Ibn Hazm: Medieval Muslim Thinker, Activist, and Polemicist

Ibn Hazm, who lived in Muslim Spain in the 11th century, is best known today for his literary achievements. But like many Jewish and Muslim writers of his day, he was also a scholar of Aristotelian science, a theorist of religious law, an interpreter of sacred texts, and a political activist. His thinking led him to a literalist, exclusionary interpretation of Islam that inspired the persecution of Jews and Christians in 12th- and 13th-century Spain, and for this he is much admired by Salafists today. Reviewing a new collection of essays, Paul Heck writes: