and that scholarly consensus ran counter to it.
-
The second category comprises matters that fall outside the doctrines of the four schools, yet were held by certain Companions, Successors, or other early authorities, with the existence of disagreement duly recorded.
-
The third involves positions widely ascribed to him that do not belong to the school of the Imam—may Allah have mercy on him—yet were nevertheless adopted by other leading scholars and their followers.
-
The fourth covers the rulings he issued and preferred that differ from the well-known view in the school of Aḥmad, even though those rulings are actually narrated from Aḥmad himself and from some of his close students.
⦗End of quotation from The Life of Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah by Shaykh Muḥammad Bahjat al-Bayṭār, pp. 54/55⦘
I say: From all this it is clear that Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah have mercy on him—never put forward an opinion lacking evidence from the Quran and the Sunnah, nor one that none of the Imams among the Companions, the Successors, and those after them had ever voiced. Whoever sincerely seeks the truth should consult his comprehensive collection of legal opinions, now forty-five volumes in length, printed many times and distributed widely across the Muslim world, and should not accept the slanders circulated by hostile critics. An adversary’s claim against his opponent is inadmissible; judgment must be based on the person’s own words. Today, praise be to Allah, the writings and fatwas of Shaykh al-Islām are widespread and well known, decisively refuting the lies his enemies have fabricated. Whoever turns to these invaluable works will realize that the accusations are sheer invention and will find therein the copious knowledge inherited from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. No fair-minded reader, free from blind partisanship, can deny his learning, his merit, and his steadfast adherence to the truth.
- They also alleged that he issued legal opinions contradicting the fatwas of the Imams of Ahl al-Sunnah wal-Jamāʿah. This is a blatant lie against Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah, for he never adopted a view that opposed all the Imams—whether the four canonical Imams or the earlier scholars who preceded them.