Reviving the ‘madhhab as-salaf’. Observations on Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Qāsimīʼs Adaption of al-Ghazālīʼs Revival of the Sciences of Religion

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Abstract

Reviving the ‘madhhab as-salaf’ Observations on Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Qāsimīʼs Adaption of al-Ghazālīʼs Revival of the Sciences of Religion The Syrian scholar Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Qāsimī (d. 1914) was a key figure of the early Salafiyya at the beginning of the 20th century. As the works of David Commins (1990), Itzchak Weismann (2014), and Munim Sirry (2011) have shown, al-Qāsimī sought to create a balance in his thinking between the views of Ibn Taimiyya (d. 728/1328), Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111). The paper focuses on the connections between the early Salafiyya and Sufism. It examines al-Qāsimīʼs 1912 published adaption of al-Ghazālīʼs Revival of the Sciences of Religion (Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm ad-dīn) titled Mauʿiẓat al-muʾminīn min Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm ad-dīn (Admonition of the Believers through Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm ad-dīn). The main point of the paper centers around the fact that al-Qāsimī actually wrote this adaptation after he had dissolved himself from Naqsh­ban­diyya Sufism and declared himself a follower of the madhhab as-salaf. The paper shows to what extend this work of al-Qāsimī has to be understood as one of his most important contributions towards integrating the ‘orthodox’ Sufism of al-Ghazālī into his own understanding of what he calls madhhab as-salaf. The paper is divided in two parts. After a short overview over the life and thinking of al-Qāsimī, it focuses on al-Qāsimīʼs understanding of al-Ghazālīʼs ideal view of the ‘pious predecessors’ (as-salaf aṣ-ṣāliḥ), as unfolded in the first book of the Iḥyāʾ. In the second part, the paper focuses on al-Qāsimīʼs adaption in depth by analyzing his method and intention.

Speakers from the University of Münster

Kokew, Stephan

Center for Islamic Theology (ZIT)