Maquinaria para el movimiento de tierras en general

Ibn Taymiyya’s writings are heavily marked by the skeptical tactics of the Qur’an, which he uses as a strategy against Muslims who in his view have

adulterated their beliefs and practices with human fabrications, including phi- losophical conjecture and the practices of Sufism that drew upon the passions of the body to become close to God. However, to justify his use of the Qur’an’s skeptical rhetoric against fellow Muslims, Ibn Taymiyya has to associate them with the Jews and Christians of the Qur’an. Once this association is made, he can charge them with conjecture (z.ann), implying deviance from the message of Islam in its pristine form. In this way, he accuses Muslims of the error that the Qur’an directs against Jews and Christians for subordinating the plain mean- ings of scripture to human conjecture.

The charge of conjecture in the Qur’an is directed more pointedly against those Arabs who associated other beings with God.32_{They were polytheists of}

a kind, associating their tribal deities with God as the chief deity of the pan- theon of pre-Islamic Arabia. However, there were no such people in Ibn Taymiyya’s day. The problem, in his view, lay with deviant forms of piety that claimed to have a scriptural basis, whether Jewish, Christian, or even Muslim. As noted earlier, Ibn Taymiyya identified Christianity as a form of polytheism (shirk), and the theme of conjecture versus real knowledge features in his writings on Christianity. For example, in one of his works, The Necessity of the Straight Path in Opposition to the People of Hell, Ibn Taymiyya’s main target is deviant beliefs of Muslims, especially devotees to saintlyfigures who pay them homage in life and death. However, before unleashing his venom on these practices, he writes at length in disparagement of Jews and Christians, especially Christians. In this way, he hopes to associate the deviant beliefs of Muslims with past recipients of scripture: Jews and Christians whose errors Islam had come to correct, and yet Muslims now imitated them. To set the stage, Ibn Taymiyya notes how the umma had long been susceptible to the influence of Jewish and Christian deviancy. Indeed, the righteous predecessors had warned of it:

As for the Jews, their infidelity lies essentially in their not acting accord- ing to their knowledge. They know the truth but do not follow it in word or deed. As for the Christians, their infidelity lies essentially in their acting without knowledge. They expend effort in various kinds of ritual worship without a law from Allah. They make statements about Allah for which they have no knowledge. For this reason, the righteous pre- decessors [al-salaf] would say: “Scholars among us who have become corrupted resemble the Jews. Worshippers among us who have become corrupted resemble the Christians.”33

Having made this connection between Judaism and Christianity, on the one hand, and corrupt forms of Islam, on the other, Ibn Taymiyya can even accuse Muslims of distorting scripture, a crucial charge the Qur’an levels against Jews and Christians. Ibn Taymiyya, it is worth noting, does not understand this to mean that the Jews and Christians had actually falsified the texts of their scriptures. (Other scholars, notably Ibn Hazm, understood

the Qur’an’s charge against Jews and Christians in that sense.) Rather, Ibn Taymiyya takes the charge to mean that Jews and Christians distort the meanings of their scriptures by subjecting them to human conjecture. It is likely that he understood the Qur’an’s charge against Jews and Christians in this sense for the sake of his arguments against fellow Muslims. He could not charge them with falsifying the actual texts of the Qur’an, although he does charge them with fabricating hadiths. Muslims are now like Jews and Christians for falsifying the meanings of scripture, reading the texts of reve- lation metaphorically, that is, on the basis of conjecture. The charge the Qur’an makes against Jews and Christians now applies to Muslims:

As for distortion of scripture in the sense of interpretation [tah.rı-f al-ta’wı-l], it inflicts many groups of this umma [that is, Islam]. As for distortion of revelation [that is, the texts of scripture, which include both the Qur’an and hadith, tah.rı-f al-tanzı-l], it has occurred among many people who distort the wordings of the messenger [Muhammad] and narrate reprehensible hadiths, although great scholars catch it [and so preserve the integrity of the hadith]. Some reach out to distort the Sunna [teachings of the Prophet] by conjecture [z.ann] they attribute to Allah: those who devise hadiths about the messenger of Allah, Allah’s prayer and peace upon him, or claim that what they conjecture [z.ann] is a proof [of their position]. It is actually not a proof.34

Muslims have thus become like Jews and Christians, distorting the meaning of scripture and even making up things about God that they then attribute to Muhammad. (In one of his writings, Ibn Taymiyya collects hadiths that he claims are actually the fabrications of storytellers. He then notes how scholars use them to justify their rationalizing conjectures about God.)35_{The Jews and}

Christians, even though they have scriptures in their possession, fail to understand the knowledge of God that they convey. Muslims have now gone down the same path despite having a book that warns against such a danger. As if distorting the message of scripture were not enough, Muslims, Ibn Taymiyya claims, have also become known for the fanatical partisanship the Qur’an imputes to Jews and Christians. At Q 2:113, Jews and Christians are depicted as accusing one another of infidelity. This, Ibn Taymiyya says, now features in Islam: Muslims have become divided into a host of groups that differ according to doctrines, laws and customs, and spiritual hierarchy. All claim that theirs alone is the way to salvation, consigning other Muslims to hell.36_{One could ask whether this is not what Ibn Taymiyya is himself doing,}

but he would say he is only setting the record straight, calling the umma back to the religion of God.

It is not just the unlearned masses that Ibn Taymiyya accuses of deviation from the message of Muhammad. He also likens the scholarly leaders of the umma to Jews and Christians. For example, envy is one of the blameworthy qualities Ibn Taymiyya attributes to Jews and Christians. Now, he says, it also

afflicts even the scholars of Islam, who apparently are prone to become envious of peers whose scholarly work has greater impact on the umma:“Some of those belonging to the classes of knowledge [that is, the ranks of religious scholars] are now tested [that is, afflicted] by envy of those whom God has guided to knowl- edge that is beneficial to the umma and to the performance of good works.”37

Having associated deviant Muslims with the Jews and Christians of the Qur’an, Ibn Taymiyya takes the next step, arguing that the only way to adhere to true Islam is by opposing all that Jews and Christians do, even things they do that bring no apparent harm to Muslims.38 _{To be a Muslim,}

then, means to oppose Jews and Christians. Simply associating with the ways of Jews and Christians is harmful and must be opposed. The Jews and Christians of the Qur’an serve Ibn Taymiyya as a foil against which to high- light the religious deviancy of fellow Muslims, but this, in turn, implies that to free oneself of corrupt belief, one has to disassociate oneself entirely from any connection to Jews and Christians:

This deviancy is a matter that people’s natures have assumed and Satan has adorned. The slave [that is, the slave of God, meaning the Muslim in this context] is commanded to invoke Allah the Praiseworthy con- tinuously and to be guided to uprightness that has in it no Jewishness and no Christianity at all.39