Ibn Taymiyya’s Feminism?: Imprisonment and the Divorce Fatwās

In the early part of the fourteenth century, Taqī al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) submitted to two terms in prison, totaling almost a year, for his position on divorce. Not only did he believe that the repudiation oath was expiable like other oaths, and need not result in actual dissolution of marriage, but he had begun asserting that Triple Repudiation was not only innovative (bid’ī) but legally invalid. When asked to retract his positions in order to return to teaching, he famously said, “I cannot conceal knowledge.”¹ When Henri Laoust considered Ibn Taymiyya’s stances on dissolution of marriage, he