An integral feature of many of Ibn Taymiyya's works is their polemical nature; he wrote these works in the context of intense theological and jurisprudential controversies, using various strategies to defeat his opponents. This article demonstrates how these strategies sometimes backfire. against Ibn Taymiyya himself and even contradict some of his intellectual premises. The paper comparatively examines five examples of Ibn Taymiyya's polemical arguments against his opponents: the argument with Christians over their oral tradition, the debate with Sunni jurists on the meaning and instances of consensus (Ijmā'), the issue of Abū Ḥanīfa's character and integrity, the issue of the punishment of heretics, and the issue of the formative place of the attitude towards 'Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib in the notion of the of Sunna.