Ibn Taymiyyah and Following a Madhhab

People also ask which madhhab Ibn Taymiyyah followed, and why scholars quote him.

As for the madhhab that he followed: he was supposed to be Ḥanbalī in fiqh, though he had many opinions that were personal, and not of the Ḥanbalī school. That is not problematic, because many scholars believe that he had the level of ijtihād within a madhhab, within the Ḥanbalī madhhab. And there are Ḥanafī scholars like Ṭaḥāwī who had many opinions in the Ḥanafī school of fiqh that went against the Ḥanafī school. He has his own opinions. He has every right to hold those opinions, because he is at that level of doing ijtihād within the madhhab. This is the same as, for example, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī: a very staunch Shāfiʿī scholar, who on some issues went against what Imam Shāfiʿī's position was. That is completely fine for anybody at that level.

It is not fine for us to follow those divergent opinions, because they are not the opinion of the madhhab. They are an opinion of one of the scholars of the madhhab, which has not become a dominant opinion of the scholars of the madhhab, and of the school itself. So we follow the school; this applies especially when it comes to the Ḥanafīs, and also to the development of the Shāfiʿī school later on. There are opinions of Imam Shāfiʿī, for example, which are different from the Shāfiʿī school, but in very, very small issues, and very minor issues, because madhhabs develop. They take on other opinions within the scope of the circumstances of the time as well.

Why do scholars quote him? If there is something good that he said (and there is a lot of good that he said; scholars have considered him Shaykh al-Islām in many senses), then there is nothing wrong with quoting that. They have even quoted, in fact, people who are completely off, as everybody agrees: a self-confessing Muʿtazilī like Zamakhsharī. They have quoted him for his great ability in Arabic; he was a master in terms of Arabic. One of his works is Asās al-Balāghah, which, it seems, is the name of his dictionary. It is very unique.

But then there are certain groups, and certain types of books, that are always quoting him, and only him, along with Ibn al-Qayyim and about a handful of other scholars; that is as far as their heritage reaches, in that way. Very seldom will they quote from Nawawī. If they mention Nawawī, they will say that he was Ashʿarī; that he had problems and deviances in ʿaqīdah, but Allah will forgive him, because he has done a lot of good work. They say the same thing about Bayhaqī; they say the same thing about Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī. That is problematic. It is just that a particular group have tried to resurrect those ideas. Yet they do not necessarily agree with him in everything: there are certain things that Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) mentioned in fiqh that they do not necessarily agree with either. But that is why a lot of people quote him, in that sense. So not everything from Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah is problematic, if that is what the one asking had in mind.