the notion of Ibn Taymiyya being influenced by Peripatetic philosophy is a topic long familiar to his modern critics in the Muslim world, from Muhammad Za : ¯hid al-Kawtharı¯ (d. 1951) to Sa ( ¯ıd Ramada: ¯n al-Bu¯: tı¯(d. 2013). Ibn Taymiyya’s bold but generally underappreciated contention that God is eternally active as Creator, eternally undertaking a process of discrete creative acts with no beginning or end. This view he had justified on the premise of the possibility of infinite temporal regress (hawa¯dith la : ¯ awwal laha¯) which had been conceptually buttressed by Ibn Sı¯na¯ as a legitimate form of actual infinity.
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