Ibn Taymiyya And The Attributes Of God

In Ibn Taymiyya and the Attributes of God (orig. published in German, 2019), Farid Suleiman pieces together, on the basis of statements scattered unsystematically over numerous individual treatises, an overall picture of the methodological foundations of Ibn Taymiyya’s doctrine of the divine attributes. He then examines how Ibn Taymiyya applies these foundational principles as exemplified in his treatment of selected divine attributes. Throughout the book, Suleiman relates Ibn Taymiyya’s positions to the larger context of Islamic intellectual history. The book was awarded the Dissertation Prize 2019 by the Academy for Islam in Research and Society (AIWG) and the Classical Islamic Book Prize by Gorgias Press (2020).

In Ibn Taymiyya on Reason and Revelation, Carl Sharif El-Tobgui offers the first comprehensive study of Ibn Taymiyya’s ten-volume magnum opus, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql (Refutation of the conflict of reason and revelation). In his colossal riposte to the Muslim philosophers and rationalist theologians, the towering Ḥanbalī polymath rejects the call to prioritize reason over revelation in cases of alleged conflict, interrogating instead the very conception of rationality that classical Muslims had inherited from the Greeks. In its place, he endeavors to articulate a reconstituted “pure reason” that is both truly universal and in full harmony with authentic revelation. Based on a line-by-line reading of the entire Darʾ taʿāruḍ, El-Tobgui’s study carefully elucidates the “philosophy of Ibn Taymiyya” as it emerges from the multifaceted ontological, epistemological, and linguistic reforms that Ibn Taymiyya carries out in this pivotal work.

Diese Arbeit erschlie t auf systematische Weise die methodischen Grundlagen der Attributenlehre des einflussreichen islamischen Gelehrten Ibn Taymiyya (gest. 728/1328). Dabei verarbeitet sie seine in vielen Einzeltraktaten ausgebreiteten Ansichten zu einer Gesamtschau und geht auf geistesgeschichtliche Zusammenh nge ein. Der Band leistet somit einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Erforschung der Geschichte der islamischen Theologie.

The debate over Allah’s attribute—the “nature” and the inner articulation of Allah—is one of the focal debates in the intellectual history of Islam. This edited collection aims to highlight and examine some aspects of this debate in their original context, based on the relevant primary literature. By showing that even an apparently self-evident concept such as Allah, which lies at the heart of every reading of Islam, is highly ambiguous and polysemous, the chapters also emphasise the plurality that has always existed in Islamic thought. Through highlighting the philosophical and theological reflections on the concept of Allah, the results of this study challenge the juristic reading of Islam, in which Allah’s function consists mainly in providing a detailed plan for the human life and also rewarding or punishing the ones who deviates from it. The book also attempts to demonstrate the relevance and the actuality of the tradition and to stress its contemporaneity. This volume makes a significant part of the intellectual tradition of Islam accessible for students and scholars of Islamic theology, Islamic philosophy, Islamic studies and the like, as well as providing a secondary source for teaching on the debate in question.

Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) of Damascus was one of the most prominent and controversial religious scholars of medieval Islam. He called for jihad against the Mongol invaders of Syria, appealed to the foundational sources of Islam for reform, and battled against religious innovation. Today, he inspires such diverse movements as Global Salafism, Islamic revivalism and modernism, and violent jihadism. This volume synthesizes the latest research, discusses many little-known aspects of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought, and highlights the religious utilitarianism that pervades his activism, ethics, and theology.

The Muslim jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) is famous for polemic against Islamic philosophy, theology and rationalizing mysticism, but his positive theological contribution has not been well understood. This comprehensive study of Ibn Taymiyya’s theodicy helps to rectify this lack. Exposition and analysis of Ibn Taymiyya’s writings on God’s justice and wise purpose, divine determination and human agency, the problem of evil, and juristic method in theological doctrine show that he articulates a theodicy of optimism in which God in His essence perpetually wills the best possible world from eternity. This sets Ibn Taymiyya’s theodicy apart from Ashʿarī divine voluntarism, the free-will theodicy of the Muʿtazilīs, and the essentially timeless God of other optimists like Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ʿArabī.

This comprehensive study of Muslim jurist Ibn Taymiyya's (d. 1328) theodicy of perpetual optimism exposits and analyses his writings on God's justice and wise purpose, divine determination and human agency, the problem of evil, and juristic method in theological doctrine.

Philosophical Theology in Islam studies the later history of the Ashʿarī school of theology through in-depth probings of its thought, sources, scholarly networks and contexts. Starting with a review of al-Ghazālī’s role in the emergence of post-Avicennan philosophical theology, the book offers a series of case studies on hitherto unstudied texts by the towering thinker Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī as well as specific philosophical and theological topics treated in his works. Studies furthermore shed light on the transmission and reception of later Ashʿarī doctrines in periods and regions that have so far received little scholarly attention. This book is the first exploration of the later Ashʿarī tradition across the medieval and early-modern period through a trans-regional perspective. Contributors: Peter Adamson, Asad Q. Ahmed, Fedor Benevich, Xavier Casassas Canals, Jon Hoover, Bilal Ibrahim, Andreas Lammer, Reza Pourjavady, Harith Ramli, Ulrich Rudolph, Meryem Sebti, Delfina Serrano-Ruano, Ayman Shihadeh, Aaron Spevack, and Jan Thiele.