A Critical Examination of Ibn Taymiyya’s Viewpoint on the Phrase Mā taqaddama min zanbika wa ma ta’akhkhar (What is past of your sin and what is to come)

In Ibn Taymiyya’s opinion, prophets are not innocent of sin, but they are innocent of insisting on sin. He believes that the verses of the Qur’an indicate that the Holy Prophet committed a sin and then asked for forgiveness and repented. One of the verses cited by Ibn Taymiyya in this regard is the second verse of Sūrat al-Fatḥ, which he thinks proves the non-infallibility of the Holy Prophet (S.A.W.) of Islam in committing sins. By discrediting an interpretative opinion concerning this verse, he condemns the viewpoint about the Prophets’ infallibility of committing sins and considers the people who are seeking to achieve the serious intention of the verse based on this viewpoint to be distorters and have invalid and corrupt interpretations. In the present research, an attempt has been made to evaluate Ibn Taymiyya’s viewpoint and his objections on this verse with a descriptive-analytical method and with a critical approach. In the end, it was concluded that his interpretation is contrary to the interpretation of the predecessors and his accusations of the Shi‘as are baseless.