Ibn Taymiyyah’s Perception Regarding al-Râzî and Its Reflections

In the history of Islamic thought, Fakhraddin al-Râzî is one of the important identities standing out with his rational and hermeneutical character. Razi is a thinker who has been frequentlyreferred to his books in the philosophical and theological field. In essence, al‑Râzî’s approach to theological issues and particularly his method related to the God’s attributes has a chracateristic centering upon the interpretation shaped by al-Ash’arit tradition. However, Ibn Taymiyyah claims that al-Râzî gave up this method and approach in the last moments of his life and he also changed the interpretive approach into the literalist line. In addition, Ibn Taymiyyah converted this situation into a reality. Ibn Taymiyyah partly quoted from al-Râzî regarding his approach to kalâm. At the first glance, it can be understood from these quotations that al‑Râzî in fact got such a discourse as claimed by Ibn Taymiyyah, but it is not true, when looked both al‑Râzî’s own works and Hanbalit followers who expressed same claim such the names as adh-Dhahabî, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Abi al-Izz and Ibn al-‘Imâd in their works. Eventually, some statements belonged to al-Râzî was manipulated by Ibn Taymiyyah. Thus, Ibn Taymiyyah tried to show him as a scholar against kalâm by his manipulative operations on the original text. After all, it means that Ibn Taymiyyah willing to create different perception regarding the theological position of al-Râzî by his fictional text.