Ibn Baaz was the Grand Mufti of Saudi
Arabia from 1993 until his death in 1999.
Biography:
He was born in the city of Riyadh الرياض ,in Najd نجد province .
At the age of sixteen, ibn Baaz contracted a serious eye
infection. His sight deteriorated and by the age of twenty he
was completely blind. His blindness notwithstanding, ibn Baaz
continued to study Islam under the direction of some of the most
renowned Islamic thinkers of his day, such as the North African
Sheikh Shanqeeti.
Ibn Baaz first developed notoriety and a reputation for
integrity in the 1940s when he served time in prison as
punishment for contradicting government policy with a fatwa
declaring the employment of non-Muslims in the Arabian Gulf
forbidden by Islam. Ironically 50 odd years later, in a seeming
reversal, he issued another fatwa allowing the deployment of
non-Muslim troops on Saudi Arabia soil to defend the Kingdom
from the Iraqi army.[1]
Ibn Baaz is best known in the West from an erroneous report
claiming he issued a fatwa (edict) declaring: "The earth is
flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of
punishment." [2] (Ibn Baaz described this flat earth-report as
"a pure lie" [1]). In fact his fatwa(s) maintained not that the
earth is flat but that it is a stationary globe that the sun and
moon revolve around, using Quranic literalism as evidence.
(Discussion of the issues can be found in Islam and flat-earth
theories).
In his career as the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (the highest
legal authority in the country) he attempted to both legitimize
the rule of the ruling family of Saud and to support calls for
the reform of Islam in line with Salafi ideals. Many criticized
him for supporting the Saudi government when, after the Gulf
War, it muzzled or imprisoned some Salafi scholars regarded as
too critical of the government. It is said that the mother of
one of the jailed scholars reprimanded Ibn Baaz, and he wept,
which some believe shows that he later regretted his actions.
When Ibn Baaz died in 1999 the loss of "his erudition and
reputation for intransigence" was so great the Saudi government
was said to have "found itself staring into a vacuum" unable to
find a figure able to "fill bin Baaz's shoes." [3] His influence
on the Salafi movement was large, and most of the prominent
judges and religious scholars of Saudi Arabia today are his
students.
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