48 - Sayyid Qutb, one of the religion reformers of this century, too, announced his admiration for Ibn Taimiyya and Muhammad ’Abduh in almost all his books. In The Future is Islam’s, for example, he praised only the word ‘Islam’ but he did not explain what he understood from this word or in which madhhab he was. On its ninety-fourth page, he wrote:

“The spiritual leader struggling in the front row of those who protected Muslim countries against the Tatar invasions was Ibn Taimiyya.”

If he meant the empire of Jenghiz by Tatars, Ibn Taimiyya had not been born yet when the Georgians (of Caucasus), the Persians and the Tatars in the army of Hulago, the notorious unbeliever, burned and ruined Baghdad and put hundreds of Muslims to the sword in 565 A.H. Ibn Taimiyya was born in Harrân in 661 A.H. It is written in the Turkish Islam Ansiklopedisi (volume V) that he was assigned to preach for jihâd against Mongols, and in 699, as a preacher, he was in the victory won against Mongols in Shaqhab in the vicinity of Damascus. It is written on the 137th page of the book Mir’ât al-kâ’inât, “Sultân Mahmûd Ghâzân Khân, Hulago’s grandson, became the Mogul ruler in 694 A.H. That year, upon the advices of Amîr Nawruz, his vizier, he embraced Islam with 400,000 Mongols including his commanders, viziers and soldiers. He read the Qur’ân and fasted [in the Ramadân of] that year.” And on the 930th page of Qisâs-i Anbiyâ’ is written, “Ghâzân Mahmûd Khân wrote to Egyptian Sultân Nasser to cooperate with him and work fraternally for the cause of Islam. Nasser, who was the ninth Turkoman sultan, did not listen to him. Nasser’s soldiers plundered the neighborhood of Mardin. Upon this, Ghâzân Khân came to Aleppo in 699 A.H. Nasser’s army was routed in Homs. Ghâzân Khân left a commander named Kapchak and a number of fighters to capture Damascus and he himself went back home. Nasser recruited soldiers in Egypt and sent them to Damascus. Upon hearing this, Kapchak gave up besieging Damascus and returned.” It is seen that Ibn Taimiyya, who is praised falsely to be a spiritual leader in the front row, in fact, incited the war between the two Muslim rulers and caused the shedding of fraternal blood and the death of thousands of Muslims. As for Ghâzân Khân, whom Sayyid Qutb

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slanders in order to represent Ibn Taimiyya as a fighter for Islam, he had an unequalled, artistically invaluable mosque built in Tebriz and established twelve big madrasas, innumerable tekkes, inns and charitable deeds. He sent many gifts to Mecca and Medina and devoted many villages. He was a Sunnî Muslim. Shemseddîn Sâmî Beg wrote that he loved to establish justice and right and possessed many virtues and superiorities and that he was reverent to sayyids and scholars. If Ibn Taimiyya had preached to these two Muslim sultans and had told them that they were brothers by following the âyat, “Reconcile your brothers!” as the Ahl as-Sunna scholars had done, Ghâzân Khân and Sultan Nasser, who were goodwilled themselves, would have co-operated and, perhaps, he would have caused the establishment of a greater Islamic empire, which might have changed the course of history and the appearance of today’s world. He did not perform this benevolent deed but set men of knowledge and rulers at loggerheads.

Long before Ibn Taimiyya when the Tatarian unbelievers ruined and burned Muslim countries and martyred millions of Muslims, not the men of bid’a like Ibn Taimiyya but the preaches and books of Burhân ad-dîn Shadîd, Fakhr ad-dîn ar-Râzî, ’Umar an-Nasafi, Sadr ad-dîn al-Qonawî, Shaikh Sa’dî ash-Shîrâzî and many other Ahl as-Sunna scholars and thousands of Awliyâ’, who were educated by the spiritual masters such as Ahmad ar-Rifâ’î, Imâm al-Ghazâlî, Najm ad-dîn al-Kubrâ, Ahmad an-Nâmiqî Jâmi’ and ’Abd al-Qâdir al-Jîlânî, protected Muslims’ religion and îmân. These great ’ulamâ’ and Awliyâ’ both guided the peoples of many countries to the right course and performed jihâd in person against unbelievers as soldiers. Many of them attained martyrdom. The history is in the open.