In the total fatwas of Sheikh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, we read the following: “(And be good to the parents) this is a restriction, because if the father calls the child to polytheism, he does not have to obey him. Rather, he has the right to command and forbid him, and this command and prohibition of the father is from kindness to him. And if - that is, the father. A polytheist permitted the boy to kill him, and there is a dispute among the scholars regarding his dislike.
Those who extracted from the text the phrase “and if he is a polytheist, it is permissible for the boy to kill him”;
To conclude from it that Ibn Taymiyyah “fatwas killing the child of the non-Muslim father,” and to demonstrate the responsibility of Ibn Taymiyyah with such a “bloody fatwa” - according to his claim - about the violence of ISIS and its ilk, and that it is based on an ancient heritage, and that the solution is to call for The so-called "humanist doctrine", whose condition is a break with what is called heritage, and a disavowal of it.
Ibn Taymiyyah distinguishes between two types of taboos.
The absolute forbidden, and the relative or restricted prohibition, which is forbidden in a case without a condition, and this distinction we will find later in Imam Al-Shatibi, who is quoted from Ibn Taymiyyah sometimes and does not call him by his name for some reason.
I previously published an article in mid-May 2020 about what I called the “technical reader” methodology, which is based on 3 central features; The first is to use the search engine (search) to find “quotes and evidence” extracted from its context (cut and past), the second is that it is devoid of any analytical textual reading, and the third is that it is separate from the scientific traditions recognized among specialists, which are traditions based on receiving and investigating the intention of the speaker By tracking 'technical terms and perception'. In another article published in June 2020, I also discussed the supposed relationship between Ibn Taymiyyah's fatwas and jihadists and the flaws in this assumption.
In this article, we continue the discussion from another angle related to the methodology of reading the classic fiqh text, which I mentioned earlier that it is a text of a special type that differs from modern classification methods, and it requires training, specialization, learning about, and studying with specialists, as it was not written for the general reader, in addition to that It becomes material for the indicated technical citation.
Returning to the text of Ibn Taymiyyah with which we opened this article - which is just an example to discuss a broader idea as it will become clear later - we find that the phrase is part of a long “chapter” (Majmoo’ Fatwas 14/459-478) in which Ibn Taymiyyah talks about that Islam is the straight path, and it is by which the religion of man is corrected.” It is a middle ground between two categories;
The first is the people of timid heresies (people of exaggeration and strictness) who forbid what God has made lawful of the good things, and the second is the people of immoral, opportunistic and gracious people who follow the lusts that are forbidden or go too far in eating what is permissible, and neglect the prayers and worship that are commanded.
In this context, Ibn Taymiyyah cites a suspicion of the people of the first category (the people of heresy) who may beg for some forbidden actions;
On the pretext that it activates them to do acts of obedience, or helps them to avoid what is most forbidden, so they are permitted for that to commit what is lighter to avoid what is more forbidden.
To remove this suspicion, Ibn Taymiyyah raises two very important issues:
The first issue:
that he distinguishes between two types of taboos.
Absolute haram, relative or restricted haram, which is forbidden in no case, and this distinction we will find later on Imam Shatibi, who is quoted from Ibn Taymiyyah sometimes and does not call him by his name for some reason.
The absolute forbidden is what is definite that nothing is permitted by the Sharia under any circumstances, neither for necessity nor for others. It is represented in 4 matters stipulated in the Qur’an, namely;
Associating others with God, committing immoral acts, speaking about God without knowledge, and pure injustice.
These absolute prohibitions do not involve anything of interest and are not permissible in any case, that is, they are not subject to negotiation.
As for the relative forbidden, it is what is forbidden in one case without one, it may be forbidden in one case and permitted in another, and its example is drinking blood, eating dead meat and pork, and drinking alcohol. Alcohol - for example - is permissible to ward off suffocation, according to the consensus of the fuqaha’; If there is no other, it is also permissible to quench thirst according to one of the two sayings of the jurists. The disagreement about it with regard to the issue of quenching thirst is not related to the disagreement about whether it is an absolute or relative forbidden. Rather, it is related to another observation. Which is whether drinking wine that quenches thirst or not. Imam Ahmad - for example - saw that wine does not quench thirst, and therefore it is not permissible to drink it in this case (necessity); It is only permitted - an exception - to quench thirst, and if it does not spur it, we return to the principle of the prohibition. Likewise, killing a soul is permitted in a state without a condition, such as retribution, for example, and that is why the expression “unlawful killing of a soul” is used, and therefore killing it is not one of the four absolutely prohibited in Sharia.
Here, Ibn Taymiyyah gave an example with the verse “Say, ‘Come, I will recite what your Lord has forbidden you, that you should not associate anything with Him, and do good to parents,’” and that a distinction must be made in duties and taboos between the absolute and the relative or the restricted. Shirk is absolutely forbidden, and kindness to parents is a relative or restricted duty. Among the evidence for its being a restricted duty are two issues; The first is that the boy is forbidden to obey his father if he calls him to polytheism. Rather, commanding the boy to his father in faith and forbidding him from polytheism is obligatory as well, and it is a matter of kindness to him. The second is that the jurists directly permitted the boy to kill his father if it necessitated killing (and we will explain later the reasons for killing), but they differed in the dislike of that.
It is clear here that whoever cuts off the phrase Ibn Taymiyyah to imply that he is giving a fatwa to kill the child of the polytheist parent - absolutely - just distorted the meaning out of ignorance or deliberately; Because Ibn Taymiyyah gave this as an example of a restrictive or relative obligation, that is, it may be permissible in one case without one; Because its prohibition is not absolute, and whoever wants to research this particular example away from the origin of the issue that Ibn Taymiyyah discusses, he must search for the reasons for that situation in which that is specifically permitted; What is happening on the law of jurisprudence and back to the sources of doctrinal jurisprudence.
The second issue:
It is necessary to differentiate between the action of oneself and the action of others. What a person does for himself and what he commands and permits - that is, acknowledges its permissibility - for others is different from what is required to remain silent, in which he neither commands nor forbids others. It is not permissible for a person in himself to do what he knows is forbidden; Just because he thought that it might help him to obey God; This would only be corrupting, or at least its corrupting would outweigh his interest. If there are things that are forbidden if someone else forbids it, something more forbidden will happen than it. He must be silent about it and not forbid it, but he also does not permit it. Because the inability to fulfill the duty or avoid the forbidden does not change the original state of the act of good or evil. That is why it is not permissible to deny the evil by what is to deny it. And if a people is on heresy or immorality, even if they are forbidden to do that, a greater evil will occur because of that than they are, and it was not possible to prevent them from it, and the prohibition did not achieve a preponderant interest; They are left behind on their heresy or immorality, and they are not forbidden.
This is the meaning and context of Ibn Taymiyya’s words, and it is a very important and useful text in theory and practice, in jurisprudence and morals together, and in distinguishing between the absolute and the relative, and between the principled and the utilitarian (pragmatic).
It is clear that it is not a fatwa as some claimed, for the fatwa differs from the ruling.
We are before the liberation of a fundamental issue related to the types of command in theory and application, and that the command is absolute and restricted, and the need to differentiate between them in the understanding of the Qur’anic discourse first, and in its revelation to objects and facts secondly.
And in Ibn Taymiyyah’s saying, “And in his dislike of a dispute among scholars,” he refers to a doctrinal dispute, which means that we are not in front of Ibn Taymiyyah’s own jurisprudence until it is correct to infer this example on his alleged “bloody” fatwas. Ibn Taymiyyah, the Hanbali jurist, explains here the points of jurists and the points of agreement and disagreement in The examples he mentions, and that the issue of a boy killing his polytheist father is just an example and an accidental detail for a broader discussion, and that is why the discussion came in a summary;
Just referring to the words of the jurists.
If we follow the issue in the previous sources on Ibn Taymiyyah; We find, for example, that Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaibani (died 189 AH) discussed the issue of killing a polytheist parent, and he hated the son’s beginning to kill the father during the war, and the Hanafi jurist Abu al-Ma’ali Ibn Maza al-Bukhari (died 616 AH) quoted him as saying: “There is nothing wrong with a Muslim man killing everyone who has Forbidden ties of kinship among the polytheists were rejected by him, except for the father in particular” (untouchability is informing the enemy of the breach of security or abandonment of friendship).
The problem here is; The apparent meaning of the Almighty’s saying: “Fight all the polytheists” [al-Tawbah: 36] is common to every infidel who fights against Muslims, but Muhammad ibn al-Hasan left this apparent meaning in the case of parents for considerations; Including the saying of the Most High: “Do not say to them Aff” [Al-Isra: 32], and the prohibition against being shy is the prohibition of killing by way of the former, even if the father is a polytheist, and because the right of the father is combined with two prohibitions; The sanctity of kinship and the sanctity of paternity, and therefore the father is not killed by killing his child, and his debt is not imprisoned, and if this is proven in the father, it is proven in the mother through the first; Because 3 taboos met in her right; The sanctity of kinship, the sanctity of illiteracy (i.e. motherhood), and the sanctity of femininity; Femininity is what forbids murder.
Ibn Mazah devotes a special chapter to this titled by his saying, “In the killing of a Muslim his polytheist father and those with the same meaning, and his killing of all his relatives,” that is, in war. In it, he clarified that the boy’s immediate abandonment of his father’s killing in the war is only in the case of choice, i.e. “if the father did not force him to kill him,” otherwise, “there is nothing wrong with killing him if he cannot escape from him, because leaving the father until he kills him is to destroy himself, and the command is in the right The son, according to Islamic law, should not attack the father with anything in the first place, not to destroy himself.” That is, we are here in front of a balance between competing duties.
And if we browse the book “Al-Sunan Al-Kubra” by Imam Al-Bayhaqi Al-Shafi’i (died 458 AH), we find a chapter entitled “The Muslim avoids – in war – killing his father, and if he kills him, there is nothing wrong with him.” He cited a hadith in which Abu Ubaidah bin Al-Jarrah killed his father, narrated by Al-Tabarani, Al-Hakim and Al-Bayhaqi. And in it, "Abu Abi Ubaidah made him confront Abu Ubaidah on the day of Badr, so he made Abu Ubaidah evade him, and when he increased, Abu Ubaidah meant to kill him." Al-Bayhaqi narrated in “Al-Sunan Al-Kubra” on the authority of Malik bin Umair - and he had realized the pre-Islamic era - he said a man came to the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, and said: I met the enemy and met my father among them, so I heard you from him an ugly speech, and I could not wait until you stabbed him with a spear or even killed him. The Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, was silent about it. Then another came and said, "I met my father, so I left him and wanted someone else to follow him, so I kept quiet about him."
I am not here to discuss the proof of these hadiths, the goal is to explain the methodology of understanding and quoting from ancient sources by completing the issue under research and investigating the reasons for preoccupation with it historically, and proving that Ibn Taymiyyah did not invent it, otherwise in this news an article from the modern workmanship.
What concerns us in this discussion is that it is complex, and comes on 3 levels:
1. The distinction between duties;
The absolute duty and the relative or restricted duty, and the effect of that in the application.
2. Balancing duties in the event of overcrowding or conflict, such as the conflict that exists between the order to fight all the warring polytheists, including the warring parent, and the command to be kind to the parents, and the warring pagan parent also includes them.
3. The overlap between the moral and the jurisprudence. On the moral side, there is honoring one’s parents, and combining the right of God - which is not to associate and deny the polytheists - and the right of parents “and to parents be kind”; Especially since the two duties have been combined together in the text of the Qur’an; Because they refer to one moral principle, which is to thank the benefactor (God is originally, and parents are a branch), and on the jurisprudential side, there is a judicial aspect related to the guarantee in the event that a child kills his father without a legitimate reason, and there is a religious aspect related to sin and its absence. In the case of permissibility, there is no sin or guarantee, and in the case of dislike and prohibition, the matter is different, i.e. the issue varies between the degrees of legal (guarantee and punishment), jurisprudence (legitimacy) and moral (perfection and taking care of the sanctity of paternity), which is the combination that the previous news refers to by the silence that approves two different cases ( Avoiding killing the father and directing his killing.
Ibn Taymiyyah’s discussion is due to the fact that the command to be kind to parents is not within the framework of forbidding polytheism, for the first is a relative or restricted matter, and the second is an absolute command to abandon polytheism.
Shirk is absolutely reprehensible and is not permitted under any circumstances. As for kindness to parents, its conditions and applications vary according to the conditions of the parent himself (peaceful or combative, calling to shirk or not) and according to the relationship between the parent and the child, and here we can enumerate 3 types of relationship:
The relationship of peace and war.
The relationship of justice and the oppressor (as long as the father is one of the prostitutes and the child is one of the people of justice, i.e. from the oppressed category).
And if the matter is subject to litigation, that is, if the son has taken over the execution of a court ruling against the father.
These are 3 situations that make the act of righteousness and charity problematic, and in conflict with other duties, diligence is done in balancing and repelling the contradiction between them, and the search for perfection and the care of the right of relative parenthood.
It is clear that the jurists give special consideration to the situation of fighting - whether in the case of war or in the case of prostitution - and the hatred of intentional killing of the father or the child is proven by some jurists - at least - in the cases of war and prostitution, even if they are among the warrior polytheists or prostitutes;
for the aforementioned moral defect.
From a legal point of view, if one of them was killed during the fighting due to the necessity of fighting, there is no guarantee. Likewise, if the prostitute kills one of his parents or children, he is not guaranteed.
But if the killing took place in a situation other than fighting or fighting, but for a reason other than the necessity of fighting, then the guarantee is proven.
Based on the foregoing, it is not possible for a specialized reader to understand from Ibn Taymiyyah’s text that it is absolutely permissible for a child to kill a polytheist father;
Because this is contrary to the law of jurisprudence, in addition to the fact that it is contrary to the text of Ibn Taymiyyah and the principle that he decided at length about distinguishing between the absolute and the restricted from taboos and duties;
Because it becomes absolutely what is restricted by Ibn Taymiyyah against his will.
On the one hand, legitimate killing according to the law of jurisprudence must have obligations, and they are realized in two contexts;
In war, based on a court ruling.
The description of polytheism is not one of the reasons for killing, for even the cause of jihad is not unbelief according to the majority of jurists, and the connection of a Muslim child to a polytheistic father is established in the records of the Prophet’s hadith, and we find some jurists stating that a Muslim child’s honoring of his polytheistic father is to wash him and bury him after his death, and that When Abu Talib died, he said, peace and blessings be upon him, to go and wash him, shroud him and cover him, and do not talk about him until you meet me.
Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaibani said, "An infidel died and had a Muslim guardian. He said he should wash him, follow him, and bury him."
On the other hand, the act of killing outside the battlefield is a judicial (legal) issue and is not left to individual people, or to groups or organizations that strive to impose polytheism on anyone, and then strive to implement its rulings that have no legitimacy in the first place, not from a religious point of view. Nor judicially.
We can summarize the methodology of understanding and analyzing the fiqh text based on this example in the following points:
The first: linking the issue with the rest of the relevant branches of jurisprudence so that the conception of the topic is complete without partiality or falsification, and in accordance with the law of jurisprudence itself.
The jurists of the pre-modern era (before the nation-state) discussed various issues related to the relationship between the father and the child, whether it was a righteous relationship, a case of a felony by one party against the other, a state of war, a case of “prostitute fighting”, or otherwise.
In some details of this context, they discuss the ruling on directing the killing, which contradicts the entitlements of the relative relationship, and they also discuss the issue of retribution in the case of whether the aggressor is a father or a son, and the status of inheritance.
That is, the relationship of kinship is subject to legal and moral evaluations according to the context (in peace and war) and according to the main title that governs this relationship, whether it is a just war (jihad), or a relationship of tyranny and violation of the legitimate authority, or it is a criminal crime, and each case has its textual arguments and inferred justifications .
The second: Understanding the text of the specific author in the light of the sources of his jurisprudential school to which he belongs first, and then in light of other doctrinal sources. When Ibn Taymiyyah says, for example, “If he is a polytheist, it is permissible for a boy to kill him, and in his dislike a dispute between scholars,” he refers us to an ancient jurisprudential dispute, This calls for asking the following questions; Jazz for whom? And in what context? What is the reality of the dispute among scholars regarding the dislike of killing him? And what exactly did they quarrel with? Did they quarrel over the killing of the polytheist parent even if he was a peaceful dhimmi?
It is not possible to understand this general statement without referring to the books of the different fiqh schools, and for this reason we have returned here to the Hanafi school of thought, for example, which dislikes a boy starting to kill his polytheistic father in war, but the Hanafi school allows - with that - the boy to resist his pagan warrior father if the father starts fighting his son.
Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaibani was asked, "Do you see the father if he was a mushrik who fought and wanted to kill his son. Do you think the son could prevent him from fighting him? He said yes. I said, if the father did not mean for his son, did you dislike his son to initiate it? He said yes," and it is a text that clarifies that the text of Ibn Taymiyyah is a continuation of an old jurisprudential tradition, and it is only talking about the military polytheist’s father, not the polytheist’s absolute.
The third: the importance of accommodating the complex dimensions of jurisprudential consideration, some of which are judicial (examines penalties and blood money), and some are religious (examines the origin of permissibility and legality and the absence of sin), and some of them are ethical (examines perfection and morals), and a party has already been explained This is about our issue.
Fourth: the specificity of the jurisprudential text and taking into account the historical context, so restoring the issue of a boy’s killing of his polytheist father under the state is a non-historical restoration, and a mere incitement of heritage with ideological or political motives and perhaps personal sometimes under the pretext of enlightenment and criticism of heritage, while the issue under discussion is a historical issue. It is due to the fact that it was one of the concerns of the early jurists, where wars are traditional and take place through direct human confrontation, and it is based on historical precedents related to the first time of the Islamic call, when the division occurred within the Meccan society and the battles and invasions took place, and it is difficult to consider them as valid issues for the present time or to be called to settle accounts with the heritage. Or with Ibn Taymiyyah or others with the claim of enlightenment, while the absolute silence about the problems and questions of reality and the crimes practiced by the existing regimes with which some of these enlightened people work.
The jurisprudential text is a specialized text that requires knowledge of rich concepts, conventions, principles, rules and traditions, and not a text directed to the general reader, and its privacy must be respected. Reading the Taymy text - rather the text of jurisprudence - by the public is dangerous and involves major problems, which explains the importance of specialization, and the importance of conditions set by the jurists for the mufti; Acknowledging the seriousness of their books on the one hand, and the gravity of the fatwa position itself on the other hand, and that is why they had their own classification of the degrees of the Mufti and Mufti, and sometimes even the specialist encounters some problem statements that need to be studied with the specialists to solve them. God knows.