[Webshaykh’s Note: The Muslim World has made some of their articles available, perhaps only for a limited time, to non-subscribers. In the latest issue (Volume 99, Issue 1, Pages 1-20, 2009) there is an interesting article by Yahya Michot (“Between Entertainment and Religion: Ibn Taymiyya’s Views on Superstition”). I attach here a brief excerpt from the article.]

One day, Ibn Taymiyya was asked to answer the following questions in a fetwa: “Are there, in this community, virtuous persons whom God keeps absent to people’s eyes? They are only seen by those by who they want to be seen. Even if they are among people, they are, in the state which is theirs, veiled to these people’s eyes. And also, are there, on Mount Lebanon, forty men absent to the eyes of those who look there? Every time one of them dies, they take somebody else among the people, who absents himself with them just as they are absent. All those, the earth hides them. They perform the pilgrimage. They accomplish in an hour distant trips that would normally take a month or a year. There are some among them who fly like birds, speak of hidden things before they happen, eat bones and clay and find this nourishing and sweet, etc.”27 The occultation of holy individuals alluded to in such questions is obviously influenced by the ShÄ«’Ä« dogma of the Hidden Imām or by the doctrine of the saint Abdāl circulating within some Sufi circles. These beliefs however seem to have been accompanied by others far less connected with the religion than with the street entertainments of the period.

In MamlÅ«k Egypt and Syria, duping and cheating people had in fact become a real art, whose masters are found by Ibn Taymiyya, and various other authors, in the most diverse milieus.28 In the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, the Holy Fire that ignorant crowds believe to be descending from heaven is nothing other than a machination artificially produced by monks.29 Likewise for crosses supposedly suspended in the air, statues or pictures of Jesus or of his mother that weep tears, etc.: “every rational (‘âqil) person knows it, all these things are impostures and forgeries. As for God’s Prophets and the virtuous among His servants, they disavow all that is fake, vain, an imposture, just as they disavowed Pharaoh’s magicians’ magic.”30 One of the main reasons of Ibn Taymiyya’s total opposition to Christian monks is that “it is them who make the religion of the Nazarenes subsist, by means of the vain tricks (hîla bâtila) which they display.”31

Within Muslim communities many are also the “nets with which some are hunting the populace [. . .] with the sole aim of feeding themselves”33 or of “fraternizing with women.”34 The Damascene theologian writes for example that one of al-HÌ£allâj’s “‘extraordinary’ deeds consisted in sending some of his companions to a desolate place in order to hide therein some fruit or sweets. Afterwards, he used to come near that place with a group of people interested in this world and to say to them: ‘What do you fancy me to bring you from that desolate place?’ One of them fancying a fruit or some sweet, he would say: ‘Stay there!’ and then would go to that place and bring back some of what had been hidden there. His audience then used to think that this was a prodigious deed of his.”35 Once, Ibn Taymiyya was asked whether it was permitted to give alms to “a man, a peasant, who neither knew his religion nor how to pray, in whose village there was a shaykh who had given him a diploma, and who was staying there eating snakes and scorpions, after having given up his job as a peasant, begging for food.”36 On another occasion, he was asked whether it was permitted to pray for “a man who claimed to be a shaykh, saw a snake and, when somebody from the audience got up to kill it, forbade him to do so, took the snake with his hand in order to show his prodigious powers (karâma), was bitten, and died.”37 Some questions also used to concern “those astrologers who hold seances on the thoroughfares, in shops and elsewhere, and with whom women sit, as well as the perverts, because of the women. These astrologers claim to give information about the hidden affairs, relying in this matter on the art of astrology. They write out magic squares, practice magic, write talismans, and teach magic to women, for use upon their husbands and others. Because of that, women, and men, assemble at the doors of their shops. The situation may even lead, sometimes, to other kinds of deeds that women commit against their husbands and to the corruption of the people’s beliefs, to their voracious attachment to magic and to the planets, to their turning away from God, Powerful is He and Majestic, and from trusting in Him concerning events and accidents. Is that licit or not?”38

For the Damascene theologian, “the extraordinary things that all these ‘innovators’ come up with — to walk through the fire, to catch snakes, to bring into view ladanum, sugar, blood, rose water . . . —” do not prove any kind of supernatural, “sacred,” energy or power but are the result of legerdemain “natural tricks” which he is keen to provide explanations for to his readers. “It is for example the case with the well known unguents which they oint themselves with in order to walk through the fire. Another example is what they drink which neutralises the poison of snakes, or the fact that they hold the serpents above their mouth so as not to be harmed by them. They also choose harmless water snakes, or they peel away the snake’s skin and stuff it with food [. . .] Some also oint their own skin with echium rubrum and, when they start sweating during spiritual concerts (samâ’), something seems to transpire on them which looks like blood. So, they come up with various kinds of tricks and mystifications.”40

Endnotes

27. Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, xxvii, 497. Ibn Taymiyya’s answer is translated, with various other texts concerning the abdâl of Mount Lebanon, in my Ibn Taymiyya. Les saints du mont Liban. Absence, jihād et spiritualité, entre la montagne et la cité. Cinq fetwas traduits de l’arabe, introduits et annotés (Beirut: Albouraq, 1428/2007).
28. See for example ‘A. R. al-JawbarÄ«’s fantastic reports in R. Khawam, ‘Abd al-Rahmāne al-DjawbarÄ«. Le voile arraché: l’autre visage de l’Islam, 2 vols (Paris: Phébus, 1979–1980).
29. See Ibn Taymiyya, Qubruṣiyya, my translation: Roi croisé, 147–149.
30. Ibn Taymiyya, Qubruṣiyya, my translation: Roi croisé, 151.
31. Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, my translation: Statut, 28; see also his Jawāb, translation Michel, 206–207.
32. Left: drawing by G. Aleeff, in G. Jahshan, Guide to the West Bank of Jordan (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, [1963?]), 16. Right: drawing on a ceramic bowl of the 5th/ 11th c., London, Victoria and Albert Museum
33. Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, my translation: Musique, 31, n. 2.
34. See Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, my translation: Pages XX, 23.
35. Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, my translation: Sang.
36. Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, my translation: Pages XX, 21.
37. Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, my translation: Pages XX, 22.
38. Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, my translation: Astrology, 188.
39. H. Kretzschmer, in G. Ebers, Egypt, Descriptive, Historical and Picturesque. Translated from the Original German by Cl. Bell, 2 vols. (London: Cassell & Co., 1898), ii, 105.
40. Ibn Taymiyya, MajmÅ«’ al-fatāwā, my translation: Pages XX, 21–22.