The Science of Logic

the banner of Islam, the guardian of the precinct of the religion and the reviver of the Sunnah in the eyes of the general run of the common folk among his companions. This is what I have to say to you.(1)

( The Science of Logic (al-manṭiq) )

Logic: its profit is slight and its harm is ruinous, and it is no part of the sciences of Islam. As for what is true in it, that lies latent already in pure souls — got up in outlandish expressions. As for the false in it, flee from it! For you will find yourself cut off in the face of your adversary while you know that you are the one in the right, and you will cut your adversary off while you know that you are in the wrong. They are flimsy formulations and crumbling premises. We ask God Most High for safety. And if you read it for the spectacle and not for argument, and for this world

— Notes —

[24] (1) After Shaykh Ṣiddīq Khān al-Qannawjī had transmitted this and what precedes it, with some divergence from what stands here, he said: “So you see his words concerning the Shaykh; weigh them with your reason, for the contradiction in them is plain, and God knows best what lies in men's inmost hearts.” End. Thus in the collection al-Radd al-wāfir, at p. 126 of the Farajīyah printing, as a comment upon the words of al-Ṣafī al-Bukhārī in al-Qawl al-jalī: “It is contradicted by what he himself mentioned in Zaghal al-ʻilm.” End. — even though in that printing it appears thus, Rajul al-ʻilm, and the number of the note was set in the wrong place. The fact of the matter is that a number of the learned had been quick to lavish praise upon Ibn Taymīyah and to take his side at the outset, and then found it hard to retract what they had said of him — until he pushed deep into those singular positions of his for which he is known, whereupon they forsook him one after another, al-Jalāl al-Qazwīnī and al-Qūnawī and al-Jarīrī and others, and their patience with him gave out. Indeed al-Dhahabī too swerved from him somewhat, after having striven for a time to lighten the weight of his opponents upon him and to pull him out of what he had got himself into — striving to the utmost, as is hidden from no one who has studied his life. May God pardon what is past.