Louay Fatoohi

I have published a comprehensive, formal response to a highly misleading critique of my article, “50 Death Penalty Fatwās by Ibn Taymiyya on Creed, Law & Practice.” The response also serves as a detailed exposé of the strategies and techniques used to defend Ibn Taymiyya. The article is too long to publish here, so I am providing the Facebook link.

www.facebook.com/LouayFatoohi/posts/pfbid0Ua1sA4Mo…

This is the introduction to the article:

Defending Ibn Taymiyya against the charge of extremism is exceedingly hard; exonerating him is impossible. Any apologetic undertaking of this nature is inevitably bound to fall into various categories of error: methodological, historical, analytical, and factual.

A passionate defence of Ibn Taymiyya risks making the apologetic scholar appear amateurish, the competent expert naive, and the well-informed ill-informed. It does a disservice to both Ibn Taymiyya and the defender. The main victims, however, are readers who lack access to primary sources or familiarity with the technical issues involved.

Arguing that Ibn Taymiyya was not an extremist is a project that is dead on arrival for a simple reason: extremism is structural in Ibn Taymiyya’s writings, rather than a matter of sporadic statements scattered across his works. The presence of extremism in Ibn Taymiyya’s writings is so ubiquitous that editing it out, literally or figuratively, would destroy the integrity of the text.

3 days ago | [YT] | 29

Louay Fatoohi

Sectarian division has plagued the Muslim Umma for centuries—dominating creed, jurisprudence, and devotional practice. But is sectarianism an inevitable feature of faith, or the result of conflating human ijtihād with the sacred?

In this podcast, I introduce Islamic Rethink: an internal, epistemological framework designed to separate the unassailable core of Islam from centuries of human interpretation, without resorting to secular redefinitions or external critical frameworks.

Key Topics Covered:

• The Root of Sectarianism: How "doctrinal lenses" blind believers to the historical development of sects and obscure the true core of faith.

• Core Islam vs. Human Ijtihād: Why secondary rulings, theological debates, and school affiliations do not define who a Muslim is.

• Islamic Rethink vs. Rethinking Islam: Defining the critical boundary between thinking within the Islamic paradigm versus imposing alien philosophical assumptions.

• The Two Axioms & Primary Tools: Grounding thought in the preservation of the Qur’an and the finality of Prophet Muḥammad, guided by revelation and reason.

• The four Rs: The need for Reevaluation, Renewal, Reform, and Renaissance for civilisational awakening.

1 week ago | [YT] | 9

Louay Fatoohi

I have now published the full text of the 50 fatwas by Ibn Taymiyya that I reviewed in my podcast, '50 Death Penalty Fatwas by Ibn Taymiyya on Creed, Law & Practice', along with the original Arabic text. It is available on my Facebook page: shorturl.at/cQrZ3. For easier reading and better formatting, read the full piece on my blog: shorturl.at/DOrZz.

3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 29

Louay Fatoohi

I was interviewed by Ali Zaka for his YouTube channel, "The Prometheans." I presented a short biography of Shaikh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, spoke about the edition and translation of his book, "Revelations of the Unseen" (Futuh al-Ghayb), which my wife and I published, and discussed several Sufi concepts from his writings.

https://youtu.be/Y1GtGCm4RjM

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 5

Louay Fatoohi

I have published a transcript of my latest video on Facebook. The text is too long to post here. This is the link shorturl.at/PvLGD.

1 month ago | [YT] | 7

Louay Fatoohi

For anyone interested in the full text—including the original Arabic—of the twelve fatwas by Ibn Taymiyya that I critiqued in my latest video, I’ve posted them on my Facebook page: shorturl.at/iodx3.

1 month ago | [YT] | 22

Louay Fatoohi

In this video, we review twelve shocking fatwas by Ibn Taymiyya that declare Muslims to be disbelievers and justify shedding their blood. Applying just one of these fatwas would be enough to wipe out the vast majority of Muslims from the face of the Earth.

Ibn Taymiyya’s bloodthirsty rulings are not entirely an innovation; they have foundations in the jurisprudence schools that developed centuries before him. However, Ibn Taymiyya built upon those foundations with fatwas deeply steeped in extremism, including pronouncing takfir on countless Muslims and issuing outrageous rulings to execute Muslims for reasons that have no basis in the Qur’an, Sunna, or even common sense. To make matters worse, he became an authority for countless Muslims over the course of more than seven centuries.

The continued—albeit relative—popularity of Ibn Taymiyya’s extremist creed and jurisprudence, which contradict the Qur’an and Sunna, makes him an exceptional case study. Examining his thought exposes many damaging, un-Islamic concepts introduced by certain scholars into various Islamic sciences—a painful reality that has not received the critical study it deserves, despite its immense harm.

The attacks that Muslims are subjected to in various parts of the world by external enemies are brutal and relentless. However, we must also not overlook or forget what Islam and Muslims have been subjected to, and continue to face, from within at the hands of scholars who devised ideas and rulings that conflict with the Qur’an and the character of the Prophet (PBUH), tearing apart the ranks of Muslims and dividing them into factions. Ibn Taymiyya is one of the most prominent symbols of this destructive self-referential scholarship.

Awareness of the other is necessary, but it must never come at the expense of our self-awareness.

1 month ago | [YT] | 9

Louay Fatoohi

“Do not abandon the remembrance of Allah (dhikr) because of your lack of presence with Allah therein, for your heedlessness of His remembrance is graver than your heedlessness in His remembrance. It may be that He will raise you from remembrance with heedlessness to remembrance with vigilance, and from remembrance with vigilance to remembrance with presence, and from remembrance with presence to remembrance with absence from everything other than the One remembered, ‘And that is not difficult for Allah’ (Ibrāhīm 14:20)” (Ibn ʿAṭāʾ Allāh al-Sakandarī (d. 709 H / 1309 CE), “Al-Ḥikam al-ʿAṭāʾiyya,” 47.)

Explanation:

The Shaikh first states that the failure to perform the dhikr of Allah—of which praying is a form—is worse than performing dhikr while absent-minded. The reason is that the effort and determination to remember Allah, even while unable to be fully mindful of Him, may lead to being rewarded by Allah. He may grant the person the ability to notice their heedlessness, thus becoming vigilant of what they are saying and doing.

Then, this improved stage, which is described as “vigilance,” may be replaced by an even better state, where the person becomes continuously aware of Allah’s “presence.”

This better state may ultimately be replaced by the best state: being completely unaware of anything and anyone other than Allah. This is the state that Sufis call “fanāʿ” (spiritual annihilation).

An example of this involves an ascetic named Muslim bin Yasār (d. 100 AH / 719 CE). When he would return home, his children would stop behaving as joyfully and noisily as they did when he was away. However, whenever he wanted to pray, he used to say to them, “Do what you like and give up your restraint, for I will not be aware of what you do.” Consequently, when he started praying, they would play, relax, and laugh, while he remained totally unaware of what they did (Source of story: Shaikh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jīlānī, Purification of the Mind [Jilāʾ al-Khāṭir]).

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 52

Louay Fatoohi

Has there been a harrowing and abhorrent finding in modern times that has been repeatedly made by so many different organisations, groups, and individuals?

On 18 June 2026, the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel” released its report titled “The essence of childhood has been destroyed: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023”

“Through the nature, scale and extent of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, the Israeli government and security forces have deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children, irreparably destroying the sanctity of childhood, including family ties, identity, innocence, safety and future. The Commission found that much of the harm suffered by Palestinian children was not incidental but intended to destroy the existence of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group. Since children embody the biological and social continuity of the group, the Commission has reasonable grounds to conclude that these acts form part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the future of the Palestinians in Gaza by targeting their children.”

Read the full report here www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-report-23jun26/

2 months ago | [YT] | 59

Louay Fatoohi

DISMANTLING THE “DIVISION” HADITH: SECTARIAN FABRICATION & EXTREMISM

Muslims today live through a sharp, painful division—perhaps the deepest among the adherents of any major religion. In this detailed lecture, we take a deep, critical journey to dismantle one of the most damaging fabricated ḥadīths: “The Ḥadīth of Sectarian Division” (the splitting of the Umma into more than seventy sects, all of which are supposedly in the Fire except one).

How did this narration transform into a tool for deepening and perpetuating sectarian divide? How did narrow sectarianism fracture us to the point where it became more prominent than the Islam that unites us? In this video, I present 10 conclusive arguments that refute this narrative linguistically, Qur’anically, historically, and logically, while shedding light on the political and sectarian exploitation of the ḥadīth over the centuries.

Key themes of the lecture:

• The glaring contradictions in the wordings (matn) of the hadith, and neutralising the chain of transmission (isnad)
• The explicit contradiction between the hadith and the Qur’an
• Historical refutation of the specific numbers of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sects.
• The sectarian exploitation of the hadith and its contradiction with pious constraint (waraʿ).

2 months ago | [YT] | 8