How Pride Led to Heresy & Kufr

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Regarding Shaykh Taqi’ ad-Din Ahmad ibn ‘Abd al-Halim ibn Taymiyyah (r.a.), the Hanbali scholar, Imam Najm ad-Din Abu ar-Rabi’ Sulayman ibn ‘Abd al-Qawi’ ath-Thufi (r.a.) said, “He could bring up in one hour from the Book, the sunnah, the Arabic language, and philosophical speculation, material which no one could bring up even in many sessions, as if these sciences were before his very eyes, and he was picking and choosing from them at will.  A time came when his companions took to over-praising him, and this drove him to be satisfied with himself, until he became conceited before his fellow human beings.  He became convinced that he was a scholar capable of independent reasoning.  Henceforth, he began to answer each and every scholar great and small, past and recent, until he went all the way back to ‘Umar (r.a.) and faulted him in some matter. 

This reached the ears of the Shaykh Ibrahim ar-Raqi’, who reprimanded him.  ibn Taymiyyah went to see him, apologised, and asked forgiveness.  He also spoke against ‘Ali (k.w.) and said, ‘He made mistakes in seventeen different matters.’” 

Imam Najm ad-Din ath-Thufi (r.a.) also wrote, “Because of his fanatical support of the Hanbali madzhab, he attacked Ash’ariyyah until he started to insult al-Ghazali, at which point some people opposed him and would almost kill him.” 

And he wrote, “They ascertained that he had blurted out certain words, concerning doctrine, which came out of his mouth in the context of his sermons and legal pronouncements, several battles mentioned that he had cited the tradition of the descent of Allah (s.w.t.),” referring to the hadits of Allah’s (s.w.t.) descent to the lowest Heaven, “then climbed down two steps from the minbar and said, ‘Just like this descent of mine’, and so was categorised as an anthropomorphist.  They also cited his refutation of whoever uses the Prophet (s.a.w.) as a means or seeks help from him.”