Islamic universalism: Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's Salafī deliberations on the duration of Hell-Fire

Classical Sunni eschatology maintains that all those who believe that God is one will enter the Garden of Paradise in due time. Some monotheists may first have to endure punishment and purification in the Fire for their sins, but those with even the least grain of belief will eventually enter the Garden as their reward. Conversely, unbelievers and those who associate partners with God (mushrikūn) will spend eternity in Hell-Fire as retribution for their unforgivable error.1 Classical Sunnism supports punishment of unbelievers and associators in unending Fire with many verses from the Qur’ān. However, its fundamental warrant for this doctrine is not the Qur’ān but consensus (ijmā‘). The classical Sunni principle of consensus affirms that when the scholars of the Muslim community have agreed on a matter — that Islam has Five Pillars, for example — it is no longer open to discussion.2 So, the claim here is that the Muslim community has reached a binding consensus that punishment of unbelievers in the Fire will never cease.3 This claim has not gone uncontested. In copious writings on the duration of the Fire, the Damascene theologian Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) — the leading student of the famed Ḥanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) — presents what may well be the most forthright challenge to the alleged consensus on this doctrine in medieval Islamic thought. The case for the limited duration of chastisement in the Fire did receive careful consideration earlier on as is evident in the vast Qur’ān commentary of Fakhr al-D?n al-Rāz? (d. 606/1209).4 Nonetheless, Ibn al-Qayyim's discussions appear to be unprecedented in their thoroughness and length. In his argumentation, the Fire no longer functions retributively to punish as in the classical doctrine but therapeutically to cleanse from sins, even the sins of unbelief (kufr) and associationism (shirk). Does then the punishment of unbelievers come to an end? Does the Fire pass away when its purposes have been attained? As we will see, some scholars have concluded that Ibn al-Qayyim answers these questions affirmatively to yield a doctrine of universal salvation. Yet, closer examination of his texts shows that coming to this conclusion is not as simple as it first appears. This article investigates three lengthy discussions on the duration of punishment and the Fire by Ibn al-Qayyim that come from the later years of his life. These three have emerged in recent controversial literature as the fullest and most significant of Ibn al-Qayyim's deliberations on the topic.5 I have not undertaken an exhaustive search for additional treatments elsewhere in Ibn al-Qayyim's vast corpus, and no attempt is made here to provide a comprehensive overview of his thought on this subject. Rather, this study seeks to clarify Ibn al-Qayyim's views in the key texts under consideration, note debts to his teacher Ibn Taymiyya, and explore the means by which he circumvents the classical Sunni consensus

Ḥanbalī theology

The modern study of Ḥanbalī theology was initially plagued by the problem of viewing Ḥanbalism through the eyes of its Ashʿarī opponents. I. Goldziher (d. 1921) and D. B. Macdonald (d. 1943) labelled the Ḥanbalīs ‘reactionary’ and bemoaned the harm that they had done to the cause of a conciliatory Ashʿarī orthodoxy. The work of H. Laoust (d. 1983) and G. Makdisi (d. 2002) turned the tide of scholarship toward closer examination of Ḥanbalī texts on their own terms and deeper understanding of Ḥanbalism in its historical context. Makdisi in particular argued that Ḥanbalism had a disproportionate impact on the development of Islamic theology because it was the only Sunnī law school to maintain a consistently traditionalist theological voice. For Makdisi, the Ḥanbalīs were the ‘spearhead’ of a wider traditionalist movement in medieval Islam against the rationalism of Muʿtazilī and Ashʿarī Kalām (Makdisi 1962–3; 1981). Aspects of Makdisi’s narrative require modification, especially as some leading Ḥanbalīs of the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries were more rationalist than earlier thought, but the main thrust of his argument still stands. It may be added that Ḥanbalī theology has also had a disproportionate impact on modern Islamic theology. The Wahhābī movement in Arabia and contemporary Salafism have appropriated and spread the theology of the eighth/fourteenth-century scholar Ibn Taymiyya far beyond the confines of the modern Ḥanbalī school of law. This chapter begins with the formation and early development of Ḥanbalism in order to clarify Makdisi’s claim, and it continues by surveying key Ḥanbalī figures from Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal in the third/ninth century to Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb in the twelfth/eighteenth and giving extended attention to the unique theology of Ibn Taymiyya

Perpetual creativity in the perfection of God: Ibn Taymiyya's Hadith commentary on God's creation of this world

The course of the Islamic debate over the origin of the world through Ibn Rushd (d. 595/1198) is well known. Kalam theologians and al-Ghazali seek to prove the temporal origination of the world, while philosophers such as Ibn Sina argue for the world's eternal emanation from God. Ibn Rushd reasserts the world's eternity against al-Ghazali, portraying creation, however, not as emanation but as a perpetual process rooted in God's perfection. Almost completely unknown to Western-language scholarship is that the Hanbali theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328)—known in some quarters to be anti-rationalist—makes a philosophical contribution to this debate and follows very closely in the footsteps of Ibn Rushd. As a first step in the more extensive study that Ibn Taymiyya's views on creation deserve, this article introduces and translates his commentary on the hadith found in Bukhari, ‘God was, and there was nothing before Him, and His Throne was on the water … Then, He created the heavens and the earth’. In this commentary, Ibn Taymiyya sets forth a speculative theological model of God's perpetual creativity. Although neither the world nor any one part of it is eternal, God's perfection entails that He create one thing or another from eternity. Ibn Taymiyya maintains that this philosophically derived vision of God accords with revelation, and it forms the viewpoint from which he polemicizes against Kalam theologians and Ibn Sina on creation

Theology as translation: Ibn Taymiyya’s Fatwa permitting theology and its reception into his averting the conflict between reason and revealed tradition (Dar' Ta'aruḍ al-'Aql waʾl-Naql)

The Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) wrote his famous tome Darʾ Taʿāruḍ al-ʿAql waʾl-Naql (Averting the Conflict between Reason and Revealed Tradition) in Damascus sometime after 713/1313 to critique the “universal rule” (qānūn kullī) of the Ashʿarī kalām theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210).2 According to al-Rāzī’s rule, precedence must be given to reason when reason and revelation conflict, and, when reason contradicts the plain sense of a revealed text, that sense must be either reinterpreted to accord with reason or delegated to God and given no further reflection.3 Ibn Taymiyya rejects al-Rāzī’s rule with 44 considerations or arguments (wujūh) of widely varying length to make the claim that there is in fact no conflict between reason and revealed tradition. Reason properly understood and the texts of revelation are in complete accord