The First Heresy of a Mujtahid
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Shaykh Taqi’ ad-Din Ahmad ibn ‘Abd al-Halim ibn Taymiyyah ( r.a. ) first came to notoriety and clashed with the scholars in 698 AH in Damascus. He was barred from teaching after he issued his heretical Fatwa al-Hamawiyyah in which he unambiguously attributed literal upward direction to Allah ( s.w.t. ). In our time. Muhammad Naswir ad-Din al-Albani revived the claim that Allah ( s.w.t. ) is in a place above the Throne which he called “ al-makan al-‘adami ”, “the non-existential place”, in his introduction to Imam Shams ad-Din Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn Ahmad adz-Dzahabi’s ( r.a. ) Mukhtaswar al-‘Uluw . He was refuted by Shaykh Hasan ‘Ali as-Saqqaf in his Talqih al-Fuhum al-‘Aliyah , “The Inculcation of Lofty Discernment”. Shaykh ibn Taymiyyah ( r.a. ) was refuted by his contemporary, Qadhi Shihab ad-Din Ahmad ibn Muhyi ad-Din ibn Jahbal al-Kilabi ( r.a. ), in a lengthy reply. Imam Taqi’ ad-Din Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali ibn ...