was of course, always referring back to the texts. They were, of course, always referring to the jurist of their schools, whether they are Malikis or Hanafis or Shafi'is.

But Ibn Taymiyyah as you know, and as we have already said, is someone who wanted to follow … well, he was Hanbali but he wanted to always go outside the box and follow the text and follow the literal interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah and the practices of the early generations as he saw fit. That used to infuriate his opponents.

And nonetheless, in the end, these trials actually more or less improved and increased Ibn Taymiyyah’s popularity because he was seen as a maverick. And goodness people love mavericks.

Thomas: In the end, all of this landed Ibn Taymiyyah in jail. In April of 1306, he was thrown into prison in Cairo, officially accused of various heretical doctrines.

18 months later, he was released when he agreed to sign a document confessing to orthodoxy.

But immediately upon being released, he resumed his public attacks on Sufism. He didn't wait any time he started to attack Sufism again.

And six months later, six months after being released from prison, he was banged up in prison again in Cairo.

Well, there he was in prison, converting prisoners to his cause. And all the while outside of prison, there was great political change happening in the Mamluk Empire.

The Sultan, Al-Nasir Muhammad, who had been a minor until now enters into his majority. He turns 18, and then this leads to some explosive political wrangling between different factions who are trying to hold onto power, but they lose, he wins. The Sultan finally achieves full power.

And little did Ibn Taymiyyah know, but Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad was a great fan of his. So, as soon as he achieves full power, he orders Ibn Taymiyyah released from prison.

Aimen: Yes. Al-Nasir Muhammad was a fan of Ibn Taymiyyah. And he offered him actually the chance to actually punish his enemies with death which Ibn Taymiyyah refuses immediately. He does not want any vengeance. He just wants to go home and preach what he believed to be the right form of Islam.

Thomas: Yeah. We've been pretty hard on Ibn Taymiyyah, but clearly amongst the other qualities, there was a sweetie in there somewhere. He didn't want to condemn his enemies to death, but little did he know right around the corner, his old enemy would return new and improved, the Mongols, this time they’re Shia.

Aimen: Horror, horror.

Thomas: Stay tuned. We'll be right back after this break.

[Music Playing]

We are back. And so, too are the Mongols. Just imagine that, Aimen, Ibn Taymiyyah thinking he's sitting pretty fresh out of prison, ready to live his life, and there his old enemy, the Mongols are back to bother him and the Mamluk Empire.

Aimen: Hooray.

Thomas: So, the backstory is in 1309, Ghazan Khan's successor as Ilkhanate ruler, Öljaitü Khan, I think I got that right. Öljaitü Khan.

Aimen: Öljaitü, Öljaitü.

Thomas: Öljaitü Khan, he converts from Sunni to Shia Islam.

Aimen: Shame, absolute shame. This guy Öljaitü, he actually went through three conversions. I mean, he was originally a Shamanist. And then after that converted to Buddhism, then he converted to Sunni Islam. Okay, that fits. But then the weirdest thing is that he converted then to Shia Islam. Yeah, what a hippie.

Thomas: Ibn Taymiyyah was clearly not wrong to doubt the sincerity of these Mongol leaders’ faith.

And in fact, as a response to Öljaitü Khan's conversion to Shi’ism, and the renewed threat from a newly Shia Mongol horde on the Mamluk Empire's borders, he wrote a book that really is one of his most influential books called the Siyāsa Sharʿiyya, Sharia Based Politics, or a Law Guided Politics, however you want to translate that title, the Siyāsa Sharʿiyya, a book which has inspired a lot of Islamist political thought.

Aimen: Oh, indeed. I mean, the Siyāsa Sharʿiyya is considered to be the book upon which a lot of later scholars and ideologues would base their framework of what a Islamic state, a proper Islamic state, and a proper Islamic society should be governed.

Thomas: And his book is a particular example of how modern interpreters of Ibn Taymiyyah, especially radical ones, pick and choose quotes from his writings. Because in this book, Siyāsa Sharʿiyya, Ibn Taymiyyah is actually very pragmatic.

At no point does he outline a systematic, comprehensive Islamist state system, and he makes it clear that everything must be done for the public good and for the avoidance of Fitna, the avoidance of any social or civil unrest.

And yet, at times, the book adopts certain maximalist views about politics and Islam, and some of his later interpreters have cherry picked those quotes in order to build up totalitarian or totalizing political programs for themselves.

Öljaitü Khan, newly Shia, had already proved his ruthlessness and was determined to consolidate the Ilkhanate Empire, which had gone through a period of civil unrest, of fragmentation after his brother's death.

And the recent political instability inside the Mamluk Empire, which we mentioned in the previous part, which brought the young Sultan Nasir al Muhammad to the top of the heap, that recent instability had convinced some Syrian emirs to defect from the Sultan in Cairo and throw in their lot with the Ilkhanate Emperor.

Encouraged by this, at the end of the year, 1312 Öljaitü and his Mongol hordes invade Syria.

And it is in this context, still in Cairo, but no longer in prison, that Ibn Taymiyyah pens his third anti-Mongol fatwa, the longest and the most notorious of his three anti-Mongol fatwas. In this fatwa, he calls the invaders not only unbelievers, but apostates, Murtaddeen.

Aimen: And of course, Thomas, a scholar of the calibre of Ibn Taymiyyah, when he brands a group of people Murtaddeen, it would have significant legal ramifications for these people.

When you fight against an army of apostates, which is exactly what the word Murtaddeen is, the plural for Murtadd, which means apostate, when you fight against an army of apostates, you are supposed to take prisoners. It's nothing short of total annihilation to anyone, and for everyone who will fall into your hands.

This is why this fatwa was considered to be harsh, but nonetheless, it wasn't a fatwa that seemed to be out of place among the mainstream Sunnis of that time, because they were horrified by the fact that this time the threat seems to have encompassed not only the Mongols, who of course, their memories are still fresh from the sack of Baghdad because Öljaitü raised red banners written upon them, [Speaking Foreign language] which means in Arabic, we will avenge Hussein.

And what is so significant about this fatwa is the fact that there wasn't that much opposition from other mainstream Muslim scholars against this fatwa. And I think it's because of the fact that they were all horrified of what's going to happen at the hands of this invading army.

Thomas: Yeah, I don't think any of his fellow clerics were defending the Mongol Invasion, but this fatwa has really resonated down to the present. And in our own day, many Sunni Islamist groups use this fatwa, especially to justify calling all Shia apostates and legitimising violence against them, because Ibn Taymiyyah takes such a strong line against the Shia conversion of the Mongols.

Aimen: Indeed. And of course, this particular fatwa is what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Al-Qaeda in Iraq at that time and the precursors of ISIS in Iraq would use in order to justify the indiscriminate attacks on Shia Muslims in Iraq.

And of course, basically that led to Shia reprisals from the other side on Sunnis. Of course, it's not rosy on the other side just to be fair. I mean, both sides carry a lot of theological hatred for each other, enough to justify killing each other.

Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. Now, like before Ibn Taymiyyah joins the Sultans army, and with all the Mamluk forces marches out of Cairo early in the year 1313, on an expedition against the Mongols.

And my goodness don't I wish that I could say what happened was this amazing epic clash, but in fact, the Mongols retreated without a fight. So, the Mamluks must have really been quite a formidable force, honestly.

We're always painting the Mongols as this fearsome invading force, but the Mamluks must have given as good as they get because the Mongols retreated without a fight. And in fact, this is the end of any great Mamluk/Mongol competition.

A few years later, a long lasting peace treaty was signed between both sides in Aleppo. And from that point on, Ibn Taymiyyah no longer had to worry about any Mongol threats.

He could just get back to his favourite pastime, of writing strongly worded refutations of all his Sunni enemies whom he thought were destroying Islam.

In 1314, he writes his notorious refutation, a big essay against rationalist theology and Aristotelian philosophy. And according to modern scholars, I've read, Ibn Taymiyyah from that work demonstrates that he didn't really quite understand Aristotle as well as he might've thought he did.

And nonetheless, he wrote that work against philosophy. He writes a book called The Correct Answer, the Longest Refutation of Christian Doctrine in the Islamic Tradition.

Aimen: Six volumes. Can you believe it?

Thomas: I should read this, I think.

Aimen: It’s called Al Jawaab As-Saheeh Liman Baddala Deen Al-Maseeh, which means the correct answer to those who falsified Christ's religion.

The funny thing is that it is six volumes, and I read some of it, and between you and me, basically, I mean, I was wondering, I don't know what Bible he read. He seemed to be reading from secondary sources. It doesn't seem to be-

Thomas: Aimen, my friend, whenever I have a debate with a Muslim about religion, I wonder if the Muslim has read anything that a Christian has ever written at all.

Aimen: Well, I did read the Bible, though. I did read the Bible.

Thomas: Oh, no, not you. Not you, dear friend. I know you are very well read into Christianity.

So, he wrote that book against Christians. In 1318, two years later, he writes three notorious fatwas against Alawite group called the Nusaris on the North Syrian Coast, who had revolted against the Mamluks.

In those fatwas, he calls them apostates. He also calls the Druze apostates that he says they can be killed, their property seized.

As you know, Aimen, in the Syrian Civil War, these fatwas were invoked regularly to justify the struggle against the Assad regime, which is an Alawite dominated regime.

Aimen: Indeed, I mean, basically, sectarianism returned to Syria with force. And the irony is that some of these Jihadist groups formed in 2012, 2013, just a year or two after the breakout of the Syrian Civil War.

Some of them would actually have a battalion within the group called the battalion of Ibn Taymiyyah, so as to reinforce the fact that Ibn Taymiyyah is so ever present.

Why? Because they wanted to remind the Alawites, to tone them that, look, we are going to attack you with the same man who 600 years ago waged Jihad against you.

However, again, as usual, I have to caveat this, it's not also rosy at the Alawite side. The Alawites committed a lot of massacres also on the Sunnis in modern time as well.

Thomas: It's a shit show from all directions, frankly.

Aimen: Absolutely.

Thomas: There's a great story from around this time of Ibn Taymiyyah attending an execution of a heretic. So, a man accused of heresy by Ibn Taymiyyah and his followers, hauled before the courts, condemned to death. And just before the heretic was beheaded, Ibn Taymiyyah walked up to him and struck him across the face.

It's a sort of strong image of the kind of man Ibn Taymiyyah had become. He was determined to root out heresy and to ensure that the Mamluk Empire was preserved from the dire effects of heresy.

And it brings to mind, all of the heresy hunters in early modern Italy, early modern Spain, inquisitors, all those sorts of people, witch burners during the Reformation and Counter Reformation.

It was a similar age of unrest, of conflict, of chaos, of social economic civil disorder. And in the midst of it, a voice like Ibn Taymiyyah really can speak very persuasively, smacking the heretics down and indeed cutting off their heads.

Aimen: You see, Thomas, this is the zeal that Ibn Taymiyyah possessed against irreligion. I've seen it on both sides of the sectarian divide in Islam. You will see Shias and Alawites taking a Sunni and burying him alive because basically they say you are a heretic; you are an infidel.

And I see Sunnis taking a Shia and basically cutting him pieces to pieces or burning him alive because he is a heretic and an infidel.

The two sides are engaged in the ugliest forms of violence. And then this is when I realised that the ugliest forms of violence is what is practised by zealot, religious fanatics from any religion or sectarian persuasion.

Thomas: In the end, zealous religious fanatics would prove Ibn Taymiyyah’s downfall. And I'm speaking specifically of his own followers. Ibn Taymiyyah had spent another couple of years in prison in the meantime, for entering into theological disputes or legal disputes, really with his fellow clerics.

But then at the very end of his life in 1326, a couple of incidents occurred outside of Damascus, where followers of his, very close followers of his, acted in such let's say inappropriate ways, in such radical ways that Ibn Taymiyyah couldn't escape censure for it.

So, one of his disciples in Cairo openly criticised visitation to graves, the graves of holy men, the graves of prophets, including the Prophet Muhammad himself, which was becoming a common refrain by Ibn Taymiyyah himself.

He found what's called Ziyarat visitation, visiting graves. He found it to become increasingly problematic because he felt that though it was okay to go to graves to pray for the dead man, he thought it was inappropriate to go and pray to the dead holy man or prophet which a lot of Muslims were doing this sin against his radical monotheism. Remember, all worship is directed only to God. There are no intermediaries at all.

Aimen: Of course, Thomas, this question will remain extremely divisive among Muslims all the way to the days of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the Arabian Peninsula, who would come half a millennium later, and we will be covering his life story in following episodes.

However, for Ibn Taymiyyah, just like for his followers down the centuries, the question of are the dead able to listen and able to help? This question is going to tear apart the Muslim world to the point where it is still resonating to this day.

Thomas: Well, as I say, one hot-headed disciple in Cairo openly criticised these grave visitations. He was arrested, beaten, banished from Cairo. He went to join his master in Damascus.

Then another disciple, equally hot-headed, this one in Jerusalem. He also preached against journeying simply to visit the graves of prophets or of Muslim holy people, including the grave of Abraham nearby Hebron.

This also got people very upset because the grave of Abraham, like the grave of the prophet in Medina, were extremely popular sites of pilgrimage, where many pious Muslims would come and offer their intercessory prayers praying for intercession from these holy people.

So, this was extremely offensive to a lot of Muslims. So much so that that year, 1326, Ibn Taymiyyah’s, old clerical enemies in Damascus jumped into action. They accused him before the governor there again, of spreading false teachings.

And the governor, I think by this point, must have been sick to death of Ibn Taymiyyah, frankly. He appealed to the Sultan in Cairo, Ibn Taymiyyah's old ally, the Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad.

Now, the Sultan had defended Taymiyyah 16 years earlier. Remember, he called him the most pious man he'd ever met.

Now, however, he just couldn't defend him any longer, and he turned against him. The Sultan decreed that Ibn Taymiyyah should be imprisoned again. And this time he revoked Ibn Taymiyyah’s right to issue fatwas.

Aimen: It became obvious to Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad that Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwas and ideas and essays were trickling down through his disciples to the general public, to the ordinary people, and that it started to tear apart neighbour against neighbour, family members against each other. Mosque congregations split down the middle between those who support him, those who opposed him.

He cannot have religious strife. He need religious conformity to be more prevalent in his society. He's already having to contend with outside enemies. He doesn't want to have his country split over a question of theology that doesn't seem to be that big.

I mean, for Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad this question was trivial, absolutely trivial. But for zealots like Ibn Taymiyyah no, no, no, no, no. It is not trivial.

Now, I salute Ibn Taymiyyah for actually thinking it's not trivial. And I salute his steadfastness in his faith. It was just the manner in which he preached it and the manner through which his disciples preached it.

Thomas: You're not wrong, you're just an asshole.

Aimen: Exactly.

Thomas: Remember, it's the Lebowski exegetical principle. Ibn Taymiyyah still in Damascus, was imprisoned there. Several of his followers were also imprisoned, interrogated, whipped.

One of his most notoriously hard line disciples, Ibn al-Qayyim who was put in prison with him, was paraded around the city on a donkey.

So, there was a big turn by the elite against this whole movement, which would remain more or less the case as the movement echoed down the centuries until men like Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab in the 18th century revived it in a big way.

Ibn Taymiyyah, despite being in prison, he still spoke out loudly defending himself. He published a work against the chief judge in Cairo, and he basically in that work said that his entire life had been a Jihad, a Jihad against both external and internal enemies.

I find this quote weirdly moving. He said, “Jihad is the greatest blessing, but people don't know it.” And more than anyone else, Aimen, that quote reminds me of Sayyid Qutb, who was also in prison, also wrote about Jihad and whom we'll also be covering over two episodes, just down the line after our episodes on Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab.

But a lot of Salafi, Jihadists, a lot of Salafists in prison probably have that same feeling. Don't people understand that Jihad is the greatest blessing? We must pursue it.

Aimen: Absolutely. And in fact, Thomas, this is why when I used to be in the camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia, I used to hear people say, Sheikh ul-Islam and Sheikh ul-Jihad Ibn Taymiyyah because for them, he is a man who fulfilled the two duties of Jihad, the military Jihad, and the theological Jihad.

For them, they always quoted his most memorable quote ever when he was in prison and about to die, he said, “What do my enemies think they are doing to me? My paradise is inside my heart. Wherever I go, it’s with me. My imprisonment is solitude. My exile is tourism, and my death is martyrdom.”

Thomas: Well, in 1328, after a short illness, Ibn Taymiyyah died in his Damascus prison cell. An eyewitness historian writing not very long after, reported that 75,000 people lined the streets of Damascus for his funeral.

I actually believe that figure, that sounds realistic, more realistic than the 2 million that lined the streets of Baghdad for Ahmad bin Hanbal.

One final contradiction, the great enemy of the Sufis was buried in a Sufi graveyard. And that's it.

Ibn Taymiyyah. I mean, what a man, what a legacy. And that's really the most important takeaway. This genius of righteous anger. This genius of clear, uncompromising literalism and legal obedience, writing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of words over the course of his long life, his influence would go on, would outlast him well, as we've been saying to the present day.

Not just within the Hanbali School of Jurisprudence, but in fact across all the four schools of jurisprudence, Muslims would find his writings and be inspired by them, and would sort of keep the flame alive of the Ibn Taymiyyah way of understanding the religion.

All the way up until the 1730s, the 1740s, in a real backwards part of the Muslim world, the Nejd in the Central Arabian Peninsula where a man would arise, whom we're going to talk about beginning in our next episode, a man whose legacy is perhaps as notorious as Ibn Taymiyyah’s. Who am I talking about, Aimen?

Aimen: Of course, it is Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, the Mujaddid as they call him, the renewer.

[Music Playing]

Thomas: Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the so-called Wahhabis, the renewer of his age. Stay tuned dear listener, we'll be back at you with another amazing story about another amazing and controversial Muslim thinker.

A reminder that you can follow the show over on Facebook and Twitter at MH Conflicted. And for a deeper dive into all the subjects we talk about here on Conflicted, head over to Facebook and search Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group.

There you will find other fans of the show engaging in heated debates, enlightening conversations, and just generally geeking out over Conflicted related topics.

Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Harry Stott. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley and Tom Biddle.