Is seclusion or company better for the seeker?

Volume 10 of Majmu' al-Fatawa contains an answer by Ibn Taymiyya to the question: is seclusion or company better for the seeker? ^{1 2} He begins by noting that people dispute over it either in general terms or according to circumstances, then states that company is sometimes obligatory or recommended, and that one and the same person may be commanded to mix with people at one time and to be alone at another. ¹

The gist for him is that company involving cooperation in righteousness and piety is commanded, and company involving cooperation in sin and aggression is forbidden. ¹ Mixing with Muslims in acts of worship – the five prayers, Friday, the two feasts, the eclipse prayer and the prayer for rain – is among what God and His Messenger commanded, as is mixing with them in pilgrimage and in campaigns, even if the leaders of these are wicked and even if there are wicked people in those gatherings. ¹ To this belongs every gathering by which the servant grows in faith, either by benefiting from it or by benefiting others. ³

On the other side he holds that the servant must have times when he is alone with himself in his supplication, remembrance, prayer, reflection, self-examination and the mending of his heart, and in matters particular to him that no one else shares – either in his house, as Tawus said, "What a fine hermitage a man's house is: in it he restrains his eyes and his tongue", or outside it. ³

Ibn Taymiyya says: "Choosing company absolutely is a mistake, and choosing solitude absolutely is a mistake"; how much of each a person needs, and what is best for him in each state, requires particular judgement. ³

He applies the same reasoning to taking up means of livelihood: one who is able to use a means without its distracting him from what is more beneficial for his religion is commanded to do so, with reliance on God, and this is better for him than taking from people even if it comes without asking; if he uses a means without a sound intention or without reliance on God, he is obedient in neither. He then makes an exception for the poor who are confined in the path of God. ³

The words of those who preferred seclusion or company absolutely, from their own books (such as the chapters on seclusion in the books of renunciation), and Ibn Taymiyya's discussion of innovated retreats have not yet been added; see the retreat (khalwa).