Ibn Taymiyya (Makers of the Muslim World) by Jon Hoover

Author:Jon Hoover [Hoover, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2019-12-05T06:00:00+00:00

The second hadith is found in the collection of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal:

Ibn ‘Abbas said, “Rukana…divorced his wife three times at once, and he was deeply saddened over her. The Messenger of God asked him, ‘How did you divorce her?’ He said, ‘I divorced her three times’. [The Messenger of God] said, ‘At once?’ He said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘That is only one. Return to her if you wish’. So, he returned to her’.”

According to Ibn Taymiyya, these hadith reports show that the Prophet treated three pronouncements issued at one time as only one. His opponents grounded their view in ‘Umar’s precedent found in the first hadith, and they furthermore claimed that all the Companions had agreed with ‘Umar. Ibn Taymiyya responds that ‘Umar changed the law merely to deter men from making three pronouncements at once. ‘Umar wanted to force men to suffer the consequences of their careless actions by losing their wives for good. Ibn Taymiyya allows that ‘Umar had the right to enact this kind of discretionary punishment, but he also notes that some of the Companions disagreed with ‘Umar, saying that this type of punishment was not permissible. ‘Umar was not always right, he explains, and the Companions did not come to consensus around ‘Umar’s ruling. Ibn Taymiyya suggests that those who claim consensus for the validity of triple divorce are not aware of the opposing views among the Companions. That aside, he maintains that a consensus of the Companions around ‘Umar’s ruling would have been in error, as a consensus may not abrogate the Sunna of the Prophet.

The second hadith involving Rukana is clear that the Prophet counted three divorce pronouncements at once as only one. However, Ibn Taymiyya’s opponents resorted to a different wording of this same hadith found in the collection of Abu Dawud (d. 889) which more easily suggested the validity of triple divorce. Ibn Taymiyya rejects the hadith in Abu Dawud as weak in its authenticity.

Ibn Taymiyya likewise dismisses the probative value of other incidents in the life of the Prophet that opponents invoked as evidence for their view. It was said that the Prophet did not object when three men – Rifa‘a, ‘Uwaymir, and the husband of Fatima bin Qays – issued triple divorce pronouncements. Ibn Taymiyya responds that Rifa‘a and the husband of Fatima issued their three pronouncements on separate occasions in accord with proper practice. So their cases are not relevant. He also explains that ‘Uwaymir first separated from his wife through a process of mutual cursing, which is a different kind of divorce process in Islamic law. ‘Uwaymir triple divorced his wife only after that in order to emphasize the separation. Thus the case of ‘Uwaymir is also irrelevant.

Ibn Taymiyya looks beyond the Sunna of the Prophet to make a number of other arguments. For example, he tries to show that a consensus of jurists on the validity of triple divorce never actually existed within Sunni Islam. He claims that his grandfather Majd al-Din (d. 1255), a prominent Hanbali jurist, was sometimes of the view that three divorce pronouncements at once counted as one.

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