←IndexThe Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Lecture 6: The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam

Section 3 of 14

Ibn Taymiyyah and the Wahhābī movement

Section summary

In brief

Iqbal traces the arc of revolt against juristic finality from Ibn Taymiyyah through al-Suyūṭī to the eighteenth-century Wahhābī movement, which he calls 'the first throb of life in modern Islam.' But he withholds full endorsement: the Wahhābīs asserted the right of independent judgement without exercising it critically, achieving formal but not substantive ijtihād.

Section 2 diagnosed the three causes of ijtihād's closure — the conservative reaction against Muʿtazilite Rationalism, the absorption of the best minds into Sufi otherworldliness, and the defensive rigidification following the fall of Baghdad — and closed by naming Ibn Taymiyyah as the 'powerful reaction' that the inner impulse of Islam generated against this immobility. Section 3 now traces the arc of Ibn Taymiyyah's intellectual programme through its historical consequences: his own revolt against the finality of the schools, the sixteenth-century claim of al-Suyūṭī, and — most significantly — the eighteenth-century Wahhābī movement, which Iqbal calls 'really the first throb of life in modern Islam.'

The section advances through three connected arguments. First, Iqbal describes Ibn Taymiyyah's substantive positions: his rejection of analogical reasoning (qiyās) and of ijmāʿ as conventionally understood, and his insistence on returning to 'first principles' — the Qur'an and Sunnah, unmediated by the accumulated authority of the schools. Second, Iqbal traces the genealogy of this impulse through al-Suyūṭī to Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, whose movement Iqbal treats as the most consequential expression of Ibn Taymiyyah's spirit — the source, 'directly or indirectly,' of 'nearly all the great modern movements of Muslim Asia and Africa,' including the Sanūsī movement, the Pan-Islamic movement, and even the Bābī movement in Persia. Third, and most importantly, Iqbal delivers a carefully calibrated evaluation: the Wahhābī movement is admirable in its 'spirit of freedom' and its vigorous assertion of the right of private judgement, but it is 'inwardly conservative in its own fashion' — its 'vision of the past is wholly uncritical,' and in legal matters it merely substitutes the authority of ḥadīth for the authority of the schools, without achieving the genuinely creative ijtihād that the situation demands.

This third movement is the section's philosophical centre of gravity. Iqbal is making a distinction that is essential to the entire argument of Lecture VI: the distinction between formal and substantive ijtihād. Formal ijtihād rejects the authority of the schools and asserts the right of independent judgement — but then exercises that judgement in a way that is itself uncritical, falling back on a literalist reading of the primary sources rather than engaging them with the creative, reconstructive energy that genuine ijtihād requires. Substantive ijtihād does not merely reject inherited authority; it generates new intellectual frameworks adequate to new circumstances. The Wahhābī movement achieved the former but not the latter — and this limitation, Iqbal implies, is why the 'immense potentialities' of the movement were never fully realised.

Original text

Ibn Taymiyyah was brought up in Ḥanbalite tradition. Claiming freedom of Ijtihād for himself he rose in revolt against the finality of the schools, and went back to first principles in order to make a fresh start. Like Ibn Ḥazm — the founder of Ẓāhirī school of law¹⁴ — he rejected the Ḥanafite principle of reasoning by analogy and Ijmāʿ as understood by older legists;¹⁵ for he thought agreement was the basis of all superstition.¹⁶ And there is no doubt that, considering the moral and intellectual decrepitude of his times, he was right in doing so.

In the sixteenth century al-Suyūṭī claimed the same privilege of Ijtihād to which he added the idea of a renovator at the beginning of each century.¹⁷

But the spirit of Ibn Taymiyyah's teaching found a fuller expression in a movement of immense potentialities which arose in the eighteenth century, from the sands of Nejd, described by Macdonald as the 'cleanest spot in the decadent world of Islam'. It is really the first throb of life in modern Islam. To the inspiration of this movement are traceable, directly or indirectly, nearly all the great modern movements of Muslim Asia and Africa, e.g. the Sanūsī movement, the Pan-Islamic movement,¹⁸ and the Bābī movement, which is only a Persian reflex of Arabian Protestantism.

The great puritan reformer, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, who was born in 1700,¹⁹ studied in Medina, travelled in Persia, and finally succeeded in spreading the fire of his restless soul throughout the whole world of Islam. He was similar in spirit to Ghazālī's disciple, Muḥammad Ibn Tūmart²⁰ — the Berber puritan reformer of Islam who appeared amidst the decay of Muslim Spain, and gave her a fresh inspiration.

We are, however, not concerned with the political career of this movement which was terminated by the armies of Muḥammad ʿAlī Pāshā. The essential thing to note is the spirit of freedom manifested in it, though inwardly this movement, too, is conservative in its own fashion. While it rises in revolt against the finality of the schools, and vigorously asserts the right of private judgement, its vision of the past is wholly uncritical, and in matters of law it mainly falls back on the traditions of the Prophet.

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4. Turkey's Nationalist Party and the Church–State question

Original text

In the sixteenth century al-Suyūṭī claimed the same privilege of Ijtihād to which he added the idea of a renovator at the beginning of each century.¹⁷