Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz
ʿ Abd al - ʿ Azeez ibn Baaz ( عبد العزيز بن عبد الله بن باز, DMG ʿ Abd al - ʿ Azeez b ʿ Abd Allāh b Baaz, also:. . Abdul- Aziz bin Baz, born November 21, 1910 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; † 13 May 1999) was a scholar of Wahhabi Islam in Saudi Arabia. He worked several years as Grand Mufti of the country.
Life
Ibn Baz was born into a family of Islamic scholars. At age 16, he went blind. He was later Islamic scholars themselves. From 1936 to 1950 he was a judge in Kharj and in 1950 was deputy director of the Islamic University of Medina. He attained the status of a Hafiz.
He soon became known as the representative of Salafism, whose leadership he was expected since 1967. He stood beside Muhammad Ibn Uthaymeen at the top of the movement that demanded reforms in the Saudi policy in the early 1990s. He was a co-signatory of a petition in 1992, which achieved the convening of the Consultative Council in the hitherto almost absolutist ruled country. At the same time it was the aim of the Salafi, the right to reform the system so that the laws are in line with the Sharia.
In 1994 Ibn Baz was brought in as Minister of Religious Studies in the Cabinet by the Saudi King Fahd. So the king came against the Islamic fundamentalists who traditionally criticized the royal family because of his wealth and his pro-American stance. Ibn Baz was also appointed Chairman of the Standing Committee on Legal Issues. However, he emphasized his loyalty to the king and said that was the task of the Council is merely to advise the king, not independently of doing politics. In 1994 he was Grand Mufti of the Kingdom. In numerous fatwas he gave religious opinions on various issues. Ibn Baz and the Council came under heavy criticism in the local population and in parts of the Muslim abroad, since it considers the deployment of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, on behalf of the committee to be legal and therefore the decision of the Saudi Government had subsequently " approved ".
Ibn Baz reputation as an innovator of the Islamization of Saudi society - he obtained along with Muhammad Ibn Uthaymeen many new, based on the Sharia laws. The Office of the Grand Mufti took over after his death, Abd al - Aziz bin Abdullah Al al- Sheikh.
Even in 1966 Ibn Baz advocated a geocentric world view and described the idea that the earth revolves around the sun, as incompatible with Quranic statements, therefore this must be considered as unbelief. This attitude, however, was met with many Islamic jurists on contradiction. Under King Faisal its book with the statement ibn Baz were censored in this regard. From an alleged statement that the earth is flat, not round, he distanced himself. Previously, there were statements that should prove that this was his opinion. From the official authorities - side in the Kingdom this has been declared as " baseless rumors".