Al-Ghazali

“ Sin is like rust on the mirror of the soul. Light is reflected in it, but the rays are no longer clear, until by repentance the rust of guilt and passion are removed.
Al-Ghazali’s mysticism was always accompanied by orthodox insistence on the six articles of faith and the five pillars of practice, through which alone the soul can receive its fundamental impulse towards God.
Yet Al-Ghazali’s mysticism leads him to emphasize always the spiritual side of worship. The mere form is nothing in itself. ”

“ In one particular, however, this ethical teaching is utterly disappointing. Al-Ghazali’s mysticism is not for the multitude. It is esoteric, for a particular class who are filled with religious pride that they, in this respect, are not as other men. Even the noblest minds in Islam restrict true religious life to an aristocratic minority, and, like the Pharisees of old, consider the ignorance of the multitude an evil that cannot be remedied. The teaching of Al-Ghazali was intended not for the masses but for the initiates. ”

“ Al-Ghazali is one of the deepest thinkers, greatest theologians and profoundest moralists of Islam. In all Muhamadan lands he is celebrated both as an apologist of orthodoxy and a warm advocate of Sufi mysticism. Intimately acquainted with all the learning of his time, he was not only one of the numerous Oriental philosophers who traverse every sphere of intellectual activity, but one of those rarer minds whose originality is not crushed by their learning. ”

“ This man, (Al-Ghazali) if ever any have deserved the name, was truly a ‘divine,’ and he may be justly placed on a level with Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty for the skilful and worthy exposition of doctrine. All that is good, noble, and sublime that his great soul had compassed he bestowed upon Mohammedanism, and he adorned the doctrines of the Koran with so much piety and learning that, in the form given them by him, they seem, in my opinion, worthy the assent of Christians. ”

“ Al-Ghazali was thoroughly aware of the dangers of Sufism both in its creed by way of becoming pantheistic, and in its antinomian practices. He saw that divorce between religion and morals would be disastrous and must therefore have been shocked by such verses as those of Omar Khayyam:
“Khayyam! why weep you that your life is bad;
What boots it thus to mourn? Rather be glad.
He that sins not can make no claim to mercy;
Mercy was made for sinners—be not sad.” His teaching regarding sin and repentance was, as we shall see later, altogether more fundamental. ”

“ Al-Ghazali exercised a commanding influence on Jewish thought in the Middle Ages. In the appendix is a list of some of the translations of his books made in Hebrew. Jewish students of philosophy, including Maimonides, drew many of their theories from the Maqasid and his other works. Al-Ghazali’s attacks on philosophy were imitated by Judah ha-Levy in his Cuzari; but it was chiefly his ethical teaching rather than through his philosophy that Al-Ghazali attracted the Jewish thinkers. ”

“ When reading this collection of “true sayings” of the Prophet (which are after all often ascribed to him without any authority or foundation) one is shocked both at the credulity and the lack of love [191] for veracity in this greatest of all Moslem apologists. If even Al-Ghazali handled Tradition so carelessly as to ascribe to Mohammed so much that is altogether puerile, fabulous and often immoral, what confidence can we put in other and later tradition-mongers and how can we clear Al-Ghazali from the charge of using pious falsehood? ”

“ Even the Encyclopædia Britannica gives only scant information. Professor Duncan B. Macdonald prepared a life of Al-Ghazali with special reference to his religious experiences and influence in a paper published in the twentieth volume of “The Journal of the American Oriental Society” (1899) , but now out of print. His scholarly investigations and conclusions, however, deal with Al-Ghazali’s inner experiences and his philosophy, rather than with his environment and the events of his life. ”

“ We cannot understand a man unless we know his environment. Biography is only a thread in the vast web of history, in [24] which time is broad as well as long. Al-Ghazali belongs to the small company of torch bearers in the Dark Ages.
He was born at Tus, in Khorasan, Persia, in the year 1058 A. D., and died in 1111 A. D. When Al-Ghazali was born Togrul Bey had just taken Bagdad, Henry IV was Emperor, Nicholas II was Pope, the Norman conquest had just begun in the west, and Asia Minor was overrun by the Turks in the Near East. ”

“ They include systems of theology, eschatology, works on philosophy, lectures on mysticism, on ethics, and on canon law.
Many have assigned to Al-Ghazali the highest position among all Moslem writers. Ismael Ibn Mohammed Al Hadrami says: “Mohammed the son of Abdullah was the Prince of all the Prophets; Mohammed the son of Idris Al-Shafiʾ was the Prince of Imams; but Mohammed the son of Mohammed, the son of Mohammed Al-Ghazali, was the Prince of Writers.” ”

“ No Moslem is now dependent on Al-Ghazali’s few quotations from the Gospel. A new day has dawned for [294] Persia and the Near East. Everywhere the New Testament is better known than any of the ninety-nine works of Al-Ghazali, and we may also say, without exaggeration, that the New Testament finds a larger circle of readers. The mystics in Islam are near the Kingdom of God and for them Al-Ghazali may be used as a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ. ”

“ Al-Ghazali completes the development of orthodox Muslim theology. From this time forth it ceased to have any originality, and for the most part showed signs of decadence. Here and there we find Sufi revivals; indeed, Sufism is the only phase of Islam which kept free from the rigid conservatism which has laid its iron hand of repression upon Muslim life and thought generally. In Yemen the system of al-Ghazali was kept alive by generations of Sufis, but for the most part Sufism preferred less orthodox paths. ”

“ HIS CREED AND CREDULITY
Although, according to his own testimony in his “Confessions,” Al-Ghazali was troubled from his earliest years with doubt and scepticism, he was not willing to yield to it, and his faith rose triumphant above all his doubts. This is one of the outstanding facts in his biography. He could say with the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews that “faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” Not only did he find God in nature and in his own conscience and consciousness, but he was a firm believer in revelation. ”

“ Al-Ghazali, who was himself cursed for alleged heresy, is memorable among the theologians of Islam in that by his breadth of sympathy he forbade the cursing of Yazid, the notorious slayer of Hussein, Mohammed’s grandson, and gave his opinion in these words: “It is forbidden to curse a Moslem: Yazid was a Moslem. It is not certain that he slew Al-Husain, and it is forbidden to think ill of a Moslem. We cannot be certain that he ordered his death; really we cannot be certain of the cause of the death of any great man, especially at such a [188] distance of time. ”

“ Al-Ghazali must have begun his education at a very early age, and his studies at Tus met with such success that he went to the larger educational centre of Jurjan before the age of twenty, a distance of over one hundred miles, and no inconsiderable journey at that time.
In Al-Ghazali’s autobiography we have a glimpse of how he himself conceived the growth of a child in wisdom and stature. “The first sense revealed to man,” he says, “is touch, by means of which he perceives a certain group of qualities—heat, cold, moist, dry. ”

“ Al-Ghazali sent the heads of several Arab chieftains and rebellious bedouins to Con- stantinople, but at Selim's death in 1520 he discarded his professed new loyalties and proclaimed himself in the Umayyad Mosque an independent sovereign, struck coins in his own name and tried to induce his former colleague Khair Bey, whom Selim had rewarded with the vice- royalty of Egypt, to follow his example. But Aleppo did not openly support al-Ghazali and Sulayman sent against him an army which, on January 27, 1521, destroyed the Syrian rebels and killed al-Ghazali. ”

“ It remains an interesting question whether Al-Ghazali in his travels, or while still in Khorasan, ever examined the New Testament.
We are told that the Jews translated their law into Persian by 827 A. D. It is, therefore, hard to acquit the Christians of Persia of negligence. Their bishops found time to write learned treatises in Persian and Arabic, and even to translate Aristotle, but not to give Moslems the Scriptures. Yet Al-Kindi and others like him, many of whose names and writings are lost, were not afraid to give their testimony even at the court of the Caliphs. ”

“ Being a Moslem, Al-Ghazali was either too proud to search for the true historical facts of the Christian religion, or perhaps it would be more charitable to say that he had no adequate opportunity, in spite of his quotations and misquotations from the “Gospels.” Otherwise he could have found there what would have met his heart-hunger and satisfied his soul—the manifestation of God not in some intangible principle, but in a living person, in Jesus Christ, who “is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. ”

“ Both exerted an immense influence by their writings as well as through teaching; and if Al-Ghazali sought the revival of religious life in Islam through his Ihya, Anselm gave employment to his active mind in writing his celebrated treatise “Cur Deus Homo?” Both of them refuted philosophers in their effort to establish the Faith.
It is interesting to note in this connection that Anselm’s famous book is now used in Arabic translation by missionaries to Moslems, and that Al-Ghazali’s “Confessions” have been put into the hands of the English reader as a testimony of his sincerity and devotion. ”

“ There seems a great difference between Al-Ghazali as dogmatic theologian, always compelled to agree with the Koran, and Al-Ghazali as the Mystic, when he begins to speculate and lift the veil. We are constantly reminded of the words of Anselm in his great work on the existence of God: “I do not attempt, O Lord, to penetrate Thy depths, for I by no means think my intellect equal to them ”

“ To understand the time in which Al-Ghazali lived we must also remember that it was one of great literary activity under the Abbasside Caliphs of Bagdad and the Seljuk sultans. We have seen how rulers rewarded literary genius, established schools, and furthered education on religious lines. Arabic literature affords a galaxy of names during the latter half of the eleventh century in almost every department of Moslem learning. ”

“ Educated Moslems of to-day may well heed the warning with which Al-Ghazali closes his “Confessions”: “The knowledge of which we speak is not derived from sources accessible to human diligence, and that is why progress in mere worldly knowledge renders the sinner more hardened in his revolt against God. True knowledge, on the contrary, inspires in him who is initiated in it more fear and more reverence, and raises a barrier of defense between him and sin. ”

“ It is unquestionable that the doctrine we ascribe to the Arabs has ever been the most accredited among the orthodox; that if the sect of Montazales rejected it, from the fear of admitting two deities, it was from not well understanding this ancient doctrine, the true meaning of which Al-Ghazali has established in saying that if we speak what is contained in the Koran, if it is written in books and stored in the memory, it is nevertheless eternal, because it subsists in the essence of God from which it cannot be parted by any transmission to men. ”

“ Where the saints leave off, the prophets [200] begin; and, apart from such teaching, man, even in physical science, would be groping in the dark.”
But we must add to this clear statement of Al-Ghazali’s theory of ethics, lest it be wholly misunderstood, that the revelation referred to is the Koran and that “the saints” were the Moslem saints of the early Caliphate, and their followers.
Moslem doctors of jurisprudence, including Al-Ghazali, define sin as “a conscious act of a responsible being against known law.” Therefore sins of ignorance and of childhood are not reckoned as real sin. ”

“ With his religious pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina it seems that Al-Ghazali’s life of strict retirement ended, except for his visit to Alexandria and beyond. Apparently he proposed to make a journey to Spain and the great Sultan of the West, Yusuf bin Tashfin, on whose behalf he had given Fatwas or religious decisions, but the news of the Sultan’s death put an end to his plans, according to some authorities. Others say that at this time he was summoned to teach again at Nishapur. ”

“ We are in ignorance and we must remain [261] in ignorance whence Al-Ghazali derived this material; or did he invent it even as the men of his day invented stories about Mohammed?
In the Ihya we find the following incidents, real and apocryphal, regarding the life of Christ on earth as a prophet and saint. [86] We begin with Al-Ghazali’s witness to His sinlessness: “It is said that the devil (may God curse him) appeared to Jesus and said, ‘Say there is no God but God.’ He replied: ‘The word is true but I will not repeat it after you.’” (Vol. III, p. 23.) ”

“ Their theology was limited to minute knowledge of Canon Law. They had no place for the religion which Ghazali preached, which was personal and passionate, a religion of the heart. When he attacked contemporary theologians busy with questions of legality and the externals of religion, he touched these pharisees of the law at the quick and they not only squirmed but screamed loudly. According to Dozy, “the Kady of Cordova, Ibn Hamdin, declared that any man who read Al-Ghazali’s book was an infidel ripe for damnation, and he drew up a fatwa condemning all copies of the book to the flames. ”